We test whether executive stock ownership affects firm payouts using the 2003 dividend tax cut to identify an exogenous change in the after-tax value of dividends. We find that executives with higher stock ownership were more likely to increase dividends after the tax cut in 2003, whereas no...

We examine CEO partisanship and the speed of adjustment to target leverage ratios. Republicans, who prior literature views as risk-averse, are expected to move more aggressively to their targets when over-levered and more slowly when under-levered. However, Republicans’ dislike of taxes...

We examine the relation between institutional investors and management discipline over the last several decades to better understand how CEO turnover has increased. Using a sample of forced and voluntary turnovers, we investigate the changing roles of activism and exit among institutional...