High-profile corporate scandals earlier in this decade provoked outrage and legislative action, however corporate executive-level ethical lapses continue to come to light. This article examines the work of Professor Dunfee and his co-authors on corruption, ethical leadership, and social...

We explore the effectiveness of the clawback provision of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act as a deterrent to earnings manipulations. Using a sample of firms that issued “high concern” earnings restatements, we estimate the career and monetary benefits the CEO...

The primary purpose for the doctrine of separate legal personality is to encourage entrepreneurship, by shifting the risks of business failure away from entrepreneurs to creditors and other risk bearers. Unfortunately this doctrine is subject to abuse by corporate controllers, which prompted the...

We explore whether clawback provisions (i.e. Dodd-Frank and SOX) can mitigate agency problems by deterring the executives from manipulating earnings in an effort to boost their incentive compensation. We estimate the direct and indirect gains executives receive as a result of manipulating...

This article studies the political preferences of chief executive officers (CEOs) of public companies. We use Federal Election Commission records to compile a comprehensive database of the political contributions made by more than 3800 individuals who served as CEOs of Standard & Poor's 1500...

Special Purpose Acquisition Company (“SPAC”) directors are compensated with economic ownership of founders shares, shares which have value if the SPAC combines with an operating business and which expire worthless if that does not occur. By analyzing the public filings of the 248 SPACs that...

We examine the depth of the labor market for female directors following an exogenous shock to demand caused by California Senate Bill 826. Despite a surge in female appointments, new female director qualifications remain stable when benchmarked to control groups, indicating a deep labor market....

Prior discussions of management turnover during financial distress have examined bankrupt and non-bankrupt firms as distinct groupings with little overlap. Separately investigating rates of turnover in-bankruptcy and out-of-bankruptcy, without a direct comparison between the two, has resulted in...

In this paper, we examine the key legal characteristics of 375 employment contracts between some of the largest 1500 public corporations and their Chief Executive Officers. We look at the actual language of these contracts, asking whether and in what ways CEO contracts differ from what are...

Using the pay restriction imposed on CEOs of centrally administered state-owned enterprises (CSOEs) in China in 2009, we study the effects of limiting CEO pay. Compared with CEOs of firms not subject to the restriction, the CEOs of CSOEs experienced a significant pay cut. In response to the pay...