Shareholders in distressed firms should profit from shifting to more risky assets, but there is little empirical evidence documenting such behavior. We find that this weak evidence is consistent with creditors being somewhat able to control the investment policies of distressed firms if distress...

In this article, we show that only distressed firms not identified as distressed by creditors are able to transfer wealth from creditors to shareholders. Using the number of years to future bankruptcy as a proxy for genuine distress and measures based on observable firm characteristics as...

Prior studies find that entrenched managers destroy firm value by choosing lower risk negative NPV projects. In this paper, I argue that enhanced monitoring by boards and internal controls established following the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and concurrent reforms to stock...

This paper uses FAS 123R regulation to examine how reduction in CEO compensation incentives affects managerial 'playing-it-safe' behavior. Using proxies reflecting deliberate managerial efforts to change firm risk, difference-in-difference tests show that affected firms drastically reduce both...

Using CEOs’ pilot licenses to proxy for sensation-seeking personality trait, we show that firms with sensation-seeking CEOs increase stock price crash risk. This result holds after addressing endogeneity concerns, using propensity score matching and several difference-in-difference tests. We...