Federal law mandates that audit and compensation committees of public companies be comprised entirely of independent directors. The assumption underlying these legal requirements is that independent directors are more likely to act as monitors of the company's top management. In this paper, we...

The likelihood and speed of forced CEO turnover - but not voluntary turnover - are positively related to a firm's earnings management. These patterns persist in tests that consider the effects of earnings restatements, regulatory enforcement actions, and the possible endogeneity of CEO turnover...

White-collar criminology scholarship shows that “accounting control frauds” (frauds led by the CEO) use accounting fraud to deceive (or suborn) sophisticated financial market participants. Large control frauds cause greater financial losses than all other forms of property crimes combined....

While executive compensation is often blamed for the excessive risk taking by banks, little is known about the operating performance incentives used in the finance industry both prior to and subsequent to the recent crisis. We provide a comprehensive analysis of incentive design -- the link of...

Expertise is increasingly being recognized as an important component to enhance boards' and directors' effectiveness. In view of the increasing relevance of special skill/ expertise in specific industries, this study offers insights to policy makers to improve corporate governance and directors'...

The global financial crisis has brought to public attention the difficulties associated with executive remuneration in the financial services sector. In many instances the financial firms with unsound remuneration practices were listed companies subject to shareholder scrutiny. Why were...

This Article is the first academic study to systematically analyze the overall sensitivity of executive compensation to stock buybacks. Specifically, my analysis of executive compensation arrangements of CEOs included in the S&P 500 Index reveals that buybacks can enhance a record high portion...

Corporate law and corporate governance are often called upon to address problems in international and transnational contexts. Financial markets are global and the problems in those markets are often similar, if not identical, even though the capital market structure across jurisdictions differs...