We study the compensation and productivity of more than 2,000 Methodist ministers in a 43-year panel data set. The church appears to use pay-for-performance incentives for its clergy, as their compensation follows a sharing rule by which pastors receive approximately 3% of the incremental...

Though widely used in executive compensation, inside debt has been almost entirely overlooked by prior work. We initiate this research by studying CEO pension arrangements in 237 large capitalization firms. Among our findings are that CEO compensation exhibits a balance between debt and equity...

The FinTech sector has begun to grow rapidly in sub-Saharan Africa. I document far greater adoption of social media, digital currency, ride sharing, and other FinTech applications in countries with a common law legal heritage compared to those with a civil law system, suggesting that legal...

Blockchains represent a novel application of cryptography and information technology to ag-eold problems of financial record-keeping, and they may lead to far-reaching changes in corporate governance. Many major players in the financial industry have began to invest in this new technology, and...

I study "donor governance," which occurs when contributors to non-profit firms place restrictions on their gifts to limit the discretion of managers. In a study of U.S. art museums, I find that this practice has grown significantly in recent years, and it represents the largest source of...

A bona fide currency functions as a medium of exchange, a store of value, and a unit of account, but bitcoin largely fails to satisfy these criteria. Bitcoin has achieved only scant consumer transaction volume, with an average well below one daily transaction for the few merchants who accept it....

This paper shows close connections between CEOs' absences from headquarters and corporate news disclosures. I identify CEO absences by merging corporate jet flight histories with records of CEOs' property ownership near leisure destinations. I find that CEOs go to their vacation homes just after...

In this empirical study, we examine the effect of CEO stock ownership on leasing. Although financial contracting theory suggests that ownership structure is potentially an important determinant of debt financing and leasing, its effect on leasing has not been previously explored. We also control...