We investigate an increasingly prevalent CEO succession strategy: recruiting CEOs from the board of directors (director-CEOs). Director-CEOs might be hired in a planned succession because they combine outsiders' new perspectives with insiders' firm-specific knowledge. Alternatively, directors...

While Jensen and Meckling’s 1976 seminal work explores key aspects of the principal-agent relationship between owners and managers, they do not examine the principal’s decision on whether to hire the agent. An owner (principal) of a closely held firm can either hire someone to manage her...

Prior research finds that firms tend to select external CEO hires from companies with superior past performance and that this past performance is associated with a compensation premium in the hiring firm. We test whether this pay premium is associated with future performance in the hiring firm....

We investigate the financial result of boards' choices to promote a new CEO from within the firm or hire externally, at large U.S. public firms between 1986 and 2005. This choice theoretically maximizes profits. Additionally, choosing a new CEO from outside the firm influences labor market...

I extend Jensen and Meckling 1976 (“JM”) to show that the change in the firm's performance from the decision on who manages is composed of 1) JM's management agency costs and 2) skill differential agency cash flows: the difference between the owner and the firm's alternate manager in...

We investigate the association between financial performance and CEO hiring source: internal promotion or external firm. This analysis includes all U.S. CEOs in established public firms from 1986 to 2005. The results show that in large firms, internal hires provide significantly higher median...