IPO firms with high-powered CEO incentive contracts have lower failure rates in the aftermarket. Economically, an interquartile change in the distribution of CEO pay translates in a reduction of the failure risk probability by approximately 21%. The Pay Gap between the CEO and its subordinate...

Greater partisan alignment among lawmakers enhances their ability to respond rapidly to adverse shocks, but it also undermines the quality of checks and balances and encourages excessive governmental intervention in local areas aligned with the ruling party. We investigate how this form of local...

We uncover strong evidence that newly public firms run by financial expert CEOs have a lower probability of involuntary delisting and a longer survival time in the aftermarket. This result is robust to alternative definitions of long-term viability and endogeneity concerns. We attribute this...

We find that Initial Public Offering (IPO) firms led by CEOs with superior educational credentials — in terms of level and quality — are associated with lower levels of IPO underpricing. This association is mainly driven by CEOs that hold advanced degrees. Notably, a difference-in-difference...

Due to their covert and often dubious nature, corporate political activities may encourage or facilitate opportunistic behaviors. Yet, they also subject firms to heightened visibility, which brings greater public and regulatory scrutiny. Using a hand-collected data set of politically connected...

Using the pay gap between a firm’s CEO and the highest-paid CEO among similar competing firms to conceptualize the prize of winning external promotion tournaments, we document a positive relationship between external tournament incentives (ETIs) and IPO underpricing – a proxy of the cost of...

We study how the regulator (SEC) responds to IPOs that have a higher political profile. We find that IPOs with issuers (intermediaries) that actively pursue political strategies receive more (less) SEC comment letters than IPOs without such actors. Cross-sectional analysis reveals that the...