Purpose: Studies on corporate boards examine how social ties between the CEO and independent board members affect the effectiveness of board monitoring. Much evidence suggests that social connections between the CEO and independent directors are associated with inadequate monitoring and lower...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify whether negative operating cash flows are related to investment inefficiency, and specifically whether they are related to subsequent overinvestment and if this relationship is driven by agency problems within the firm....

This paper explores how financial frictions and financial shocks can contribute to jobless recoveries. We incorporate financial frictions and financial shocks into a real business cycle model in which firms determine not only their investment in capital and employment of workers, but also...

We investigate how the shift in private pension coverage from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC) retirement plans since the 1980s has contributed to the substantial rise in labor force participation of older Americans. We develop a life cycle model of retirement that captures...

We document that following a turnover of the Party Secretary or mayor of a city in China, firms (especially private firms) headquartered in that city significantly increase their "perk spending." Both the instrumental-variable-based results and heterogeneity analysis are consistent with the...