Using 2,956 CEO turnovers from 1993 to 2009, I find that default probability is useful in understanding and predicting forced CEO turnovers for non-distressed firms, controlling for conventional performance measures, such as stock performance. The high predictive power is not explained by...

Executive managers' remuneration has been an issue of debate for the last 30 years. Practitioners and academics are arguing for the mechanisms, mix, level, time horizon and goal. Disclosure or not of information regarding these issues preoccupies regulating, legislative authorities as well as...

Exploiting the 2009 amendments to Regulation S-K, we provide unique evidence on the first-time disclosure of the reasons firms state for combining (separating) the roles of CEO and chairman. The stated reasons support both agency theory and organization theory. They are more numerous and...

CEOs of S&P 500 firms that report high non-GAAP earnings relative to GAAP earnings receive more than $600 thousand in unexplained pay. The abnormally high pay appears even after controlling for the level of non-GAAP earnings and despite relatively weak GAAP performance and low returns....

We analyze the presence of activist investors (hedge funds and private equity funds) and their impact on top management turnover in Germany. We contrast two hypotheses. The monitoring hypothesis is based on agency theory. Under this hypothesis, we expect active investors to increase top...

These slides summarize a paper on opportunism by corporate insiders. We show that opportunistic insiders can be identified through the profitability of their trades prior to quarterly earnings announcements (QEAs), and that opportunistic trading is associated with various kinds of...

Exploiting the 2009 amendments to Regulation S-K, we provide unique evidence on the first-time disclosure of the reasons firms state for combining (separating) the roles of CEO and chairman. The stated reasons support both agency theory and organization theory. They are more numerous and...

We study the impact of a principles-based (i.e., comply or explain) approach to female representation on corporate boards. In contrast to the existing evidence on mandatory diversity regulation, we find that those firms most likely to be affected by this principles-based regulation exhibit...

We examine the effect of financial markets on the tone manipulation of earnings press releases by CEOs. We find that CEOs with high compensation convexity are significantly more likely to employ positive tone management right after recent high industry returns. Further analysis shows that this...