We show that firms with CEOs who personally benefitted from options backdating were more likely to engage in other forms of corporate misbehavior, suggestive of an unethical corporate culture. These firms were more likely to overstate firm profitability and to engage in less profitable...

Managers' incentives may conflict with those of shareholders or creditors, particularly at leveraged, opaque banks. Bankers may abuse their control rights to give themselves excessive salaries, favored access to credit, or to take excessive risks that benefit themselves at the expense of...

We argue that a firm's aggregate risk is a key determinant of whether it manages its future liquidity needs through cash reserves or bank lines of credit. Banks create liquidity for firms by pooling their idiosyncratic risks. As a result, firms with high aggregate risk find it costly to get...

This paper proposes a simple homogeneous dynamic model of investment and corporate risk management for a financially constrained firm. Following Froot, Scharfstein, and Stein (1993), we define a corporation's risk management as the coordination of investment and financing decisions. In our...

In this paper we argue that risk-adjustment matters for the valuation of financial distress costs, since financial distress is more likely to happen in bad times. Systematic distress risk implies that the risk-adjusted probability of financial distress is larger than the historical probability....

Firms face uncertain financing conditions and are exposed to the risk of a sudden rise in financing costs during financial crises. We develop a tractable model of dynamic corporate financial management (cash accumulation, investment, equity issuance, risk management, and payout policies) for a...

The rapid increase in online instruction in higher education has heightened concerns about cheating. We use a randomized control design to test whether informing students that we can detect plagiarism reduces cheating. We further test whether informing students they have been caught cheating...

Blockchain front-running involves multiple agents, other than the legitimate agent, claiming a payment from performing a contract. It arises because of the public nature of blockchain transactions and potential network congestion. This paper notes that disputes over payments are similar to...

Estimates of the benefits of antifraud enforcement in health care typically focus on direct monetary damages. Deterrence effects are acknowledged but unquantified. We evaluate the impact of a Department of Justice investigation of hospitals accused of billing Medicare for unnecessary implantable...