This paper provides evidence on how executive compensation relates to firm performance in listed firms in China. Using comprehensive financial and accounting data on China's listed firms from 1998 to 2002, augmented by unique data on executive compensation and ownership structure, we find for...

This paper provides the first rigorous econometric estimates on the pay-performance relations for executives of Korean firms with and without Chaebol affiliation. To do so, we have assembled for the first time panel data (that provide information not only on executive compensation and firm...

Using comprehensive financial and accounting data on China's listed firms from 1998 to 2002, augmented by unique data on CEO turnover, ownership structure and board characteristics, we estimate Logit models of CEO turnover. We find consistently for all performance measures including both stock...

A unified framework is presented to characterise the capital structure of firms that face borrowing restrictions - which extends the classic theory of capital by incorporating elements from actuarial and agency theory. It is demonstrated that the bankruptcy and agency costs afforded by these...

Prevailing executive pay practices rest on fallacious assumptions about performance attribution, the nature of alignment, and the psychology of incentives, and have numerous unintended consequences that are value-destructive particularly for long term and diversified shareholders. The focus of...

Does it pay to voluntarily disclose the manager's private information about the firm's earnings prospects before the mandatory announcement date? This question has been a subject of much debate because prior research establishes both benefits and costs of early information disclosure. We provide...

This chapter assesses the behavior of corporate managers and boards of directors within the framework of agency theory, stewardship theory, and psychological biases. In agency theory, a chief executive officer (CEO) is motivated to act in his or her own best interests rather than those of...

The value a director provides to a firm is empirically hard to establish. We estimate that value by exploiting the commonality in idiosyncratic returns of firms linked by a director and show that, on average, a single director's influence causes variation in firm value of almost 1% per year. The...

We study the relations between governance mechanisms (internal and external), conference call voluntary disclosures (incidence and length), and CEO compensation using hand-collected data on conference calls, corporate governance, and compensation. We hypothesize and show that institutions push...

Building on the short-term nature of interim CEO contracts, this paper examines the effect of interim CEO appointment on corporate long-term investment measured by a firm's R&D spending. We find robust evidence that the corporate R&D investment level is significantly lower during the interim CEO...