Prior research shows that powerful CEOs can exacerbate the agency conflict, resulting in adverse corporate outcomes. Exploiting an exogenous shock introduced by the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, we explore whether board independence mitigates CEO power. Based on difference-in-difference...

CEOs are “lucky” when they receive stock option grants on days when the stock price is the lowest in the month of the grant, implying opportunistic timing (Bebchuk, Grinstein, and Peyer, 2010). We extend Bebchuk et al. (2010) by investigating the geographic peer effects of CEO luck. Our...

CEOs are “lucky” when they are granted stock options on days when the stock price is lowest in the month of the grant, implying opportunistic timing and severe agency problems (Bebchuck, Grinstein, and Peyer, 2010). Using idiosyncratic volatility as our measure of stock price...