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...

Prior evidence of the impact of governance on disclosure credibility is inconclusive. Karamanou and Vafeas (2005) fail to document a significant association between board of director characteristics and analyst reactions to management guidance. By isolating exogenous variation in director...

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...

Evidence of the impact of governance on disclosure credibility is inconclusive. Based on a large, post-Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg-FD) sample, we find that increased director monitoring – through increased director independence and director attention – is associated with more credible...

While mutual funds are required to vote on directors in every portfolio firm every year, many funds satisfy this requirement by following the recommendations of proxy advisory service companies such as ISS. However, companies complain that ISS employs one-size-fits-all policies, which do not...