Shareholders in distressed firms should profit from shifting to more risky assets, but there is little empirical evidence documenting such behavior. We find that this weak evidence is consistent with creditors being somewhat able to control the investment policies of distressed firms if distress...

In this article, we show that only distressed firms not identified as distressed by creditors are able to transfer wealth from creditors to shareholders. Using the number of years to future bankruptcy as a proxy for genuine distress and measures based on observable firm characteristics as...

Prior studies find that entrenched managers destroy firm value by choosing lower risk negative NPV projects. In this paper, I argue that enhanced monitoring by boards and internal controls established following the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and concurrent reforms to stock...

Using CEOs’ pilot licenses to proxy for sensation-seeking personality trait, we show that firms with sensation-seeking CEOs increase stock price crash risk. This result holds after addressing endogeneity concerns, using propensity score matching and several difference-in-difference tests. We...

We examine the effect of Top Management Team (TMT) professional finance experience on firm investment efficiency. Top managers with a career background in finance help reduce deviations of investment from the level warranted by firm fundamentals. Reductions in investment inefficiencies are...

We study whether CEO narcissism affects a firm’s share repurchase announcements and their implementations. Using signature characteristics as a measure of narcissism, we find that US firms with narcissist CEOs are more likely to make repurchase announcements and announce higher repurchase...