After a large bank merger the compensation of the surviving bank's CEO often increases materially. Theories of executive compensation based on managerial productivity and optimal incentives suggest that changes in CEO compensation are related to the potential gains from merger. Alternatively,...

We investigate corporate governance of Japanese banks from the 1970s to the 1990s. In spite of economic shocks to the operating environment of Japanese banks over this period, there are few mergers, failures, and other changes in ownership and control. We also find that executive turnover is...

Although industry deregulation leads to changes in the scale and scope of the duties of the board of directors, little is known about the changes in incentives for directors surrounding such events. The deregulation of the U.S. banking industry and associated technological and regulatory changes...

We examine the response of prosocial employees and boards of directors to corporate misconduct. We develop several proxies for the presence of prosocial employees and directors, based on the density of social networks and social capital in the county of the firms' headquarters and companies'...

Using a unique dataset of corporate philanthropy, we find that direct giving activities are positively associated with more collaborative and original innovation. In contrast, our results do not hold for corporate foundations' contributions. Our results suggest that much of what is ostensibly...

We examine the impact of venture capitalist (VC) involvement, quality and exit on corporate governance structures at the time of and subsequent to an initial public offering (IPO). Venture capital backed firms utilize governance structures with greater levels of monitoring at the time of an IPO...

Estimates of investor expectations of government support of large financial firms are often based on large financial firms' lower borrowing costs relative to smaller financial firms. Using pricing data on credit default swaps (CDS) and corporate bonds over the period 2004 to 2013, however, we...

To what extent do capital market factors affect home prices? This paper examines quarterly changes in median sales prices for homes across more than 3,000 U.S. ZIP Codes in 203 metropolitan areas from 2001 to 2006 to investigate home price sensitivity to returns on U.S. stocks and bonds. The...

The model and simulations of Berk, Green, and Naik (BGN, 1999) suggest that exercise of growth options alters firm-specific characteristics such as firm size (MVE) and book-to-market ratio (B/M) commensurately with changes in systematic risk. Consistent with BGN, we show empirically that...

Firms headquartered in the same U.S. city experience positive comovement in their stock returns, a finding suggestive of local biases in equity trading activity (Pirinsky and Wang, Journal of Finance, 2006). We investigate the robustness of this finding with respect to additional equity pricing...