Logit and probit models of turnover=f(performance, firm type, firm type*performance, controls) are often used when testing whether turnover is “more sensitive to performance” for different types of firms. Researchers using this specification typically focus on the significance of the interaction term coefficient. If the intent is to show that the likelihood (rather than the odds) of turnover changes by more for one type of firm as performance varies, then this is an inappropriate test. Simulations are used to demonstrate how focusing on this particular coefficient can generate incorrect inferences. I then show how analyzing marginal effects eliminates this inference problem.

Agency costs are a cost of production, and firms that do a better job of minimizing these costs should exhibit better performance. This paper tests this hypothesis by calculating the performance elasticity of average employee hourly compensation for U.S. manufacturing firms. This elasticity indicates the degree of alignment between employee and shareholder objectives. The estimated elasticity is indistinguishable from zero in low performance firms, and it equals 0.193 in high performance firms. While it is difficult to know whether an elevated performance sensitivity causes better firm performance, clearly the best performers in manufacturing industries link average employee pay to performance.

This paper estimates the intensity of the value-maximization incentives for average employees generated through the combination of wage, salary, and bonus mechanisms. This is accomplished through estimation of the elasticity of average employee hourly compensation with respect to changes in firm performance. This performance elasticity indicates the degree of alignment between employee and shareholder objectives, and it can also be interpreted as an incomplete residual income claim for employees. The estimated performance elasticity for the full sample of firms is not significantly different from a CEO salary-plus-bonus performance elasticity of 0.1 published in Coughlan and Schmidt [Journal of Accounting and Economics 7 (1985) 43]. Jensen and Murphy [Journal of Political Economy 98 (1990) 225] find that CEOs received approximately US$3.25 for each US$1000 increase in shareholder wealth. This translates to an elasticity of just over 57, but most of these payments come through channels other than salaries and bonuses. Jensen and Murphy report a performance sensitivity of salary and bonus payments for CEOs that is equivalent to analogous elasticities for rank and file workers reported in this paper. While the rewards CEOs receive through salary and bonus channels are larger than those of average employees in absolute terms, these rewards represent comparable fractions of income. This paper also finds differences in the pay-performance link based on firm size. The estimated performance elasticity is 0.197 in small firms and is indistinguishable from zero in large firms. The results indicate that firms use wage, salary and bonus adjustments to direct approximately 5.3% of firm value increases to employees. Although the precise link between pay and performance is not visible with this data, these results indicate that average employees benefit when the firm performs well.

This paper explores the explanatory power of Jensen's free cash flow hypothesis in managers' choice of LIFO versus FIFO. The association between FCF, and choice of inventory methods is based on the assumption that there is a potential conflict of interest between managers and shareholders when LIFO is the tax minimization method and that non-value-maximizing managers of firms with the FCF problem have incentives to choose FIFO, an income increasing method, in order to increase their compensation. However, since debt can act as a monitoring device and mitigate the agency problems of FCF, managers of firms with high FCF and high debt are less likely to choose FIFO than managers of firms with high FCF and low debt. The evidence is consistent with this expectation.

This paper, using 5308 observations of listed Japanese firms between the years 1988–1992, provides additional evidence on contracting theory arguments for the relation between growth opportunities, capital structure and dividend policies. To avoid the problems of using cross-sectional proxies for time-sequenced variables, this study uses (1) pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis and (2) time-series analysis with a one-year lag for the dependent variables. Results show significant negative relations between growth opportunities and levels of both debt financing and dividend yields after controlling for firm size, profitability, firm keiretsu affiliations and industry regulation. The results are consistent with contracting cost arguments for corporate finance and dividend policies and confirm the importance of growth opportunities in corporate finance theory.

This paper finds new evidence that the threat of legal sanctions significantly affects the trading behavior of insiders. Specifically, I examine the effects of the Insider Trading and Securities Fraud Enforcement Act (ITSFEA) on insider trading around earnings announcements. Given ITSFEA's stated concern with trading on private information prior to its release, I argue that insiders may respond to the Act by altering the timing of their trades. I find that, following ITSFEA, insiders are more likely to postpone liquidity sales until after negative earnings surprises. I also find that insiders increase their relative emphasis on post-event as opposed to pre-event information based trading. Finally, earnings announcements appear to be more informative in the post-ITSFEA period, consistent with less information based trading in front of earnings announcements, after the Act.

This study shows that corporate innovation efficiency (IE) as measured by patents filed or cited divided by R&D expenditures improves credit ratings, but this occurs gradually. This gradual response implies that credit rating agencies (CRAs) impose in the near term a higher borrowing cost on innovative firms than their performance and risk characteristics would justify. We predict and confirm that the gradual improvement of credit ratings in response to IE is amplified for firms with more downside risk, with more financial constraints, and with increased sales or cash flows in the years following the IE. These results suggest a predictable response of CRAs to contemporaneous IE information based on economic factors relevant to credit analysis rather than a response based on CRAs' inefficient or biased use of innovation information.

Majority voting in board elections has emerged as a dominant theme in recent proxy seasons. Analysis of majority voting is important: first, the impact is controversial yet scant empirical evidence exists. Second, Congress is still considering mandating this practice. Third, there has been a tectonic shift in adoptions of majority voting, from 16% to over 67% of S&P 500 firms in just two years. Fourth, the vast majority of shareholder proposals for majority voting are sponsored by unions with little shareholdings. Proponents argue that majority voting aligns shareholder–director interests. Opponents argue that the practice will be disruptive and could result in the failure of boards to meet exchange and SEC requirements. Others assert that majority voting is a paper tiger, amounting to form over substance, particularly since many adoptions are non-binding. We provide an empirical analysis of the wealth effects, characteristics, and efficacy of majority voting. Our results are consistent with the paper tiger hypothesis.

We test the signaling and wealth transfer hypotheses around the announcement of share repurchases using a recent and larger sample of data than previously examined while employing a methodology designed to enhance the power of our tests. Disentangling the wealth transfer and signaling hypotheses is difficult; they are not mutually exclusive and can have opposite effects for bondholders. Wealth transfers decrease bondholder wealth while positive signals increase it; the combined result obscures tests of each hypothesis. By focusing on sub-samples where signaling is more and less likely to be present we increase our ability to isolate the separate effects. In addition to traditional tests of wealth effects, we feature information inherent in the correlation of wealth changes to equity and debt. Our results are generally consistent with the positive signaling effect of stock repurchases, but also provide some support for wealth transfer. Our work also emphasizes the importance of trying to disentangle the various hypotheses. In the subset of option funding repurchases, where signaling effects are less likely, the positive correlation of wealth changes between stockholders and bondholders is completely eliminated. Bond ratings are much more likely to be upgraded in samples without executive options which is precisely where the signaling effects are expected to be concentrated. Firms with weaker shareholder rights experience greater bondholder wealth losses at the announcement of stock repurchases.

A major criticism of corporate boards of directors is the absence of objectivity in appraising and monitoring management [The Business Lawyer, 48 (1992) 59–77]. Recently, Shivdasani and Yermack [Journal of Finance LIV (5) (1999) 1829] find that CEO involvement in board selection is associated with a greater proportion of gray and a lower proportion of outside director appointments. The question addressed here is whether corporate performance, as measured by Tobin's q, is affected by management influence in the board nominating process. Agrawal and Knoeber [Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 31 (3) (1996) 377] find interdependence among seven mechanisms to control agency problems between managers and stockholders. Their finding suggests that cross-sectional OLS regressions of firm performance on a single mechanism may be misleading and that interpretation of multiple regression methods is weakened by multicollinearity. In this study, a principal component analysis (PCA) is employed to mitigate such problems. An index of management involvement in director nomination is constructed for a sample of 106 firms from 1989 to 1992 via a PCA method utilizing selected governance mechanisms within the nominating process. We find a positive relationship between management participation in the director selection process and corporate performance.