We provide new evidence on the motives for corporate hedging by examining the relation between the quality of the firms' monitoring mechanisms and the quantity of interest rate derivatives employed. Because the capital structure decision and hedging decision are considered to be endogenous, the...

We study the stock market's reaction to the unexpected death of a top executive or board chair for insight into grey director incentives. Whereas there is little debate as to the motives of inside and strict outside directors, the allegiance of grey directors is less certain. We find that grey...

We examine board quality and executive replacement decisions around deaths of senior executives. Stock price reactions to executive deaths are positively related to board independence. Controlling for such factors as the deceased's stockholdings, outside blockholdings, board size, and whether...

We report new evidence on the hypothesis that dividends reduce agency costs. Consistent with dividends as a mechanism to reduce agency costs, we find that, on average, firms with a majority of strict outside directors on their boards experience significantly lower mean abnormal returns around...

This paper provides an analysis of the citation counts of articles published in the leading finance journals. It identifies the determinants of the most prevalent measure of influence for finance journals, the Social Sciences Citation Index impact factors. It finds that impact factors are...

We propose a citation-based framework for the assessment of journal influence and demonstrate its application with the Journal of Banking and Finance. The framework assesses the current position of the journal, its trends and the reasons behind the trends. The Journal of Banking and Finance is...

The economic value of the Say-On-Pay (SOP) provision of the Dodd–Frank Act has been a subject of debate. Proponents of this provision suggest these votes benefit shareholders by increasing investor influence over managerial compensation. Opponents of the SOP provision believe compensation...

We study the long-term stock performance of initial public offerings (IPOs). We examine how past performance affects the board of directors’ stability and how changes in boards affect subsequent performance. We introduce a dynamic, scale invariant stability metric to measure such changes. Our...

We examine the governance characteristics, earnings quality, growth rates, dividend policy, and compensation structure of 97 firms recently under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for accounting fraud. Our results show that the corporate environment most likely to...

The role of the board of directors is to oversee managerial decisions and to protect the interests of shareholders. While director pay historically is a small cash fee, many corporations now use both stock and option grants as a part of a director's compensation. This paper examines whether this...