We empirically investigate the adoption of stock option plans in Japan after the corporate governance reforms of the early 2000s. We examine the determinants of stock option grants, especially focusing on the effects of herding behavior among Japanese firms and the change of accounting treatment...

We present a selection of seminar slides based on our 2013 Quarterly Journal of Economics paper, "https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1640552" Managerial Miscalibration. Using a large panel of CFO forecasts of S&P 500 returns, we find that executives are severely miscalibrated,...

I develop measures of firm-level pay disparity and examine their relation to firm performance. Using comprehensive compensation data for a large sample of firms, I find no statistically significant relation between the ratio of CEO-to-mean employee compensation and performance. I next create...

We distill evidence about the effects of COVID-19 on companies. Stock price reactions to the shock differed greatly across firms, depending on their resilience to social distancing, financial flexibility, and corporate culture. The same characteristics affected the response of firms' sales,...

Executive compensation in the U.S. banking industry has been criticized as a root cause of the recent financial crisis. This study examines the relationship between executive compensation, ownership structure, and firm performance for Chinese financial corporations during 2001-2009. The results...

We analyze the appointments of outside CEOs of financial and non-financial firms as independent directors on US bank boards and their implications for the banks and the outside CEO firms. We show that outside CEOs from financial firms match with less traditional banks and their appointment...

We investigate whether factors beyond agency conflict are important in bank governance. Specifically, we examine the possibility that confusion and overlap between the roles of CEO and Chairman have important effects on bank risk and return. Using a new data set for UK banks over the period...

Objective - The objective of this study was to investigate empirically the relationship between the compensation of chief executive officers (CEO) and a firm's performance in the banking industry and to examine if CEO compensation affects bank performance differently between banks with and...