Dividend-paying firms tend to manage earnings upward when their earnings would otherwise fall short of expected dividend levels. This behavior is evident only in firms with positive debt and is more aggressive prior to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, subsequent to the 2003 dividend tax cut, in...

We provide empirical evidence on how the practice of competitive benchmarking affects chief executive officer (CEO) pay. We find that the use of benchmarking is widespread and has a significant impact on CEO compensation. One view is that benchmarking is inefficient because it can lead to...

For funds with high incentives and more opportunities to inflate returns, we find that (i) returns during December are significantly higher than returns during the rest of the year, even after controlling for risk in both the time series and the cross-section; and (ii) this December spike is...