Using options- and press-based proxies for CEO overconfidence (Malmendier and Tate 2005a, 2005b, 2008), we find that over the 1993-2003 period, firms with overconfident CEOs have greater return volatility, invest more in innovation, obtain more patents and patent citations, and achieve greater...

Takeovers result in the transfer of bondholders' claims from the target to the acquiring firm, providing a setting to examine the impact of a change in shareholder power on bondholders. We find that an increase in the holdings of the top 5 acquirer institutional owners, a measure of shareholder...

We find significant persistence in various investment and financing policies. This persistence survives even the split-up of a firm through a spin-off transaction. We find that spin-off firms choose policies that are more similar to those of their parent firms than to those of their own matched...

We examine the determinants of appointments of outside CEOs to boards and how these appointments impact the appointing companies. We find that CEOs are most likely to join boards of large established firms that are geographically close, pursue similar financial and investment policies, and have...

I study managers' risk-taking behavior and how it is affected by equity-based compensation. I find that in response to an exogenous increase in takeover protection in Delaware during the mid-1990s, managers lower firm risk by 6%. I also find that the decrease in firm risk is concentrated among...

This study investigates the impact of trustee stock status announcements on shareholders' wealth in Singapore. An event study methodology is used to ascertain the abnormal returns around the announcement day. The results show that there is a positive and permanent wealth effect on trustee stocks...

Outside directors have incentives to resign to protect their reputation or to avoid an increase in their workload when they anticipate that the firm on whose board they sit will perform poorly or disclose adverse news. We call these incentives the dark side of outside directors. We find strong...