The credit rating industry has historically been dominated by just two agencies, Moody's and S&P, leading to longstanding legislative and regulatory calls for increased competition. The material entry of a third rating agency (Fitch) to the competitive landscape offers a unique experiment to...

We examine the effect of auditor expertise on managerial equity-based compensation. Consistent with theories that predict that firms will grant more equity-based compensation to their managers when financial statement manipulation is more likely to be detected, we find strong evidence that firms...

A purported dark side to powerful equity-based incentives is that they may induce the manager to manipulate stock prices by distorting information. Recent theories predict that firms will grant more equity-based incentives to their managers when the detection of such information manipulation is...

There is widespread evidence that bidders are more highly valued than their targets, and that both parties tend to be in temporarily high-valued industries. We find that valuation differences are also uniquely important for predicting who will be acquired and when. A firm is more likely to be a...

"The credit rating industry has historically been dominated by just two agencies, Moody's and S&P, leading to longstanding legislative and regulatory calls for increased competition. The material entry of a third rating agency (Fitch) to the competitive landscape offers a unique experiment to...