This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical literature on executive compensation. We start by presenting data on the level of CEO and other top executive pay over time and across firms, the changing composition of pay; and the strength of executive incentives. We compare pay in U.S. public...

Most research on firm financing studies the choice between debt and equity. We model an alternative source - non-core asset sales - and allow asset sales to occur for operational as well as financing motives. We identify three new factors that drive a firm's choice between selling assets and...

A large amount of activity in the financial sector occurs in secondary financial markets, where securities are traded among investors without capital flowing to firms. The stock market is the archetypal example, which in most developed economies captures a lot of attention and resources. Is the...

This paper studies optimal contracting under synergies. We define influence as the extent to which effort by one agent reduces a colleague's marginal cost of effort, and synergy to be the sum of the (unidimensional) influence parameters across a pair of agents. In a two-agent model, effort...

This paper identifies a limit to arbitrage that arises from the fact that a firm's fundamental value is endogenous to the act of exploiting the arbitrage. Trading on private information reveals this information to managers and helps them improve their real decisions, in turn enhancing...

This paper studies the effect of stock liquidity on blockholders' choice of governance mechanisms. We focus on hedge funds as they are unconstrained by legal restrictions and business ties, and thus have all governance channels at their disposal. Since the threat of governance, not just actual...

This paper studies the long-term consequences of actions induced by vesting equity, a measure of short-term incentives. Vesting equity is positively associated with the probability of a firm repurchasing shares, the amount of shares repurchased, and the probability of the firm announcing a...