The empirical research examining the association between typical measures of corporate governance and various accounting and economic outcomes has not produced a consistent set of results. We believe that these mixed results are partially attributable to the difficulty in generating reliable and...

In March 2013, Lululemon Athletica removed its inventory of women's black yoga pants from its stores because recent shipments of the product were “too sheer.” For a company reliant on a reputation for quality, the news was devastating. Worse, the recall set off a series of PR related...

On March 5, biotechnology company Chimerix refused to provide a potentially life-saving drug to 7-year old Josh Hardy who was battling cancer. The drug had not yet received FDA approval, and the company had discontinued its "compassionate use" program to dedicate resources to Phase 3 testing of...

This study investigates whether investors are willing to trade off wealth for societal benefits. We take advantage of unique institutional features of the municipal securities market to provide insight into this question. Since 2013, over $23 billion green bonds have been issued to fund...

According to Nielsen, social networks and blogs account for the largest percentage of time that individuals spend online, more than email and reading the news. Given the pervasiveness of social media and the potential impact it can have on corporate activities, some experts recommend that boards...

We examine the link between corporate governance, managerial incentives, and corporate tax avoidance. Similar to other investment opportunities that involve risky expected cash flows, unresolved agency problems may lead managers to engage in more or less corporate tax avoidance than shareholders...

The shareholders of public corporations have considerable interest in the choice of individual to serve as CEO of their company. They want to be assured that the company has a viable plan in place to replace the current CEO if necessary. Historically, boards have deferred to outgoing CEO,...

Based on two samples of high quality personality data for chief executive officers (CEOs), we use linguistic features extracted from conferences calls and statistical learning techniques to develop a measure of CEO personality in terms of the Big Five traits: agreeableness, conscientiousness,...

Researchers in accounting, corporate finance, economics, and law regularly evaluate the impact of corporate governance provisions on firm performance and managerial actions. Many of these studies rely on publicly available governance summaries developed by the Investor Responsibility Research...

Union pension funds manage approximately $3.5 trillion in retirement assets on behalf of public and private sector employees covered by collective bargaining agreement. They are also very active in the proxy process, sponsoring approximately one-third of the shareholder proposals that are...