If the private benefits of control are high and management owns a small equity stake, managers and workers are natural allies. There are two forces at play. First, managers effectively transform employees into a “poison pill’’ by signing generous long-term labor contracts and thereby...

This paper analyzes the relation between CEOs monetary incentives, financial regulation and risk in banks. We present a model where banks lend to opaque entrepreneurial projects to be monitored by managers; managers are remunerated according to a pay-for-performance scheme and their effort is...

We investigate the determinants of firms’ implicit employment and wage insurance to employees against industry-level and idiosyncratic shocks. We rely on differences between family and non-family firms to identify the supply of insurance, and between national public insurance programs to gauge...

We present a model where firms compete for scarce managerial talent ("alpha") and managers are risk-averse. When managers cannot move across firms after being hired, employers learn about their talent, allocate them efficiently to projects and provide insurance to low-quality managers. When...

When stakeholder protection is left to the voluntary initiative of managers, relations with social activists may become an effective entrenchment strategy for inefficient CEOs. We thus argue that managerial turnover and firm value are increased when explicit stakeholder protection is introduced...

We provide evidence suggesting that incumbents’ access to group deep pockets has a negative impact on entry in product markets. Relying on a unique French data set on business groups, our paper presents three major findings. First, the amount of cash holdings owned by incumbent-affiliated...

This paper uses an industry data set from the European Union, United States and Japan to investigate the degree to which banking regulation and institutional environment affects corporate finance choices. La Porta et al. (1997, 1998) have shown the influence of investor protection on financing...

We analyze how the law and its enforcement affect equity market equilibrium. Improvements in the legal system, while invariably associated with broader equity markets, have different effects on equity returns depending on the institutional change considered and on the degree of international...

This paper presents a political economy model where there is mutual feedback between investor protection and stock market development. Better investor protection induces companies to issue more equity and thereby leads to a broader stock market. In turn, equity issuance expands the shareholder...

We analyze corporate fraud in a model where managers have superior information but, due to private benefits from empire building, are biased against liquidation. This may induce them to misreport information and even bribe auditors when liquidation would be value-increasing. To restrain fraud,...