I analyze the role of executive compensation in corporate governance. As proxies for corporate governance, I use board size, board independence, CEO-chair duality, institutional ownership concentration, CEO tenure, and an index of shareholder rights. The results from a broad cross-section of...

We study trading in option strategies in the FTSE-100 index market. Trades in option strategies represent around 37% of the total number of trades and over 75% of the total trading volume in our sample. We find some evidence that order flow in volatility-sensitive option strategies contains...

We investigate whether bank performance during the recent credit crisis is related to chief executive officer (CEO) incentives before the crisis. We find some evidence that banks with CEOs whose incentives were better aligned with the interests of shareholders performed worse and no evidence...

We investigate whether a bank's performance during the 1998 crisis, which was viewed at the time as the most dramatic crisis since the Great Depression, predicts its performance during the recent financial crisis. One hypothesis is that a bank that has an especially poor experience in a crisis...

We study changes in chief executive officer (CEO) contracts when firms transition from public ownership with dispersed owners to private ownership with strong principals in the form of private equity sponsors. The most significant changes are that a significant portion of equity grants...

We study the relative importance of market governance and non-market governance in retirement investments using a sample of variable annuities. Variable annuity investors are significantly less sensitive to performance and fees than mutual fund investors. Consistent with a complementary role of...

Bank payout policy is strongly affected by regulation and politics, especially for the largest banks. Banks, but not industrial firms, have consistently lower payouts in times of high regulation uncertainty and under democratic presidents. After the Global Financial Crisis, bank regulators'...