Does corporate governance structure matter for firm value? We develop a model in which the allocation of control rights between shareholders and managers (“governance structure”) affects managers' incentive to invest (strong governance tightens managerial freedom and weak governance loosens...

In 2005, the perception that wealthy executives were being rewarded for failure led Congress to ban Chapter 11 firms from paying retention bonuses to senior managers. Under the new law, debtors could still pay bonuses to executives – but only “incentive” bonuses triggered by accomplishing...

Scholars and antitrust enforcers have raised concerns about anticompetitive effects that may arise when institutional investors hold substantial stakes in competing firms. Their concern rests on empirical evidence that such common concentrated ownership is associated with higher prices and lower...

Prior research finds that when investors receive credible bad news about a firm, they revise their valuations of that firm downward. We examine a setting where investors receive bad news about a firm and revise their valuations of that firm upward. Specifically, we find that when activist...

The accuracy of firm information disclosures and the efficiency of long-term investment both play crucial roles in the economy and capital markets. We estimate a dynamic model that captures a trade-off between these two goals that arises when managers confront realistic incentives to misreport...

This paper examines the impact of takeover law enforcement on corporate acquisitions. We use the European Takeover Directive as a natural experiment, which harmonizes takeover law across countries, while leaving its enforcement to the discretion of individual countries. We exploit this...

A U.S. firm buying and selling its own shares in the open market can trade on inside information more easily than its own insiders because it is subject to less stringent trade- disclosure rules. Not surprisingly, insiders exploit these relatively lax rules to engage in indirect insider trading:...

Upon examining the language used in recent SEC filings, we find that severance agreements are often paid whether or not the CEO leaves the firm due to a change in control. We hypothesize that since severance agreements compensate CEOs in the event of termination, CEOs with these agreements will...