We analyze the effects of heterogeneity across large shareholders, using a new blockholder-firm panel dataset in which we can track all unique blockholders among large public firms in the United States. We find statistically significant and economically important blockholder fixed effects in...

Companies actively seek to appoint outside CEOs to their boards. Consistent with our matching theory of outside CEO board appointments, we show that such appointments have a certification benefit for the appointing firm. CEOs are more likely to join boards of large established firms that are...

We investigate whether bank performance during the credit crisis of 2008 is related to CEO incentives and share ownership before the crisis and whether CEOs reduced their equity stakes in their banks in anticipation of the crisis. There is no evidence that banks with CEOs whose incentives were...

Eleven percent of the largest public U.S. firms are headed by the CEO who founded the firm. Founder-CEO firms differ systematically from successor-CEO firms with respect to firm valuation, investment behavior, and stock market performance. Founder-CEO firms invest more in research and...

From 1988 to 2003, the average change in managerial ownership is significantly negative every year for American firms. We find that managers are more likely to significantly decrease their ownership when their firms are performing well and more likely to increase their ownership when their firms...

We investigate whether bank performance during the credit crisis of 2008 is related to CEO incentives and share ownership before the crisis and whether CEOs reduced their equity stakes in their banks in anticipation of the crisis. There is no evidence that banks with CEOs whose incentives were...

We develop an empirical framework that allows us to analyze the effects of heterogeneity across large shareholders, using a new blockholder-firm panel data set in which we can track all unique blockholders among large public U.S. firms. We find statistically significant and economically...

A firm is more likely to reappoint a former CEO to its board of directors after retirement the better is the firm's market-adjusted stock performance and the more powerful is the former CEO. Firms benefit from the presence of former CEOs on their board. Firms with former CEO directors have...

Outside directors have incentives to resign to protect their reputation or to avoid an increase in their workload when they anticipate that the firm on whose board they sit will perform poorly or disclose adverse news. We call these incentives the dark side of outside directors. We find strong...

Large shareholders may play an important role for firm performance and policies, but identifying this empirically presents a challenge due to the endogeneity of ownership structures. We develop and test an empirical framework which allows us to separate selection from treatment effects of large...