When larger market values of equity result in being subject to costly regulation, firms have incentives to shift their sources of financing toward debt and away from equity. We use the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) as a setting to provide evidence of such incentives. Smaller firms were...

When larger market values of equity result in being subject to costly regulation, firms have incentives to shift their sources of financing toward debt and away from equity. We use the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) as a setting to provide evidence of such incentives. Smaller firms were...

It is frequently argued that effective executive compensation should contain some performance-based remuneration. We lack, however, serious understanding of the characteristics of the many patterns of variable compensation in use. It is too often assumed that these different methods of...

Chhaochharia and Grinstein (2009) estimate that CEO pay decreases by 17% more in firms whose boards were not compliant with the recent NYSE/NASDAQ independence requirements than in firms that were compliant. We document that 65% of the magnitude is driven by a single outlier. All our attempts to...

Chhaochharia and Grinstein (JF, 2009) estimate that CEO pay decreases by 17% more in firms that were not compliant with the recent NYSE/NASDAQ board independence requirement than in firms that were compliant. We document that 74% of this magnitude is attributable to two outliers out of 865...

Using Chhaochharia's and Grinstein's (JF, 2009) data and methodology, Guthrie, Sokolowsky, and Wan (JF, 2010) document that compensation committee independence leads to an increase in executive pay, and that the increase is concentrated in firms with powerful monitors. These findings stand in...

Morse, Nanda and Seru (2011) interpret the data to suggest that more powerful CEOs ex-post change their incentive contracts more. My paper points out a number of issues with their inference. First and most importantly, MNS do not control for the fact that not just the most powerful but almost...

We define annual shareholder meetings as contentious if one or more ballot items are likely to obtain sufficient shareholder votes to induce a firm to implement governance changes. Using a sample of almost 28,000 meetings between 2003 and 2012, we find that abnormal stock returns over the 40-day...

In response to corporate scandals in 2001 and 2002, major U.S. stock exchanges issued new board requirements to enhance board oversight. We find a significant decrease in CEO compensation for firms that were more affected by these requirements, compared with firms that were less affected, taking...

We conduct a large-scale global study of ESG-linked pay for major firms that make up 85% of the market capitalization across 59 countries. We find that the pay adoption is higher for firms in extractive and utility industries, in countries that value individualism and femininity, have stronger...