We investigate the role of Relative Performance Evaluation (RPE) theory in CEO pay and turnover using a product similarity-based definition of peers (Hoberg and Phillips 2016). RPE predicts that firms filter out common shocks (i.e., those affecting the firm and its peers) while evaluating CEO...

This paper focuses on the pay level of the highest paid executive directors, which we label as "Executive Director's Organizational Level" (henceforth EDOL), to raise the question if highest paid CEOs invest heavily in innovative projects. Two-stage least squares (2SLS) regressions show that...

Does earnings management, even though legal, hinder investor trust in reported earnings? Or do investors regard earnings management as a way for firms to convey private information, or simply as a neutral feature of financial reporting? We find that past abstinence from earnings management...

We analyze survey responses from nearly 600 corporate tax executives to investigate firms' incentives and disincentives for tax planning. While many researchers hypothesize that reputational concerns affect the degree to which managers engage in tax planning, this hypothesis is difficult to test...

In listed companies, the Board of directors has ultimate responsibility for information disclosure. The conventional wisdom is that director independence is an essential factor in improving the quality of that disclosure. In a sense, this approach subordinates expertise to independence. We argue...

This paper investigates whether individual top executives have incremental effects on their firms' tax avoidance that cannot be explained by characteristics of the firm. To identify executive effects on firms' effective tax rates, we construct a dataset that tracks the movement of 908 executives...

Many argue that the design of compensation contracts for public company chief executive officers (CEOs) is often not guided by a goal of value maximization. Yet, there is limited direct empirical evidence on the negative consequences of the proposed inefficient contracting between shareholders...

We present evidence that managerial responses to voluntary clawback adoptionsdepend on compensation incentives that can induce capital investment mix shifts and reducecapital investment efficiency. Specifically, we find that managers incentivized by high levels ofperformance-based pay and...

Following CEO turnovers, US firms adjust real business activities to manage earnings downward (REM bath). This effect is most pronounced in firms with low levels of institutional ownership. REM baths early in CEOs' tenure can be confounded with legitimate adjustments to business activities....

This study examines the effect of relative performance evaluation (RPE) on firm performance and risk-taking behavior. Agency theory suggests that RPE use in executive compensation plans improves risk sharing and strengthens incentive alignment when firm performance is exposed to common shocks. I...