This paper investigates whether directors' political connections affect their behavior in financial markets. We conjecture that directors feel protected by their political connections, which translates in lower perceived enforcement probability. We use the French $2007$ presidential election as...

This paper investigates whether political connections affect individuals' propensity to engage in illegal activities in financial markets. We use the 2007 French presidential election as marker of change in the value of political connections, in a difference-in-differences research design. We...

This paper investigates whether political connections affect individuals' propensity to engage in illegal activities in financial markets. We use the French 2007 presidential election as a plausibly exogenous change in the value of political connections in a difference-in-differences...

Pre-World War I Belgium was characterized by a strong concentration of power in the hands of a small elite with ties to business, banks, and politics. We find that political and upper class connections were widespread amongst listed firms, especially connections with the ruling political party....

On July 1, 2015, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed an excess-pay clawback rule to implement the provisions of Section 954 of the Dodd-Frank Act. I explain why the SEC's proposed Dodd-Frank clawback, while reducing executives' incentives to misreport, is overbroad. The economy...

In this article, we argue that the U.S. corporate governance rules put too much faith in the independent board members and insufficient emphasis on the shareholders themselves to control and monitor the top management. Given the agency problem between the board of directors and the shareholders,...

We investigate the impact of introduction of personal liability on the market for independent directors (IDs), particularly the acceptance of directorship offers by candidate IDs. Using a game theoretic framework and constructing games involving different information regimes, types of insiders...

The competitive target pay policy sets a target dollar number for total CEO compensation within a specified range of the amounts paid to a CEO’s peers chosen from similar sized firms in the same industry. If such a policy were widely adopted by compensation committees, we would observe a...

This study compares CEO employment contracts across two common law countries: the United States and Australia. Although the regulatory regimes of these jurisdictions enjoy many comparable features, there are also some important institutional differences in terms of capital market, tax, and...