Prior research has shown that trust has a positive effect on the economic welfare of nations. We investigate this result by analyzing the effect of endowed trust on agency problems within organizations. We find that firms located in U.S. counties where trust is more prevalent suffer less from...

We exploit an influential 1991 Delaware court ruling to examine simultaneously two types of conservatism that play important roles in resolving creditor-owner agency conflicts: contracting conservatism and reporting conservatism. The ruling expanded managerial fiduciary duties in favor of...

We examine how executives' ability to control their firm's exposure to risk affects the design of their incentive-compensation contracts. Using the introduction of exchanged-traded weather derivatives as a natural experiment, we find that executives who became more able to control their firm's...

We exploit an influential 1991 Delaware court ruling to examine simultaneously two types of conservatism that play important roles in resolving creditor-owner agency conflicts: contracting conservatism and reporting conservatism. The ruling expanded managerial fiduciary duties in favor of...

Firms located in communities in which people are, on average, more trusting enjoy some benefits in terms of the power of CEO contracts. We present two pieces of empirical evidence to support this claim: (1) higher average trust in a county is associated with "flatter" executive contracts and (2)...