We examine the performance and compensation implications of firms' decisions to combine the roles of CEO and board chairman (duality). We document that firms that split the CEO and chairman positions due to investor pressure have significantly lower announcement returns and subsequent...

We examine how executives' behavior outside the workplace, as measured by their ownership of luxury goods (low "frugality") and prior legal infractions, is related to financial reporting risk. We predict and find that CEOs and CFOs with a legal record are more likely to perpetrate fraud. In...

Bargeron, Lehn, and Zutter [2009. Sarbanes-Oxley and corporate risk-taking. Journal of Accounting and Economics, forthcoming] document that as compared with non-US firms, risk-taking by publicly traded companies in the US declined after the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002 (SOX). They...