We investigate the effect of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT)-supportive corporate policies on credit ratings. To the extent that LGBT-friendly policies are beneficial to the firm and therefore improve its expected cash flows, credit rating agencies should assign more favorable...

We examine the impact of CEO tenure on corporate labor investment efficiency. While some studies show that CEO entrenchment increases in tenure (e.g., Hermalin and Weibach, 1998), others argue that managerial expertise builds over time in the office (e.g., Graf-Vlachy et al., 2020). Using a...

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 et al. (2010), we explore the effect of overall corporate governance quality on CEO luck. Provided by the...

This study investigates how debt maturity structure is influenced by the strength of shareholder rights. The empirical evidence reveals an inverse relation between the strength of shareholder rights and debt maturity. We contend that managers of firms with weak shareholder rights eschew choosing...

Motivated by agency theory, we investigate how a firm’s overall quality of corporate governance affects its dividend policy. Using a large sample of firms with governance data from The Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), we find that firms with stronger governance exhibit a higher...

Motivated by agency theory, we investigate the effect of board size on corporate outcomes. To address endogeneity, we exploit the variations in the director-age populations across the states in the U.S. We argue that firms with access to a larger pool of potential directors tend to have larger...

We contribute to the debate on the costs and benefits of busy directors by investigating the effect of busy directors on firm value during a stressful time, i.e. during the Great Recession. Our results show that busy directors improve firm value significantly during the financial crisis. In...

We show how capital structure is influenced by the strength of shareholder rights. The empirical evidence shows an inverse relationship between leverage and shareholder rights, suggesting that firms adopt higher debt ratios where shareholder rights are more restricted. This is consistent with...

The purpose of this study is to determine whether earning management is exacerbated or alleviated in diversified firms. An explicit distinction is made between industrial and geographic diversification. The empirical evidence shows that earnings management is mitigated by 1.8% in industrially...

Because of concentrated ownership stakes, board composition, and longer investment horizons, founding-family controlled firms provide an interesting setting for examining issues relating to governance and control. Anderson and Reeb (2003a, 2003b, 2004), find that the founding-family controlled...