We show how CEO ownership and the market for corporate control interact to influence the investment-timing decisions of empire-building CEOs. The prospect of a future takeover means that CEOs with no ownership stake will over-invest in some types of projects and under-invest in others, but these...

I examine the relationship between managerial ownership and operational performance for firms acquired in a buyout. I show that high post-buyout CEO ownership stakes are associated with improved firm profitability. This result is economically stronger for changes in ownership stakes, and is...

We establish that CEOs of companies experiencing volatile industry conditions are more likely to be dismissed. At the same time, industry risk is, accounting for various other factors, unlikely to be associated with CEO compensation other than through dismissal risk. Using this identification...

This study empirically examines the relationship between executive compensation and mergers and acquisitions (M&A) behaviors by identifying the influence of short- and long-term incentive on the propensity and scale of M&A. When the short-term incentive is insufficient, M&A behaviors serve as a...

Many view large payments following mergers or acquisitions as excessive and evidence of rent extraction. Using additional disclosures required by the SEC since 2006, I hand-collect details of pre-existing change in control (CIC) provisions in employment agreements and CIC benefits granted to...

We find significant positive contemporaneous, short-run, and long-run effects of an increase in the acquisition rate on management compensation. The long-run effect of an additional deal completed each year by an average acquirer increases management's total, equity, and cash compensation by 21...

We introduce the idea of Executive Compensation Faultline (ECF) strength as a means to capture the alignment of the whole top management team’s incentives across multiple compensation characteristics. We build on previous literature on demographic faultlines, which suggests that strong...

This paper investigates the impact of the target chief executive officer’s (CEO) postmerger position on the purchase premium and target shareholders’ abnormal returns around the announcement of the deal in a sample of bank mergers during the period 1990–2004. We find evidence that the...