We examine the number of external appointments held by corporate directors. Directors who serve larger firms and sit on larger boards are more likely to attract directorships. Consistent with Fama and Jensen (1983), we find that firm performance has a positive effect on the number of...

Contrary to the concerns of the Council of Institutional Investors and other shareholder activists, it is reported that the incidence of multiple board memberships appointments by corporate directors is low, with only 4% of the sample holding three or more seats. It is found that directors in...

We study the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) enforcement decisions in the context of the highly salient back-dating scandal. We find that (1) the SEC shifted its mix of investigations significantly toward backdating and away from other accounting issues; (2) event studies of stock...

We study the role of attorneys as arbitrators in securities arbitration. We find that arbitrators who also represent brokerage firms or brokers in other arbitrations award significantly less compensation to investor-claimants than do other arbitrators. We find no significant effect for...

How does Supreme Court precedent affect lower court decisions when there is asymmetric probability of appellate review? We study the impact of Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights, Ltd., which clarified the law of securities fraud on pleading scienter. Tellabs reversed a lenient...

In this paper, we examine why firms have no debt in their capital structure. We reject the hypothesis that zero-leverage policies are driven by entrenched managers attempting to avoid the disciplinary pressures of debt. These firms do not have weaker internal or external governance mechanisms....

We examine differences in motives, firm characteristics, market performance, and subsequent operating performance of firms that repurchase shares frequently versus firms that repurchase only occasionally or infrequently. Frequent repurchasers are much larger, have significantly less variation in...

Rodrik [JIE 1996] argues for coordinated government policy when emerging countries are stuck in a low wage equilibrium because of a coordination failure. Because the return to intermediate output is markedly below that realised when a minimum threshold number of varieties must produced in...

Through a comparison of serial and once bankrupt firms over the period 1970-1996, those factors that lead to a successful reorganization are examined. It is found that serial bankrupt firms generally fail to restructure their top management around the time of their initial reorganization while...