From Elihu Thomson and Herbert Dow in the late nineteenth century to Steve Jobs a hundred years later, many entrepreneurs have been stymied by their investors. In this paper, we use a simple model to explore how outcomes might have been different if entrepreneurs, instead of the investors, had...

We conduct a field experiment in partnership with the largest job platform in Brazil to study how environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices of firms affect talent allocation. We find both an average job-seeker's preference for ESG and a large degree of heterogeneity across...

In the rural areas of developing countries, teacher absence is a widespread problem. This paper tests whether a simple incentive program based on teacher presence can reduce teacher absence, and whether it has the potential to lead to more teaching activities and better learning. In 60 informal...

Stock-based compensation is the standard solution to agency problems between shareholders and managers. In a dynamic rational expectations equilibrium model with asymmetric information we show that although stock-based compensation causes managers to work harder, it also induces them to hide any...

We investigate the relationship of "shared capitalist" compensation systems - profit/gainsharing, employee ownership, and stock options - to the culture for innovation and employees' ability and willingness to engage in innovative activity. Using a large dataset with over 25,000 employee surveys...

This paper uses nationally representative linked workplace-employee data from the British 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey to examine the operation of shared capitalist forms of pay--profit-sharing and group pay for performance, employee share ownership, and stock options--and their...

Equity ownership gives labor both a fractional stake in the firm's residual cash flows and a voice in corporate governance. Relative to other firms, labor-controlled publicly-traded firms deviate more from value maximization, invest less in long-term assets, take fewer risks, grow more slowly,...

Workers who hold a firm's stock make decisions other than those that pure capital owners would make, but there exist institutions and compensation packages that will generally lead workers to favor efficient firm decisions. Workers care about their firm-specific rents and may seek shares in...

We evaluate the net benefits of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) for shareholders by studying the lobbying behavior of investors and corporate insiders to affect the final implemented rules under the Act. Investors lobbied overwhelmingly in favor of strict implementation of SOX, while corporate...

We study financial reporting and corporate governance in 218 companies accused of price fixing. These firms engage in evasive financial reporting strategies, including earnings smoothing, segment reclassification, and restatements. In corporate governance, cartel firms favor outside directors...