In this paper I exploit a unique feature of the Greek institutional environment, whereby alternative cash compensation payments to directors are taxed differently from the point of view of both personal and corporate taxes. Specifically, board directors can receive cash compensation either in...

This Essay examines the problem of tax noncompliance through the prism of the options backdating scandal. The noncompliance of backdating was obvious, at least to tax lawyers. Backdating wasn't a sophisticated tax scheme. Rather, the noncompliance was collateral damage from weak internal...

This paper investigates the impact of the seller's tax liability on the price paid in hospital acquisitions. Lock-in theory predicts that for a given asset, asset holders with larger tax liabilities demand a higher price to compensate for income tax liabilities generated on the sale. We apply...

We exploit cross-temporal differences in capital gains tax rates to test whether shareholder-level capital gains taxes are associated with higher acquisition premiums for taxable acquisitions. We model acquisition premiums as a function of proxies for the capital gains taxes of target...

In September 2005, after years of bitter competition, Siebel Systems Inc. finally agreed to be acquired by Oracle Corporation. The two companies preferred different forms of consideration as payment for Siebel Systems and used a deal structure known as a double dummy to satisfy both parties. The...

Most large public companies offer their executives the opportunity to defer the receipt and taxation of their salary or other current compensation until retirement or some other future date, and equity compensation, which also entails deferral of pay and taxation, constitutes a large fraction of...

Although nonqualified deferred compensation plans lack explicit tax preferences afforded qualified plans, it is well understood that nonqualified deferred compensation results in a joint tax advantage when employers earn a higher after‐tax return on deferred sums than employees could do on...

We examine the role of board connections in explaining how the controversial practice of backdating employee stock options spread to a large number of firms across a wide range of industries. The increase in the likelihood that a firm begins to backdate stock options that can be explained by...

Executive pay clawback provisions require executives to repay previously received compensation under certain circumstances, such as a downward adjustment to the financial results upon which their incentive pay was predicated. The use of these provisions is on the rise, and the SEC is expected to...

This paper tests whether firms' dividend policy is determined by the preferences of their large shareholders. Exogenous variation from changing personal income tax rates is used to analyze dividend payments of firms whose large shareholders were affected by these reforms (individuals), compared...