We document that firms that are larger, have stronger governance and more able CEOs are more likely to combine CEO and board chair roles (i.e., duality). We also document that firms that split these roles have significantly lower announcement and post-announcement returns, and lower...

We investigate how boards use discretion in contracting to incorporate private information about managerial performance. Building from the literature documenting that loss firms' publicly available valuation allowance (VA) disclosures contain value-relevant private information, we show the VA...

This paper investigates the importance of role-specific performance measures and sociopolitical factors in the career paths of CFOs. We find that forced CFO turnover is associated with poor performance in functions over which they have more direct influence, including financial reporting,...

We examine how and why insider trading varies across senior executives and their firms. As predicted, the profitability of both purchases and sales are higher for “recordholder” executives (those who have a record of legal infractions), than for other “non-recordholder” executives at the...

We examine how executives' behavior outside the workplace, as measured by their ownership of luxury goods (low "frugality") and prior legal infractions, is related to financial reporting risk. We predict and find that CEOs and CFOs with a legal record are more likely to perpetrate fraud. In...