Recently, a significant number of companies have come under public and regulatory scrutiny for backdating stock option grants. This article discusses factors that influenced the dramatic increase in stock option compensation and summarizes the academic research that led to the discovery of...

We document an economically significant relation between director turnover and prior firm performance. This relation manifests in idiosyncratic stock returns consistent with relative performance evaluation and the monitoring of actions attributable to directors. The director turnover-performance...

Director selection is crucial in corporate governance, but little is known about the relative importance of individual director attributes in the selection process. We examine the motives for director selection using the empirical setting of mergers, which offers a well-defined pool of...

We document an economically significant relation between director turnover and prior firm performance. This relation manifests in idiosyncratic stock returns consistent with relative performance evaluation and the monitoring of actions attributable to directors. The director turnover-performance...

We report that the probability that executives exercise options early decreases with the volatility of the underlying stock return. We interpret this to mean that executives' subjective option value increases with volatility and that option grants increase executives' risk appetite. Further...