We report a significant positive association between the likelihood of securities fraud allegations and a measure of executive stock option incentives. This relation is robust to the inclusion of other components of the compensation structure and to other possible determinants of fraud...

The use of equity incentives is significantly greater in countries with stronger insider trading restrictions, and these higher incentives are associated with higher total pay. These findings are robust to alternative definitions of insider trading restrictions and enforcement, and to panel...

Following corporate spinoffs, unit boards are formed from scratch. We find that these ‘de novo' boards are smaller, more independent, include more outside directors with relevant industry expertise, and derive more industry expertise from outsiders than do industry and size-matched peers....