Working Paper
The Effects of Management-Board Ties on IPO Performance
This paper studies the two potentially contrasting effects on IPO pricing and post-IPO operating performance of family ties as well as social ties the top management has with board members. While family ties may solve manager-owner...
Bonus Schemes and Trading Activity
Little is known about how different bonus schemes affect traders' propensity to trade and which bonus schemes improve traders' performance. We study the effects of linear versus threshold (convex) bonus schemes on traders'...
Overconfidence, Effort, and Investment
The theoretical finance literature predicts that overconfident managers overinvest in risky projects and exert more effort to learn about potentially value-enhancing projects in comparison with their unbiased peers. We test this...
Say Pays! Shareholder Voice and Firm Performance
This paper estimates the effects of Say-on-Pay (SoP); a policy that increases shareholder ?voice? by providing shareholders with a regular vote on executive pay. We apply a regression discontinuity design to the votes on...
Limited managerial attention and corporate aging
As firms have more assets in place, more of management?s limited attention is focused on managing assets in place rather than developing new growth options. Consequently, as firms grow older, they have fewer growth options and a lower...
Do Managers Manipulate Earnings Prior to Management Buyouts?
To address the question as to whether managers manipulate accounting numbers downwards prior to management buyouts (MBOs), we implement an industry-adjusted buyout-specific approach and receive an affirmative answer. In UK...
The Performance of Secondary Buyouts
Buyout funds increasingly sell their portfolio companies to other buyout funds. These secondary buyouts (SBOs) underperform primary buyouts. Yet, only SBOs made late in the investment period underperform, consistent with funds...
Top Management Ties with Board Members: How They Affect Pay-Performance Sensitivity and IPO Performance
This paper is the first study on the effects of pay-performance sensitivity (PPS) on the performance of initial public offerings (IPOs) in the presence of social ties and family ties of the top managers with board members. We...
Employee Satisfaction, Labor Market Flexibility, and Stock Returns Around the World
We study the relationship between employee satisfaction and stock returns across 30 countries. Employee satisfaction is associated with superior long-run returns in flexible labor markets, such as the US and UK, but not rigid labor...
Corporate Governance Changes As a Signal: Contextualizing the Performance Link
Promoting ?good? corporate governance has become an important concern. One result has been the creation of indexes that purport to measure the quality of a firm?s corporate governance structure. Prior scholarship reports a positive...
Social Capital, Trust, and Firm Performance: The Value of Corporate Social Responsibility during the Financial Crisis
We study the extent to which a firm's social capital, as measured by the intensity of a firm's corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, affects firm performance during the 2008-2009 financial crisis. We find that high-CSR...