We examine the value and incentive effects of six nontraditional executive stock options: premium options,performance-vested options, repriceable options, purchased options, reload options, and indexed options. With reasonable parameter values, four options have lower value than a traditional...

I examine the relation between leverage and bank debt use to analyze the effects of bank screening and monitoring on capital structure. The analysis joins capital structure models in which asymmetric information problems reduce optimal leverage, with recent banking firm models in which screening...

I examine the relation between corporate debt ownership structure and several firm characteristics suggested by recent theory. The results demonstrate the importance of monitoring and information costs, the likelihood and costs of inefficient liquidation, and borrowers' incentives in affecting...

Recent theoretical models suggest debt and dividends can serve as substitute free cash flow control or signaling devices. I examine share price responses to announcements of straight debt issues and test whether there are systematic differences between low and high dividend payout firms. Share...

Firm value and operating performance are positively related to managerial incentives from both vested and unvested stock and option holdings. The effects of incentives on firm value and operating performance are significantly larger for unvested stock and options than for vested ones, however,...

Using an intraday transaction dataset with trader identity, we study foreign and domestic investors' trading activities and investment performance ahead of open-ending events of Taiwanese closed-end funds. Simply buying the funds at a discount and holding until open ending generates large...

We reexamine long-term abnormal returns for portfolios sorted on governance characteristics. Firms with strong shareholder rights and firms with weak shareholder rights differ from the general population of firms and from each other in how they cluster across industries. Using tests that are...

Operating and stock return results imply that managers that commit fraud likely anticipate large stock price declines if they do not misreport earnings. Stock price declines cause greater losses for managerial stockholdings than for option holdings because of differences in payoff convexity....

Acquisitions among specialist firms can increase specialist firm size, capitalization, and market concentration, and thus potentially have important effects on market quality. We examine the impact of NYSE specialist firm acquisitions on market quality and find that while stocks traded by both...

The Dodd-Frank Act created differential regulatory requirements for banks above specified asset size thresholds. Event study results imply greater expected net regulatory costs for above-threshold banks. Consistent with hypotheses that near-below-threshold banks alter their behavior to attempt...