We analyze 228 executive compensation contracts voluntarily disclosed by Chinese listed firms and find that central-government-controlled companies disclose more information in executive compensation contracts than local-government-controlled and non-government-controlled companies. Cash-based...

Financial strategy is about how companies raise funds and manage them within their organizations. Corporate governance is relevant to both of these aspects, and an understanding of corporate governance is vital for an appreciation of corporate finance. This chapter from Corporate Financial...

Boards of directors are frequently criticized for their lack of monitoring in executive decision making. Increasing board effort to reduce information asymmetry between executives and shareholders is commonly viewed as desirable. This study challenges this common view by demonstrating that...

We investigate experimentally how the enforcement of negative say on pay (SoP) votes affects a CEO's investment incentives, the level and structure of executive compensation, and firm performance. We operationalize the board's discretion in response to a no-vote via three levels of SoP...

We use the special case of Finland to analyze the role of nomination committees on board diversity and composition. We compare board diversity in two types of firms: firms with a nomination committee composed of board members, and firms where the (usually three) largest shareholders choose a...

This paper examines how corporate governance reporting corresponds to actual conduct regarding severance payment caps for prematurely departing members of companies' executive boards in Germany. For this purpose, we first evaluate the declarations of conformity for all companies listed in the...

We document that firms whose compensation peers experience weak say on pay votes reduce CEO compensation following those votes. Reductions reflect proxy adviser concerns about peers' compensation contracts and are stronger when CEOs receive excess compensation, when they compete more closely...

We study the relationship between CEO pay-performance sensitivity, pay-risk sensitivity, and shareholder voting outcomes as part of the "say-on-pay" provision of the 2010 U.S. Dodd-Frank Act. Consistent with our hypothesis, we provide evidence that shareholders tend to approve of compensation...

I provide strong evidence that powerful CEOs positively affect firm level tax avoidance. This result is robust to various alternative specifications, including endogeneity concern, firm-specific omitted variable bias, and controlling for various internal and external monitoring mechanisms. I...

There are several measures of equity compensation that may provide shareholders with distinct and useful information for evaluating CEO pay. We examine whether shareholders consider additional disclosures of equity compensation measures beyond the grant date fair value when participating in...