We study the determinants and effects of the relative compensation of top executives and lower-level employees. First, we show that CEO–employee pay ratio depends on the balance of power between the CEO (relative to the board) and ordinary employees (relative to management). Second, our...

Turning workers into shareholders improves corporate performance, or so advocates of employee ownership maintain. Their logic is simple: workers with a stake in their company's future are more likely to take a long-term view, which translates into higher productivity and other gains. But new...

Equity ownership gives labor both a fractional stake in a firm's residual cash flows and a voice in corporate governance. Relative to other firms, labor-controlled publicly traded firms deviate more from value maximization, invest less in long-term assets, take fewer risks, grow more slowly,...

The high-profile scandals of the late 1990s have transformed the corporate governance landscape and increased the oversight duties of independent directors. New mandates, such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, have had substantial effects on corporate boards. For one thing, they dramatically...

This paper presents evidence suggesting that CEO connections facilitate investments in corporate innovation. We find that firms with better-connected CEOs invest more in R&D and receive more and higher quality patents. Further tests suggest that this effect stems from two characteristics of...

We propose a measure of the advising capacity of corporate boards that focuses on the distribution of committee assignments. We then study the characteristics and impact of directors dedicated to providing strategic counsel to top management. We find that advisory directors possess professional...