This paper examines the relation between CEO inside debt holdings (pension benefits and deferred compensation) and corporate tax avoidance. Because inside debt holdings are generally unsecured and unfunded liabilities of the firm, CEOs are exposed to risk similar to that faced by outside...

This article proposes a practical method to accomplish a previously elusive task: measuring human capital with monetary values on the statement of financial position, such as the balance sheet.Human capital is shown to comply with the definition of a right-of-use asset, as defined in the IASB...

We provide evidence of unreported trading by corporate insiders in their own firm's shares and link this activity to future firm earnings and analyst forecast error. Unreported trading represent discrepancies between insider shareholdings from trades they report to the Exchange and their...

Corporate governance systems exist to discourage self-interested behavior. One question that is often overlooked is how extensive these systems should be. A look at corporate governance today suggests that self-interest is high because companies are compelled - by regulators and the market - to...

When designing incentives for a manager, the trade-off between insurance and a "good" allocation of effort across various tasks is often identified with a trade-off between the responsiveness (sensitivity, precision, signal-noise ratio) of the performance measure and its similarity (congruity,...

In multiple-task hidden-action models, the (mis-)allocation of effort may play an important role for benefit creation. Signals which capture this benefit and which are used in incentive schemes should thus not only be judged by the noise and the associated costs but also by the mis-allocation...

This study examines whether the equity incentives of the CFO are associated with earnings management. Prior research investigates delta and vega for the average of the top five executives on the firm’s financial misreporting. The top 5 executives variable most likely captures the culture of...

I explore the theoretical properties of earnings, prices, and compensation contracts under the assumption that strategic managers are evaluated based on audited financial reports of their own making. If auditors require managers to provide verifiable evidence substantiating the contents of their...

Employee performance evaluations usually take place on an annual basis but quarterly, monthly, or weekly evaluations are by no means exceptional. If their outcomes determine variable pay, finding the optimal frequency of performance evaluations is far from a trivial task. This paper investigates...

Motivated by the rise of linking CEO compensation to corporate social responsibility (hereafter, CSR contracting), we examine the impact of CSR contracting on CEO performance-induced turnover. Using a sample of S&P 500 firms with hand collected information on the use and substantiveness of CSR...