Using a sample of more than 1,500 US public firms in the period 1998-2016, we examine how firms endogenously adjust CEO compensation contracts when they become financially distressed. The link between compensation and equity-based measures of firm performance is positive and strong prior to...

Boston's high housing costs reflect a historic failure to build enough units to satisfy demand. Interest rates and construction costs have risen recently, and the flow of new market-rate residential housing projects has slowed. To spur more construction, the City of Boston is considering various...

We are the first to investigate what information is provided in “Compensation Actually Paid” (CAP) in the SEC’s newly required “Pay versus Performance Disclosure”. We find that change in stock price during the year explains a significant portion of the difference between CAP and total...

We examine the extent to which executive talent at the time of the hire affects the design of the executive's compensation contract at the hiring firm. Using a sample of executives who switched jobs at least once between 1992 and 2007, we find that our proxies for executive talent are positively...

We use an unanticipated court ruling in a lawsuit against Citigroup claiming corporate waste related to CEO pay to analyze court intervention as an alternative governance mechanism in cases of excess pay. We find a negative relation between announcement returns and excess pay, consistent with...

Investors are increasingly demonstrating a preference for superior ESG performance among their portfolio firms. Concurrently, the use of ESG-related contracting metrics in executive compensation contracts has increased. We investigate these two related issues in the context of the adoption of...