Despite the large infusion of capital into the financial sector and low interest rates, the flow of financing to operating firms has failed to return to normal levels. One explanation suggested is that banks still lack confidence because they need time to adjust to the new environment. Another...

We investigate the distribution of pay in the top executive team in public companies. In particular, we study the CEO's pay slice (CPS), defined as the fraction of the aggregate top-five total compensation paid to the CEO. The level of a firm's CPS might reflect the relative centrality of the...

We study the extent to which decisions to expand firm size are associated with increases in subsequent CEO compensation. Investigating a broad universe of firm-expansion choices, we find, controlling for performance and firm characteristics, a positive and economically meaningful correlation...

This paper contains the edited transcripts of the Symposium on Corporate Elections held at Harvard Law School in October 2003. The symposium brought together SEC officials, CEOs, directors, institutional investors, money managers, shareholder activists, lawyers, judges, academics, and others to...

This paper develops a model of the causes and consequences of misreporting of corporate performance. Misreporting in our model covers all actions, whether legal or illegal, that enable managers of firms with low value to make statements that mimic those made by firms with high value. We show...

In some cases, the law permits a party that unilaterally provides a benefit to another party to recover the estimated value of this benefit. Despite calls for expanding the set of cases to which such a restitution rule applies, the law commonly applies a mutual consent rule under which a party...

Whenever the use of an asset by one party imposes an externality on another party's use of an asset, entitlements must be allocated. Does an upstream firm have a right to use a river's water or does a downstream firm have a right not to have the water used? And if the downstream firm is to be...