A distinctive feature of stock options is that they create incentives for managers to take risks. For a sample of 6,439 CEO-year observations over 1992-1999, we find that risk-taking incentives offered by CEO's stock options (the sensitivity of ESO values to stock return volatility) are...

We find that fixed effects related to the location of a firm's headquarters explain variation in broad based option grants after controlling for industry effects and firm characteristics traditionally known to affect option granting. Location matters because of local labor market conditions and...

We gather data from 77 current mid-level managers and 111 future entry-level managers, to investigate how they value stock options and restricted stock. We refer to our current and future manager groups collectively as quot;managers.quot; We supplement our manager data with a dozen field...

We examine whether executive stock options (ESO) encourage managers to make risky investments on behalf of shareholders. For a sample of oil and gas producers, we find, as predicted, that the variance of cash flows from exploration activity and the extent of price risk exposure hedged are...

We examine whether executive stock options (ESOs) provide managers with incentives to invest in risky projects. For a sample of oil and gas producers, we examine whether the coefficient of variation of future cash flows from exploration activity (our proxy for exploration risk) increases with...

We provide evidence on the long standing concern on auditor conflicts of interest from providing non-audit services (NAS) to audit clients by using rarely explored NAS fee data from 1978-80 Using this earlier setting, we find cross-sectional evidence of improved earnings quality when auditors...

MSCI, widely considered the largest data provider to the ESG investment community, sells ESG ratings for companies and constructs its own ESG indexes based on such ratings. Such ESG indexes underlie the creation of several ESG ETFs (exchange traded funds) or mutual funds. Motivated by such...

The Financial Accounting Standards Committee of the American Accounting Association (the Committee) is charged with responding to requests for comments from standard-setters on issues related to financial reporting. The Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF) recently released for public comment,...

In 2013, a new law required Indian firms, which satisfy certain profitability, net worth, and size thresholds, to spend at least 2% of their net income on corporate social responsibility (CSR). We exploit this regulatory change to isolate the shareholder value implications of CSR activities....

We investigate the effectiveness of regulatory oversight exercised by the SEC against auditors over the years 1996-2009. The evidence suggests that the SEC is significantly less likely to name a Big N auditor as a defendant, after controlling for both the severity of the violation and for the...