Asset owners (principals) typically do not manage their own investments and leave this job to delegated managers (agents). What is best for the asset owner, however, is usually not best for the fund manager. Additional agency conflicts arise when the asset owner does not know the quality and...

We analyze 228 executive compensation contracts voluntarily disclosed by Chinese listed firms and find that central-government-controlled companies disclose more information in executive compensation contracts than local-government-controlled and non-government-controlled companies. Cash-based...

We find that the presence of independent directors who are blockholders (IDBs) in firms promotes better CEO contracting and monitoring, and higher firm valuation. Using a panel of about 11,500 firm-years with a unique, hand-collected dataset on IDB-identity and a novel instrument, we find that...

We investigate say-on-pay (SOP) voting outcomes in a country (Italy) where ownership structure is concentrated by regressing shareholder dissent on a comprehensive set of independent variables (spanning from remuneration structure and disclosure to corporate governance), coming from the Italian...

While previous literature linked certain corporate governance mechanisms to stronger CEO‘s compensation shielding from restructuring charges, this study investigates the impact of shareholders ownership characteristics, distinguishing between institutions ownership vs. managerial ownership. We...

This study documents that firms with active corporate owners compensate their employees less than their peers. We analyze over 20 million employee records from 897 US firms and calculate pay differentials for employees in comparable positions across firms. The analysis yields three main...

In this paper, we develop and test a theory on the effect of institutional investor heterogeneity on CEO pay. Our theory predicts that institutional investors' incentives and capabilities to monitor CEO pay are determined by the fiduciary responsibilities, conflicts of interest, and information...

By means of a simple economic model, Shleifer and Vishny (1989) describe how top managers can entrench themselves by specific overinvestment. An extension of the model with additional investments exposes interdependencies that exceed the primary value of explanation. The extension of the model...

We examine the causal effect of institutional ownership on insider trading using a regression discontinuity design to analyze exogenous differences in institutional ownership around Russell Index reconstitutions. Our findings indicate institutional investors influence insider trading behavior....

Understanding the association between quasi-indexer ownership and insider trading is important given the externalities that insider trading can impose on shareholders, the importance of quasi-indexers in the capital markets, and their mixed monitoring incentives. The prior literature has...