This paper examines the effects of executive compensation and potential for earnings management on the incidence of shareholder class action lawsuits and their outcomes. Although damage measurement factors,managerial option intensity, and earnings management all significantly affect the...

This study examines the role of media coverage on meritorious shareholder litigation. Asserting a causal effect of the media on litigation is normally difficult due to the endogenous nature of media coverage. However, we use the Wall Street Journal’s backdating coverage to overcome these...

If overstatements were a symptom of the agency conflict, pay-for-performance sensitivities should have increased in response to the additional penalties for misreporting imposed by SOX. Our finding of their decrease is inconsistent with the view that overstatements were an unintended consequence...

This paper contributes to the literature that analyses the relationship between Share-Option Based Compensation (SOBC) expense and shareholder returns. It utilises a sample of financial firms listed in the European Economic Area and Switzerland between 2005 and 2016 to make inferences about the...

The literature on shareholder voting has mostly focused on the influence of proxy advisors on shareholder votes. We exploit a unique empirical setting enabling us to provide a direct estimate of management's influence. Analyzing shareholder votes on the frequency of future say on pay votes, we...

Purpose: This study explores the probability of expropriation of minority shareholders by controlling shareholders in the form of CEO compensation under an imperfect governance institution by using a novel Chinese dataset over 2001-2010.Design/methodology/approach: We use a direct method to...

This study is the first to show that the extent of executive pensions directly affects firm dividend policy. We argue and find that managers with high pension holdings are less likely to adapt a high dividend policy that can risk the managers' future pension payouts. Using a hand-collected...

Using the most recent data available, I examine the influence of large shareholders and institutional investors on different components of CEO compensation. Increased large shareholder ownership reduces total pay and current elements of incentive compensation, i.e. option, stock, and bonus pay,...

This paper studies how hedge fund activism reshapes board monitoring, CEO incentives and compensation. I find that activists target CEOs who have co-opted the board, have poor performance records and weak equity portfolio incentives, are less subject to relative performance evaluation (RPE) but...