Evidence indicates that private equity funds, unlike mutual funds, deliver persistent abnormal returns and that the top performing funds are often oversubscribed. Why do private equity funds appear to leave money on the table, rather than increasing fund size? We argue that private equity funds...

Do executives demand a premium for working in polluted environments? We develop a model of optimal CEO compensation and find empirical support for its prediction that pollution will induce a higher fixed wage, but lower incentive pay. This is the case even if we exclude polluting firms. We...

We examine the impact of overconfidence on compensation structure. We test alternative hypotheses, drawing upon and extending existing theories. Our findings support the exploitation hypothesis: firms offer incentive-heavy compensation contracts to overconfident CEOs to exploit their...

The literature suggests that while decentralized decision-making can allow for greater specialization in an organization, it heightens the cost of coordinating decisions. The mutual fund industry – in particular, sole- and team-managed balanced funds – provides an ideal setting to test the...

The extant literature on trade credit emphasizes its financing role wherein financially sound firms provide trade credit to ease the credit constraints of weaker trading partners. We offer an alternative, though not mutually exclusive, perspective in which trade credit serves as a commitment...

We posit that presence of informed directors, by enhancing the board's information and ability to advise and monitor management, will affect the nature of incentive contracts offered to CEOs. In particular, we study the effect of directors from related industries (DRIs) i.e., downstream or...

Should IPO investors pay attention to employees' views on firm quality and work satisfaction (e.g., work-life-balance)? We track employees' opinions (Glassdoor) in private firms that subsequently go public. Employees' pre-IPO views are informative: positive views on firm/manager quality predict...