Impression and earnings management were explored via reasoning and methods grounded in ethnostatistics and agency theory. We hypothesized that earnings management occurs more frequently following duality-creating successions than otherwise because CEO-chairs have greater control of the...

This paper investigates stock returns surrounding the appointment of directors to audit committees. We examine 136 voluntary appointment announcements over 1990-2001. Most of the announcements are issued after year 1999 and by small, NASDAQ firms. We find significantly positive stock price...

We examine the board structure of firms following stock-for-stock mergers. We find that former target inside (outside) directors are more likely to join the combined firm board when target insiders (outsiders) have a relatively strong position on the pre-merger target board. The relative size of...

We examine the role of the board of directors, the audit committee, and the executive committee in preventing earnings management. Supporting an SEC Panel Report's conclusion that audit committee members need financial sophistication, we show that the composition of a board in general and of an...

Managing the succession process by the hiring and firing of key executives is one of the important functions of a board of directors. In this research we study successions of fund managers in the closed-end mutual fund industry. The agency issues inherent in closed-end mutual funds makes them a...

This paper studies a sample of firms that changed their auditors and examines the potential agency cost issues that may arise. We find that on average the stock market interprets auditor changes as an agency cost because the changes seem to be management entrenching events. We also document that...

We test whether the conversion price (ratio) is viewed by the stock market as a credible signal of the firm's future earnings prospects (Kim, 1990) and subsequently whether convertible debt serves as backdoor equity financing (Stein, 1992). Examining the conversion price in relation to current...

This study examines the performance of filter and dual moving-average crossover trading rules applied to Nasdaq stocks. We find that trading rules conditioned on a stock?s past price history perform poorly, but those based on past movements in the overall Nasdaq Index tend to earn statistically...

Takeover defense mechanisms have become common for many modern corporations. In this research, we examine one potential takeover defense mechanism, golden parachutes. In particular, the relationship between the board of directors and the board committees and the question of whether the...

This paper examines whether post-merger board composition affects the premiums paid to target shareholders. Using a sample of 207 stock-for-stock mergers from 1996 to 2004, we show that target merger premiums vary inversely with target director representation on the post-merger board. We also...