Traditional finance theory suggests that riskier investments should yield higher returns. Challenging this notion, anecdotal and empirical evidence suggests that highly-incented managers may take on excessive risk, leading to greater losses, while other theoretical research argues that high...

We develop a measurement-error framework for assessing the quality of relative-performance metrics designed to filter out the systematic component of performance, and analyze relative total shareholder return (rTSR)-the predominant metric market participants use to isolate managers'...

The interdependences of payment schemes, returns and the existence of a works council are analysed by using data collected on German firms in the sector of mechanical engineering. There is no connection between payment schemes and returns, whereas a works council has a negative effect on a...

We document that CEO cash compensation is twice as sensitive to negative stock returns as it is to positive stock returns. Since stock returns include both unrealized gains and unrealized losses, we expect cash compensation to be less sensitive to stock returns when returns contain unrealized...

This study, through empirical evidence of 3,081 US firms during the period of 1992-2009, shows a strong causal relation between different CEO compensation components and firms' investment policy and firm risk. Specifically, the proportion of CEO option-based compensation is positively and...

I invoke agency theory to evaluate how top executives' compensation contracts are structured, conditional on risk in the firm's operating environment, focusing on the total, fixed, and variable components. The results suggest that companies exert some effort to adhere to agency theoretic...

Earnings manipulations are often revealed with significant lag. This usually entails dramatic share price' slide. Therefore investors should avoid/buy stocks with low/high earnings-quality. However, given the shortcomings of auditing, using this strategy requires application of the other (then...

We investigate the extent to which hedge fund managers smooth self-reported returns. In contrast with prior research on the “anomalous” properties of hedge fund returns, we observe the mechanisms used to price the fund's investment positions and report the fund's performance to investors,...

We investigate the extent to which hedge fund managers smooth self‐reported returns. In contrast with prior research on the “anomalous” properties of hedge fund returns, we observe the mechanisms used to price the fund's investment positions and report the fund's performance to investors,...

It is well known that the market-to-book equity ratio and total asset growth are negatively associated with future stock returns. Much less known is that the predictabilities are related through the mispricing channel. We show that the growth-value anomaly is governed by ex-ante total asset...