This study investigates how debt maturity structure is influenced by the strength of shareholder rights. The empirical evidence reveals an inverse relation between the strength of shareholder rights and debt maturity. We contend that managers of firms with weak shareholder rights eschew choosing...

It is well known that recent decades have seen an explosion in levels of senior executive remuneration in public companies, both in absolute terms and in relative terms to ordinary worker pay. However, a conspicuous corresponding trend over recent years has been the development of a range of...

In this article, we analyze whether the manipulation of stock options still continues to this day. Our evidence shows that executives continue to employ a variety of manipulative devices to increase their compensation, including backdating, bullet-dodging, and spring- loading. Overall, we find...

This paper examines why powerful CEOs are paid more in total compensation. Broadly, our results are consistent with the managerial ability view. First, CEO power is endogenously determined reflecting the CEO's ability. Specifically, founder-CEOs are more powerful than professional- and heir-CEOs...

This study examines the impact of CEO duality on firms' internal capital allocation efficiency. We observe that when the CEO is also chair of the board, diversified firms make inefficient investments, as they allocate more capital to business segments with relatively low growth opportunities...

Many scholars have been quick to criticize the merits of CEO duality, a situation where a company's Chief Executive Officer is also the Chairman of the Board, by claiming that CEO duality undermines the board's ability to effectively monitor and constrain self-interested CEOs. These criticisms...

This paper investigates whether CEO pay disparity reflects efficient contracting or CEO entrenchment by exploiting an exogenous event which mandated option expensing, namely, the introduction of FAS 123R. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we find supportive evidence for the entrenchment...

Conventional wisdom among corporate law theorists holds that the presence of a controlling shareholder should alleviate the problem of managerial opportunism because such a controller has both the power and incentives to curb excessive executive pay. This Article challenges that common...

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,...

As the dominant owners of listed companies in many developed markets, institutional investors have been under increasing pressure to act as responsible shareholders. In the UK, Canada, France, the Netherlands, and other markets, stewardship codes have been developed or are under consideration to...