Using a survey of 800 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in 22 emerging economies, we show that CEOs' management styles and philosophies vary with the ownership and governance structure of their firms. Founders and CEOs of firms with greater family involvement display a greater stakeholder focus...

In addition to its well-documented alignment effect, managerial ownership may also value-destroying effects by shifting risk to managers and encouraging risk-substitution; that is, managers with relatively undiversified personal portfolios tend to pass up profitable projects with high...

This paper studies leverage dynamics when managers cannot commit to future financing and default policies ex-ante. Managers derive private benefits of control but debt constrains their flexibility, and thus, they build up less excessive leverage and may even actively reduce debt over time....

Are the professional networks of corporate directors valuable? More connected directors may have better information and more influence, which can increase firm value. However, these directors may also be busy or spread value-decreasing practices. To separate the effect of director networks on...

Regulators generally discourage bank CEOs also holding the role of board Chairman, as this governance structure can hinder independent decision-making and effective risk oversight. This study examines the issue of CEO Duality, identifying a positive relation to greater risk-taking across a...

How do the labor market values of executives' personal traits evolve over time? We propose and estimate an interactive fixed effects model, which allows for time-variant valuation of unobserved manager attributes. We find that managerial talent is the most important unobserved trait determining...

We use CEO health shocks as a time-varying and physical managerial attribute that can change the degree of managerial effort. Using hand-collected data on CEO illnesses, deaths, and medical leaves to identify large health shocks, we find that firm value is considerably lower and firm volatility,...

This paper investigates how lending relationships attenuate the conflict of interest between creditors and shareholders that arises from CEO compensation contracts. We find that lending relationships mitigate the influence of CEO risk-taking incentives on loan spreads, especially for...

Using a cross-country sample, we examine the CEO tournament structure (measured alternatively as the ratio and the difference of pay between the CEO and other top executives within a firm). We find the tournament structure to vary systematically with firm and country cultural characteristics. In...

Using a cross-country sample, we examine the CEO tournament structure (measured alternatively as the ratio and the difference of pay between the CEO and other top executives within a firm). We find the tournament structure to vary systematically with firm and country cultural characteristics. In...