Leveraged Employee Stock Ownership Plan (quot;ESOPquot;) transactions originated in the 1950s, yet there are still unresolved valuation issues that arise from a complex set of operating expenses, financing structures and contingent claims that are unique to leveraged ESOPs. Although complex,...

Control premiums represent the value that can be extracted by controlling shareholders at the expense of minority interests. To assume that controlling shareholders can extract enough value from the minority interests to justify the high premiums suggested by acquisition premium studies is to...

Very few matters of social importance are more complex than the one before you today. This particular issue is not only about uncovering obscure dollars unscrupulously extracted from the account balances of America's workforce, but it is also about correcting the culture that has permitted the...

We study executive stock options that permit the option holder to rescind an exercise decision, returning the shares acquired to the company and obtaining a refund of the exercise price. Rescissions occurred at a number of U.S. companies in 2000 after the large decline in internet stocks, and...

Most corporate law scholars who suggest reforming executive compensation worry about corporate governance problems that arise out of poor compensation design. Most politicians who suggest reforming executive compensation seem as or more worried about growing economic inequality. This essay...

We measure U.S. publicly traded companies' exposures to skilled labor risk, i.e., the potential failure in attracting and retaining skilled labor, by the intensity of their discussions on this issue in their 10-K filings. We show that this measure effectively captures firm risk due to the...

We examine the relation between customer concentration, a critically important aspect of a firm's business model, and the level of corporate tax avoidance. A firm with a concentrated corporate customer base needs to hold more cash, faces a higher likelihood of financial distress, has a stronger...

Infrastructure projects involve multiple parties: a government, private sector firms that build and manage, and outside investors who supply financing. Private sector firms need incentives to implement and maintain the projects well; governments may lack commitment not to extort cash flows (for...

This paper evaluates the real effects of a Tobin tax by investigating a policy experiment that reduced this tax on only a subset of equity securities in China. Affected stocks experienced an increase in both liquidity and return volatility. More importantly, the tax reduction further led to an...

The 2012 Dividend Tax Reform in China uniquely ties individual investors' dividend tax rates to the length of their share holding period. We find that firms facing a reduction in their individual investors' dividend tax rate are more likely to increase dividend payout, initiate dividends, and...