We present evidence that individuals make political contributions strategically by targeting politicians with power to affect their economic well-being. Individuals in Congressional districts with greater industry clustering choose to support politicians with jurisdiction over the industry....

We examine whether the compensation incentives of top management affect the extent of risk shifting versus risk management behavior in pension plans. We find that risk shifting through pension underfunding (and, to a lesser extent, through pension asset allocation to risky securities) is...

We examine how Chief Executive Officer (CEO) compensation increased at a subset of firms in response to a governance shock that affected compensation levels at other firms in the economy. We first show that Delaware-incorporated firms with staggered boards and no outside blockholders increased...

Using transactions generally overlooked in the compensation literature—joint ventures, strategic alliances, seasoned equity offerings (SEOs), and spin-offs—we find that, beyond compensation for increases in firm size or complexity, chief executive officers (CEOs) are rewarded for their...

We use a well-developed dynamic panel generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator to alleviate endogeneity concerns in two aspects of corporate governance research: the effect of board structure on firm performance and the determinants of board structure. The estimator incorporates the dynamic...

This paper investigates whether investor-level taxes affect corporate payout policy decisions. We predict and find a surge of special dividends in the final months of 2010 and 2012, immediately before individual-level dividend tax rates were expected to increase. We also find evidence that...

Although recent research documents a positive relation between corporate transparency and the proportion of independent directors, the direction of causality is unclear. We examine a regulatory shock that substantially increased board independence for some firms, and find that information...

In April 2012, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) was enacted to help revitalize the initial public offering (IPO) market, especially for small firms. During the year ending March 2014, IPO volume and the proportion of small firm issuers was the largest since 2000. Controlling...

Public firms provide a large amount of information through their disclosures. In addition, information intermediaries publicly analyze, discuss, and disseminate these disclosures. Thus, greater public firm presence in an industry should reduce uncertainty in that industry. Following the...

We provide evidence that incumbent and entrant firms' access to business group deep pockets affects the entry patterns in product markets. Relying on a unique French data set on business groups, our paper shows that entry into manufacturing industries is negatively related to the cash hoarded by...