The personal traits of chief executive officers (CEOs) have been found to influence corporate policy decisions. We examine the impact of past professional distress experiences on payout policy. We hypothesize that CEOs experiencing a distress event in their past career, before becoming CEO,...

When a firm finances a new project by issuing debt, it has an incentive to invest in excessively high-risk projects because shareholders enjoy all the benefits in case the project is successful but have limited liability when it fails. Anticipating such behavior, creditors may require a higher...

Classic financial agency theory recommends compensation through stock options rather than shares to induce risk neutrality in otherwise risk averse agents. In an experiment, we find that subjects acting as executives do also take risks that are excessive from the perspective of shareholders if...