Macroeconomic fluctuations such as interest rate and exchange rate can be considered sources of good or bad “luck” for corporate performance. Incentive effects of performance-based compensation for management may be weakened or biased by macroeconomic influences depending on the ability of...

If managers are risk-averse and compensation schemes are not directly linked to shareholder wealth, incentives to allocate effort to manage effects of relative and macroeconomic shocks may be distorted. In this paper we develop a simple model to identify factors that determine the optimal...

This paper analyzes how ownership concentration and managerial incentives influences bank risk for a large sample of US banks over the period 1997-2007. Using 2SLS simultaneous equations models, we show that ownership concentration has a positive total effect on bank risk. This is the result of...

I test theories of the recent financial crisis by studying how banks' pre-crisis investments connect to their CEOs' beliefs. Using different proxies for beliefs, I find banks with larger housing investments and worse crisis performance had CEOs who were more optimistic ex ante. Banks with the...

The paper investigates the role of CEO's equity and risk incentives in boosting securitization in the financial industry and in motivating executives to reduce the perceived risk while betting on it. Using a sample of US financial institutions over the period 2003-2009 we document that CEOs with...

The aim of this paper is to examine the executive compensation practices in closely-held financial institutions where the corporate governance conflict lies between the blockholder on one hand and minority shareholders and depositors on the other. We study the determinants of the level of bank's...

This paper examines the influence of CEO and CFO age on bank risk-taking. Using data on large U.S. banks between 2006 and 2018, we document a negative association between CEO age and the bank’s insolvency risk and market-based measures of risk-taking after controlling for bank size, asset...

This paper examines the effect of facial attractiveness on the compensation of bank Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). Consistent with the so-called beauty premium hypothesis, we document that good looks pay off for bank CEOs. Specifically, by utilizing machine learning to assess the facial...

Owing to the decreased profitability of real economy and the significantly increased return on financial assets since the beginning of the 21st century, non-financial firms in China are increasingly inclined to hold more financial assets. This paper performs an empirical study on the...

We investigate whether bank performance during the recent credit crisis is related to chief executive officer (CEO) incentives before the crisis. We find some evidence that banks with CEOs whose incentives were better aligned with the interests of shareholders performed worse and no evidence...