Early empirical studies find a negative association between firm performance and shareholder activism, whereas more recent studies document a positive association. We argue and theoretically show that this change in behavior results from mandating executive compensation disclosure. We develop a...

This Article reports results of an empirical study that suggests that the current economic crisis has changed managerial behavior in the US in a way that may impede economic recovery. The study finds a strong, statistically significant and economically meaningful, positive correlation between...

Agency theory - as applied to debates in corporate governance - rests on a myth of separated ownership and control. The true separation, however, is between ownership and ownership: ownership of shares by shareholders and ownership of assets by the corporation. Shareholders are not principals;...

This paper analyzes the dividend payout by Romanian companies listed on the Bucharest Stock Exchange in connection with the changes in corporate taxes. If the tax burden on corporate gross incomes is increasing, the companies' management can follow two reasons in deciding the dividend payout: to...

This paper introduces a dataset on forms of finance used in 12,363 Canadian and US venture capital and private equity financings of Canadian entrepreneurial firms from 1991 to 2003. The data comprise different types of venture capital institutions, including corporate, limited partnership,...

In the last three decades, corporate governance and reporting have been confronted to a drift toward shareholders' primacy and value, and the revival of old-fashioned proprietary views against entity views on the business firm. This paper develops an accounting perspective of the relationship...

In 2001, Nevada significantly limited the personal legal liability of corporate officers and directors. We use this exogenous shock to implement a differences-in-differences design that examines the impact of officer and director litigation risk on agency costs. We find decreased firm value,...

Many studies use country-specific evidence to investigate research questions of broad interest due to research advantages of a given country, such as data availability or to exploit an exogenous event that allows identification. One such research stream examines Canadian directors' and officers'...

We analyze 228 executive compensation contracts voluntarily disclosed by Chinese listed firms and find that central-government-controlled companies disclose more information in executive compensation contracts than local-government-controlled and non-government-controlled companies. Cash-based...

We develop and test a model linking the duration of financial fraud to information produced by auditors and analysts and efforts by managers to conceal the fraud. Our empirical results suggest fraud termination is more likely in the quarter following the release of audited financial statements,...