Given potential abuse, conflicts of interest, and other issues, why do companies routinely pay for their managers to entertain the managers of other firms and allow their own managers to be so entertained? An answer that such practices facilitate inter-firm cooperation is incomplete because it...

This paper considers a two-period model in which managers have superior information about their ability to forecast the realization of given investment projects. Firms compete for managers by offering short-run contracts. As future salaries depend on current play through its impact on managerial...

We develop a dynamic principal-agent model for financing a multistage project. The optimal contract displays the following unique features: (i) There is a pecking order between milestone bonuses and deferred compensation: when an intermediate stage succeeds, principal prefers to use deferred...

Are the professional networks of corporate directors valuable? More connected directors may have better information and more influence, which can increase firm value. However, these directors may also be busy or spread value-decreasing practices. To separate the effect of director networks on...

This paper shows that customer CEOs' short-term equity incentives impose a negative spillover effect on the real investment decisions of their supplier firms. Specifically, we find that CEOs' short-term incentives, measured by CEOs' vesting equity in a given quarter, are negatively associated...

I look at the relationship between corporate loan terms and connections of board members to bankers through employment on other boards, a connection less likely to be affected by confounding factors. Specifically, I examine whether loan terms such as pricing and maturity as well as other loan...

Governance at banks, especially major banks, requires further reform, especially with respect to incentives. Supervisors are concerned that incentives may make executives prone to take “excessive” risks. Shareholders are concerned that banks rarely earn their cost of capital.What's needed is...

If managers are risk-averse and compensation schemes are not directly linked to shareholder wealth, incentives to allocate effort to manage effects of relative and macroeconomic shocks may be distorted. In this paper we develop a simple model to identify factors that determine the optimal...

We examine the ex-ante optimality of repricing of executive stock options while considering the tax effects of new accounting rules associated with traditional repricing. Although there has been a body of empirical literature on repricing, the optimality of repricing after considering the...

We present causal evidence on the e↵ect of boardroom networks on firm value and compensation policies. We exploit a ban on interlocking directorates of Italian financial and insurance companies as exogenous variation and show that firms that lose centrality in the network experience negative...