We argue that information about firm activities can vary substantially in the presence of founder or heir ownership, thereby influencing the risks borne by minority investors. We explore two hypotheses with regard to these controlling shareholders and corporate transparency, focusing on their...

We explore the relation between corporate diversification and CEO compensation. We document that geographic diversification provides a compensation premium, while industrial diversification is associated with lower levels of CEO pay. We also examine the effect of corporate diversification on the...

Corporate innovation propels both company performance and economic growth. Yet, measuring corporate innovation proves to be challenging, leading researchers to rely on a variety of different signals, such as reported R&D expenditures, patent citations and new product announcements. I posit that...

We examine how the threat of exit by non-blockholders (investors with ownership 5%) relates to firms’ income smoothing. Unlike informed blockholders, non-blockholders lack private information and therefore rely more on reported accounting numbers to evaluate firm performance. To isolate the...

We examine how the threat of exit by non-blockholders (investors with ownership 5%) relates to firms’ income smoothing. Unlike informed blockholders, non-blockholders lack private information and therefore rely more on reported accounting numbers to evaluate firm performance. To isolate the...