We show that risk-mitigating incentives dominate risk-shifting incentives in fragile banks. We study security trading by banks, as banks can easily and quickly change their risk exposure within their security portfolio. For identification, we exploit different crisis shocks and supervisory...

While mutual funds are required to vote on directors in every portfolio firm every year, many funds satisfy this requirement by following the recommendations of proxy advisory service companies such as ISS. However, companies complain that ISS employs one-size-fits-all policies, which do not...

We examine why institutional investors vote the way they vote on director elections, using a novel dataset on voting rationales provided by institutional investors. We find that the most important reasons for opposing directors are board independence, board diversity, tenure, firm governance,...

We analyze class action litigation as a corporate governance device. Firms that have lower internal governance standards and those with fewer external monitors are more likely to be indicted. Lawsuits announcements are salient information to the market, as firms, on average, lose 12.3% without a...

Using the pay restriction imposed on CEOs of centrally administered state-owned enterprises (CSOEs) in China in 2009, we study the effects of limiting CEO pay. Compared with CEOs of firms not subject to the restriction, the CEOs of CSOEs experienced a significant pay cut. In response to the pay...

The past decade saw the rise of both “founder-friendly” venture financings and non-traditional investors, frequently with liquidity constraints. Using detailed contract data, we study open-end mutual funds investing in private venture-backed firms. We posit an interaction between the classic...

Historically, economic activities have been organized around certain ideologies. We investigate the impact of politicians' ideology on corporate policies by exploring a unique setting of ideological change—China from Mao to Deng around the 1978 economic reform—in a regression discontinuity...

Are firms' financial disclosure decisions affected by executive compensation at other firms? We find that a CEO's pay gap relative to the highest CEO pay among industry peers, defined as industry tournament incentives, can lead to distortions in corporate financial disclosures. Our analyses show...

We find that ownership changes much less over time in private firms than in public firms. The average largest shareholder in private (public) Norwegian firms keeps the same stake in 82% (14%) of two consecutive years. In private firms past ownership dominates ownership determinants proposed in...

We examine the role of employee health in Private Equity buyouts using employee-level data on employment, wages, medical prescriptions, and health expenditures of more than 55,000 buyout employees. Employees with a lower health status before the buyout face the most substantial losses of income...