We examine how firms' contractual relationships with their employees affect the design of their debt contracts, and their use of financial covenants and pricing grids in particular. Viewing the firm as nexus of both explicit and implicit contractual relationships, we argue that managers...

We examine how executives' ability to control their firm's exposure to risk affects the design of their incentive-compensation contracts. Using the introduction of exchanged-traded weather derivatives as a natural experiment, we find that executives who became more able to control their firm's...

We examine how income taxes—both managerial and corporate—influence the design of firms’ debt contracts and their use of financial covenants in particular. Both levels of taxation have the potential to exacerbate conflicts of interest among creditors, shareholders, and managers and,...

We develop three complementary tests to examine how adverse selection affects the design of executive compensation contracts: First, we show that externally hired CEOs receive higher total pay and have fewer equity incentives relative to internally promoted CEOs, consistent with their ability to...