We relate the agency issues inherent in management buyouts and in earnings management. Income-reducing earnings management occurs prior to management buyouts. When insiders own small amounts of stock, outside monitoring mechanisms such as institutional ownership and Big Six audit firms reduce...

CEOs are “lucky” when they receive stock option grants on days when the stock price is the lowest in the month of the grant, implying opportunistic timing. Extending the work of Bebchuk, Grinstein, Peyer (2010), we explore the effect of overall corporate governance quality on CEO luck....

Exploiting an exogenous shock that diminishes the shareholder litigation risk for certain firms, we examine the effect of litigation risk on corporate social responsibility. In particular, we take advantage of an unexpected ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court that raised the difficulty of...