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...

Using an event study approach, we seek to estimate the market value investors placed on Steve Jobs by investigating the stock market reactions to his death. In the three-day window surrounding his death, the estimated cumulative abnormal returns (CAR) are -5.76%. Given the market capitalization...

CEOs are “lucky” when they are granted stock options on days when the stock price is lowest in the month of the grant, implying opportunistic timing and severe agency problems (Bebchuk et al., 2010). Using idiosyncratic volatility as our measure of stock price informativeness, we find that...

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...

Motivated by agency theory, we explore the potential impact of managerial entrenchment through staggered boards on dividend policy. The evidence suggests that firms with staggered boards are more likely to pay dividends and pay them more generously than do those with unitary boards. We also show...

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...

This paper investigates the impact of multiple directorships on corporate diversification. We hypothesize that multiple directorships affect the quality of managerial oversight and, thus, influence the degree of corporate diversification and firm value. The empirical evidence lends credence to...

This paper examines the impact of multiple directorships on stockholder wealth around the announcements of mergers and acquisitions. Grounded in agency theory, we argue that multiple directorships affect the quality of managerial oversight and thus influence agency conflicts in acquisition...

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...