That football Head Coaches will be dismissed for poor performance and will quit when they have better outside options seems to be nothing more than a statement of the obvious. But owners may find it hard to distinguish poor performance from bad luck and may find it difficult to identify and...

There is widespread concern about whether Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) are appropriately punished for poor performance. While CEOs are more likely to be forced out if their performance is poor relative to the industry average, overall industry performance also matters. This seems puzzling if...

We examine the effect of competition shocks induced by major industry-level tariff cuts on forced CEO turnover. Both the likelihood of forced CEO turnover and its sensitivity to performance increase, particularly for firms with low productivity and high default risk. While CEO's incentive pay...

We study the role of the contractual time horizon of CEOs for CEO turnover and corporate policies. Using hand-collected data on 3,954 fixed-term CEO contracts, we show that remaining time under contract predicts CEO turnover. When contracts are close to expiration, turnover is more likely and is...

This paper analyzes the interaction between wage contracts with deferred compensation and worker turnover. While deferred compensation improves the workers' incentives to exert effort, it distorts turnover decisions. We show that deferred compensation is less attractive when overall turnover in...

Using a structural model, I examine the distortionary effects of frictions in the CEO labor market. Firms experience productivity shocks over time and either outgrow or underutilize their incumbent CEO's talent, but keep their manager to avoid a switching cost. The decision to replace a manager...

This paper uses a new data set of 3,954 US CEO employment agreements to study their contractual time horizon. Longer contracts offer protection against dismissals: turnover probability increases by 12% each year closer to expiration. This should encourage CEOs to pursue long-term projects, and...

We use the 2003 NYSE and NASDAQ listing rules concerning board and committee independence as a quasi-natural experiment to examine the causal relations between board structure and CEO monitoring. Noncompliant firms forced to raise board independence or adopt a fully independent nominating...

We study whether mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is associated with changes in the sensitivity of CEO turnover to accounting earnings and how the impact of IFRS adoption varies with country-level institutions and firm-level incentives. We find that CEO...

We study the relation between innovation quality and managerial time horizon, measured by the time remaining until the end of fixed-term CEO employment contracts. Firms with longer CEO horizons produce more important innovation on average: one additional year in horizon is associated with 8%...