We analyze the impact of social comparison on optimal contract design under imperfect labor market competition for managerial talent. Adding a disutility of social comparison as induced by a ranking of verifiable efforts to the multi-task model by Bénabou and Tirole (2016), we demonstrate that...

Corporate scandals, reflected in excessive management compensation and fraudulent accounts, cause considerable damage. Agency theory's insistence on linking the compensation of managers and directors as closely as possible to firm performance is a major reason for these scandals. They cannot be...

Purpose – This paper develops a discussion for the shifting of focus of corporate executives from agency theory to stakeholder theory.Design/methodology/approach – This study entails a literature review of the topic area.Findings – The findings show that there is much benefit and...

Purpose – This paper develops a discussion for the shareholder influence on board of directors and CEO remuneration of public listed corporation.Design/methodology/approach – This study entails Australia, The United States of America and The United Kingdom.Findings – The findings show that...

This paper explores the impact of target CEOs' retirement preferences on takeovers. Using retirement age as proxy for CEOs' private merger costs, we find strong evidence that target CEOs' preferences affect merger activity. The likelihood of receiving a successful takeover bid is sharply higher...

Corporate scandals, reflected in excessive management compensation and fraudulent accounts, cause considerable damage. Agency theory's insistence on linking the compensation of managers and directors as closely as possible to firm performance is a major reason for these scandals. They cannot be...

Corporate governance is a recent concept that encompasses the costs caused by managerial misbehavior. Corporate governance is concerned with how organizations in general, and corporations in particular, produce value and how that value is distributed among the members of the corporation, its...

The recent seminal work of Gabaix (2011) raises a puzzling question: If centralization-putting different projects under the same roof-reduces diversification for investors, how does this situation reconcile with the seemingly contradictory fact that it also boosts a firm's borrowing capacity? To...

Digital transformation is fundamentally changing the business landscape. It is also affecting the role of top managers within firms. Our survey of more than 160 senior managers in Europe suggests that digitalization, rather than encouraging more decentralized forms of management, will lead to an...