We study the long-term stock performance of initial public offerings (IPOs). We examine how past performance affects the board of directors’ stability and how changes in boards affect subsequent performance. We introduce a dynamic, scale invariant stability metric to measure such changes. Our...

We examine the governance characteristics, earnings quality, growth rates, dividend policy, and compensation structure of 97 firms recently under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for accounting fraud. Our results show that the corporate environment most likely to...

The role of the board of directors is to oversee managerial decisions and to protect the interests of shareholders. While director pay historically is a small cash fee, many corporations now use both stock and option grants as a part of a director's compensation. This paper examines whether this...

This paper tests how changes in information asymmetry and agency variables affect changes in debt policy. Unlike previous studies that examine levels of variables to explain what may determine debt policy, we calculate yearly changes in variables to provide a stronger test of causal relations....

This paper documents a strong positive relation between the percentage of outside directors and the frequency of outside CEO succession. The likelihood that an executive from outside the firm is appointed CEO increases monotonically with the percentage of outside directors. This monotonic...