The concern that out-of-the-money stock options are not an effective way to motivate managers has led boards of directors to consider measures such as lowering the exercise price of underwater options, or issuing new option grants, to restore the incentive managers have to increase shareholder...

This paper studies how firms tie CEO compensation to firms' stock market performance. I demonstrate that in theory and in practice there is a tradeoff between giving CEOs incentives and forcing them to hold an un-diversified position in the firm. Unlike the results of the existing literature,...

We show that new managers who take over mutual fund portfolios typically proceed to sell off inherited momentum losers. They sell losers at higher rates than stocks in any other momentum decile, even after adjusting for concurrent trades in these stocks by continuing fund managers. This behavior...

We examine how personal taxes affect CEOs' decision to sell their vested equity and compare it against diversification, managerial overconfidence and other determinants of CEOs' sale of equity. While CEOs frequently sell large amounts of their unrestricted firm equity, we find that the tax...

Morck, Yeung and Yu (MYY, 2000) show that R2 and other measures of stock market synchronicity are higher in countries with less developed financial systems and poorer corporate governance. MYY and Campbell, Lettau, Malkiel and Xu (2001) also find a secular decline in R2 in the United States over...

We document frequent and large selling of equity by CEOs. Such selling is designed not simply to offset the current year grant of options and stock. We find that the tax burden associated with the sale and (various measures of CEO) overconfidence both decrease CEOs' propensity to sell their...

Capital gains tax can impose potentially large cost on investors selling stocks. This cost can sometimes be an order of magnitude larger than conventional transaction costs. This paper addresses the question of whether capital gains taxes serve as an impediment to selling and if so, to what...

This paper employs heterogeneity in institutional shareholder tax characteristics to identify the relationship between firm payout policy and tax incentives. Analysis of a panel of firms matched with the tax characteristics of the clients of their institutional shareholders indicates that...

Capital gains tax can impose a potentially large cost on investors selling stocks. This cost can sometimes be an order of magnitude larger than conventional transaction costs. This paper addresses the question of whether capital gains tax serves as an impediment to selling and if so, to what...

China attracted considerable foreign investment following the opening of its economy in 1979. With the switch to a quasi-market economy, China became reliant on taxes to fund government, opening the door to potential double taxation of profits from foreign investment, first in China and second...