ABSTRACT I examine whether directors' superior access to information through their board network improves the accuracy of firms' forecasting. Managers may benefit from well-connected directors (i.e., board centrality) as they may have limited insight into market developments or decision-making processes of other firms beyond knowledge specific to their firm. Employing a sample of U.S.-listed companies, I separately examine the effect of within-firm variation in direct and indirect board connections on management earnings forecast accuracy. The study contributes by showing that higher-degree connections can have an economically significant effect on the accuracy of management forecasts, regardless of firms' board interlocks. Further analyses point toward well-connected directors' ability to provide managers with valuable advice in a forecasting context, which complements directors' more extensively studied role in preventing managerial expropriation. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text. JEL Classifications: G3; L14; M41.

ABSTRACT Firms trade off CFOs' fiduciary duties against their decision-making duties when designing CFO bonus plans. Decreasing bonus incentives tied to financial measures benefits CFOs' fiduciary responsibilities at the expense of motivating their decision-making duties. As prior research indicates that clawbacks increase personal misreporting costs through the loss of previously awarded compensation, we examine whether clawbacks allow firms to increase incentives in CFO bonus contracts. Based on a sample of U.S. firms between 2007 and 2013, we find that clawbacks are associated with greater CFO bonus incentives. We also find the increase in incentives to be more pronounced for CFOs relative to other executives. Our results are moderated by firms' susceptibility to misreporting. The relation between clawbacks and incentives is weaker when firms experienced internal control deficiencies, have larger abnormal accruals, when CFOs are more vulnerable to pressure from CEOs, and when audit committees have less financial expertise and prestige.

We exploit Donald Trump’s nonpolitical background and surprise election victory to identify the value of sudden presidential ties among S&P 500 firms. In our setting firms did not choose to become politically connected, so we identify treatment effects comparatively free of selection bias prevalent in this literature. Firms with presidential ties enjoyed greater abnormal returns around the 2016 election. Since Trump’s inauguration, connected firms had better performance, received more government contracts, and were less subject to unfavorable regulatory actions. We rule out a number of confounding factors, including industry designation, sensitivity to Republican platforms, campaign finance, and lobbying expenditures.