This paper presents a theoretical model of self-control as a dynamic process. In situations demanding self-control, the individual experiences one of two types of temptations: Impulsiveness or procrastination, followed by an inner struggle between yielding to and overcoming the temptation. When...

Economists often play crucial roles in designing and implementing public policies; thus it is of importance to better understand the values that underlie their decisions. We explore the value hierarchies of economists in four studies: The first two studies examine whether value differences exist...

What motivates individual self-sacrificial behavior in intergroup conflicts? Is it the altruistic desire to help the ingroup or the aggressive drive to hurt the outgroup? This paper introduces a new game paradigm, the Intergroup Prisoner’s Dilemma – Maximizing Difference (IPD-MD) game,...

While previous empirical literature has examined the effect of founder-CEOs on firm performance, it has largely ignored the effect of firm performance on founder-CEO status.(...)

Around the world, policy makers are mandating gender quotas for boards of publicly-traded firms. Since the benefits and costs of these quotas accrue to shareholders, it is important to see how they react to the appointment of female directors. Using data on mandatory announcements of new...

Should boards of financial firms be blamed for the financial crisis? Using a large sample of data on nonfinancial and financial firms for the period 1996-2007, I document that the governance of financial firms is, on average, not obviously worse than in nonfinancial firms. In fact, using simple...

The subprime crisis highlights how little we know about bank governance. This paper addresses a long-standing gap in the literature by analyzing the relationship between board governance and performance using a sample of banking firm data that spans 34 years. We find that board independence is...

A large literature documents that women are different from men in their choices and preferences, but little is known about gender differences in the boardroom. If women must be like men to break the glass ceiling, we might expect gender differences to disappear among directors. Using a large...