This paper builds on Rosen (1981) and Hvide (2002) to provide a simple framework that elucidates the nature of incentives in the tournaments among top executives in both the external managerial labor market for the top executive positions in other companies and within the executives' own firm...

We empirically evaluate 20 prominent contributions to a broad range of areas in the empirical corporate finance literature. We assemble the necessary data and apply a single, simple econometric method, the connected-groups approach of Abowd, Karmarz, and Margolis (1999), to appraise the extent...

We model and empirically assess industry tournament incentives for CEOs. The measures we develop for the tournament prize derive from the compensation gap between the CEO at her firm and the highest-paid CEO among similar competing firms. The model predicts that firm performance and risk...

We provide in this appendix a relatively parsimonious description of the results for the fields incompletely treated or not addressed in the body of Coles and Li (2022, CL): Observed firm characteristics do best in explaining market leverage, cash holdings, CEO pay level, and accounting...

1 The theory of corporate finance: historical overview and basic building blocks -- 2 Capital budgeting -- 3 Corporate finance within perfect capital markets -- 4 Capital structure: taxes and bankruptcy costs -- 5 Agency and information-related costs: capital-structure implications -- 6...