Chhaochharia and Grinstein (2009) estimate that CEO pay decreases by 17% more in firms whose boards were not compliant with the recent NYSE/NASDAQ independence requirements than in firms that were compliant. We document that 65% of the magnitude is driven by a single outlier. All our attempts to...

Chhaochharia and Grinstein (JF, 2009) estimate that CEO pay decreases by 17% more in firms that were not compliant with the recent NYSE/NASDAQ board independence requirement than in firms that were compliant. We document that 74% of this magnitude is attributable to two outliers out of 865...

We present empirical evidence that firms inflate earnings around seasoned equity offerings in the presence of large outsider blockholdings, but not in their absence. The finding is robust to several alternative explanations, including differences in firm characteristics, growth, performance, CEO...

Under the fair value option, SFAS No. 159, firms have full discretion over electing to report specified financial instruments at fair value on a contract-by-contract basis. Building on Henry's (2009) study of early adopting banks, this paper examines to what extent firms' election of instruments...

In their reply to our critique, Chhaochharia and Grinstein (2012) suggest that (i) Apple is a prime example of how board regulations affect CEO pay and should therefore not be excluded from the study, and (ii) their original results are robust to excluding the outliers when extending the...

We posit that feeling constrained impedes happiness. Under this view, utility and happiness maximization yield the same optimal choices in a variety of standard economic decision problems, but utility and happiness can move in opposite directions in response to exogenous shocks. Our theory (i)...