Extant research argues that borrowing from financial intermediaries subjects managers to external monitoring. However, given managers' flexibility in choosing the type of debt financing, why would managers submit themselves to external monitoring? Recent theory points to the role of managerial...

We study the impact of social networks on the ability of independent directors to obtain private information from their firms' executives. We find that independent directors socially connected to their firms' senior executives earn significantly higher returns than unconnected independent...

We investigate whether managers' personal political orientation helps explain tax avoidance at the firms they manage. Results reveal the intriguing finding that, on average, firms with top executives who lean toward the Republican Party actually engage in less tax avoidance than firms whose...