We investigate the suggested substitutive relation between executive compensation and the disciplinary threat of takeover imposed by the market for corporate control. We complement other empirical studies on managerial compensation and corporate control mechanisms in three distinct ways. First,...

We examine CEO compensation, CEO retention policies, and M&A decisions in firms where founders serve as a director with a non-founder CEO (founder-director firms). We find that founder-director firms offer a different mix of incentives to their CEOs than other firms. Pay for performance...

This paper examines how executive compensation influences the market value of the firm's assets. After controlling for endogeneity, we find that boards have set the incentive to incur risk (vega) to maximize shareholder value, but that incentives to increase returns (delta) do not maximize...

We test whether CEO and director turnover has any impact on firms' financial performance. The results derived from our sample indicate that, as measured by the subsequent three-year industry-adjusted return on assets, financial performance after CEO and/or director turnover worsens, on average....

General Motor's ability to exit bankruptcy through a public offering of its common stock (IPO) depended heavily on the sacrifices of active and retired members of the United Auto Workers (UAW). A review of the now public filings of GM related to the IPO indicate the significant concessions UAW...

This paper analyzes takeover announcements for public US targets from 1987 to 2008. Consistent with the hypothesis that gambling attitudes matter for takeover decisions, both acquiror announcement returns and expected synergies are lower in acquisitions where the target's stock has...

We examine the outside director selection process using unique data on appointments of academic directors. Overall, we find academic directors tend to be appointed by small- and mid-cap firms expanding their boards. However, we find important differences in both the factors influencing academic...

For the past 30 years, the conventional wisdom has been that executive compensation packages should include very large proportions of incentive pay. This incentive pay orthodoxy has become so firmly entrenched that the current debates about executive compensation simply take it as a given. We...

This paper analyses the impact of CEO relative compensation on takeover premiums and bidder performance. Based on a sample of takeover deals between Australian listed targets and bidders from 2000 to 2015, we find that there is insignificant difference between bid premiums offered by CEOs who...

Using the full set of committee memberships for the directors of Fortune 100 firms (which I collect from annual proxy statements), I introduce a measure to capture the extent of a director's involvement in discussion and decisions that affect corporate policy. I document substantial variation in...