We test under what circumstances boards discipline managers and whether such interventions improve performance. We exploit exogenous variation due to the staggered adoption of corporate governance laws in formerly Communist countries coupled with detailed 'hard' information about the board's...

This paper investigates under what circumstances boards of directors fire CEOs and whether this action leads to better firm performance. We use unique and detailed data, covering 473 companies in the transition region, on boards’ actions, expectations and beliefs about CEO ability. We find...

We test under what circumstances boards discipline managers and whether such interventions improve performance. We exploit exogenous variation due to the staggered adoption of corporate governance laws in formerly Communist countries coupled with detailed ‘hard’ information about the...

We examine the relation between executive compensation and market-implied default risk for listed insurance firms from 1992-2007. Shareholders are expected to encourage managerial risk-sharing through equity-based incentive compensation. We find that long-term incentives and other share-based...

We study how well-incentivized boards monitor CEOs and whether such monitoring improves performance. Using unique, detailed data on boards' information sets and decisions for a large sample of private-equity-backed firms, we find that gathering information helps boards learn about CEO ability....

We provide causal evidence that venture capitalists (VCs) improve the performance of their portfolio companies by replacing founders. Augmenting a database of U.S.-based, VC-backed startups founded from 1995-2008 with hand-collected information regarding turnover, we exploit shocks to the supply...

We study how well-incentivized boards monitor CEOs and whether such monitoring improves performance. Using unique, detailed data on boards' information sets and decisions for a large sample of private-equitybacked firms, we find that gathering information helps boards learn about CEO ability....

This paper studies the first day return of 227 carve-outs during 1996-2013. I find that the first day return of newly issued subsidiary stocks is explained by the reporting distortions in the pre IPO period, conditioned on whether the executives and directors of the subsidiary received stock...

Our hand-collected sample of 298 U.S. SPACs reveals that the modal SPAC CEO is a 50-year-old male MBA graduate with substantial financial expertise. In accordance with signaling theory, greater reputation gained through prior CEO experience in public companies is linked to larger SPACs. As the...

We examine the CEO turnover in LBOs backed by private equity funds. When a company is taken private, we find that the CEO turnover decreases and is less contingent on performance. We also find that a higher involvement of the LBO sponsors, who replace the outside directors on the board after...