This paper presents a data point relevant to significant issues of policy concerning areas of law where small firms have either been granted exemption from regulations or not investigated for violations of laws that, on their face, apply to them. Whether small firms should be exempted is an...

I analyze directorships held by CEOs who retired during 1989-1993 and during 1998-2002. My results suggest that retired CEOs became more popular on boards. Also, although pre-retirement accounting performance helps explain the number of outside directorships a retired CEO held in the 1989-1993...

This paper investigates firms’ decisions to resist individualized disclosure of top management compensation packages. We exploit the unique German setting, where recent legislation man-dates individualized disclosure of remuneration for members of the management board of listed corporations,...

The aim of this paper is to explain relationship between earning management, corporate governance and managerial optimism through the governance characteristics that are board of directors such as independence, duality and size and ownership structure such as managerial participation, block...

This paper reports the prevalence of a “one-size-fits-all” trend in the structure of executive compensation plans. The way firms distribute total compensation across different components of pay –salary, bonus, stock awards, option awards, non-equity incentives, pensions, and perquisites–...

In this article, we analyze whether the manipulation of stock options still continues to this day. Our evidence shows that executives continue to employ a variety of manipulative devices to increase their compensation, including backdating, bullet-dodging, and spring- loading. Overall, we find...

Over the past two decades, hedge fund activism has emerged as a new mechanism of corporate governance that brings about operational, financial and governance reforms to a corporation. Many prominent business executives and legal scholars are convinced that the entire American economy will suffer...

This paper examines why powerful CEOs are paid more in total compensation. Broadly, our results are consistent with the managerial ability view. First, CEO power is endogenously determined reflecting the CEO's ability. Specifically, founder-CEOs are more powerful than professional- and heir-CEOs...

The executive suite and the board are closely bound to each other through their fiduciary responsibility to same shareholders. With CEOs' prominent role in both governing bodies, their independence from CEOs' self-serving behavior might be related to each other. We explore the interdependence...

We exploit a recent regulation passed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to explore the nomination of board members to US publicly traded firms. In particular, we focus on firms' use of executive search firms versus simply giving choice rights to internal members (oftentimes...