Abstract Blockchains represent a novel application of cryptography and information technology to age-old problems of financial record-keeping, and they may lead to far-reaching changes in corporate governance. Many major players in the financial industry have began to invest in this new technology, and stock exchanges have proposed using blockchains as a new method for trading corporate equities and tracking their ownership. This essay evaluates the potential implications of these changes for managers, institutional investors, small shareholders, auditors, and other parties involved in corporate governance. The lower cost, greater liquidity, more accurate record-keeping, and transparency of ownership offered by blockchains may significantly upend the balance of power among these cohorts.

This paper studies separation payments made when CEOs leave their firms. In a sample of 179 exiting Fortune 500 CEOs, more than half receive severance pay and the mean separation package is worth $5.4 million. The large majority of severance pay is awarded on a discretionary basis by the board of directors and not according to terms of an employment agreement. For the subset of exiting CEOs who are dismissed, separation pay generally conforms to theories related to bonding and damage control. Shareholders react negatively when separation agreements are disclosed, but only in cases of voluntary CEO turnover.

This paper shows connections between chief executive officers׳ (CEOs׳) absences from headquarters and corporate news disclosures. I identify CEO absences by merging records of corporate jet flights and CEOs׳ property ownership near leisure destinations. CEOs travel to their vacation homes just after companies report favorable news, and CEOs return to headquarters right before subsequent news releases. When CEOs are away, companies announce less news, mandatory disclosures occur later, and stock volatility falls sharply. Volatility increases when CEOs return to work. CEOs spend fewer days out of the office when ownership is high and when weather is bad at their vacation homes.

I study large charitable stock gifts by Chairmen and Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of public companies. These gifts, which are not subject to insider trading law, often occur just before sharp declines in their companies’ share prices. This timing is more pronounced when executives donate their own shares to their own family foundations. Evidence related to reporting delays and seasonal patterns suggests that some CEOs fraudulently backdate stock gifts to increase personal income tax benefits. CEOs’ family foundations hold donated stock for long periods rather than diversifying, permitting CEOs to continue voting the shares.

This paper studies perquisites of CEOs, focusing on personal use of company planes. For firms that have disclosed this managerial benefit, average shareholder returns underperform market benchmarks by more than 4% annually, a severe gap far exceeding the costs of resources consumed. Around the date of the initial disclosure, firms’ stock prices drop by an average of 1.1%. Regression analysis finds no significant associations between CEOs’ perquisites and their compensation or percentage ownership, but variables related to personal CEO characteristics, especially long-distance golf club memberships, have significant explanatory power for personal aircraft use.

ABSTRACT I study incentives received by outside directors in Fortune 500 firms from compensation, replacement, and the opportunity to obtain other directorships. Previous research has only shown these relations to apply under limited circumstances such as financial distress. Together these incentive mechanisms provide directors with wealth increases of approximately 11 cents per $1,000 rise in firm value. Although smaller than the performance sensitivities of CEOs, outside directors' incentives imply a change in wealth of about $285,000 for a 1 standard deviation ( SD ) change in typical firm performance. Cross‐sectional patterns of director equity awards conform to agency and financial theories.

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the timing of CEO stock option awards, as a method of investigating corporate managers' influence over the terms of their own compensation. In a sample of 620 stock option awards to CEOs of Fortune 500 companies between 1992 and 1994, I find that the timing of awards coincides with favorable movements in company stock prices. Patterns of companies' quarterly earnings announcements are consistent with an interpretation that CEOs receive stock option awards shortly before favorable corporate news. I evaluate and reject several alternative explanations of the results, including insider trading and the manipulation of news announcement dates.

Pensions and deferred compensation represent substantial components of CEO incentives. We study stockholder and bondholder reactions to companies' initial reports of CEOs' inside debt positions following a 2007 SEC disclosure reform. We find that bond prices rise, equity prices fall, and the volatility of both securities drops for firms whose CEOs have sizeable defined benefit pensions or deferred compensation. Similar changes occur for credit default swap spreads and exchange-traded options. The results indicate a reduction in firm risk, a transfer of value from equity toward debt, and an overall destruction of enterprise value when CEOs' inside debt holdings are large.

We investigate the impact of stock‐based compensation on managerial ownership. We find that equity compensation succeeds in increasing incentives of lower‐ownership managers, but higher‐ownership managers negate much of its impact by selling previously owned shares. When executives exercise options to acquire stock, nearly all of the shares are sold. Our results illuminate dynamic aspects of managerial ownership arising from divergent goals of boards of directors, who use equity compensation for incentives, and managers, who respond by selling shares for diversification. The findings cast doubt on the frequent and important theoretical assumption that managers cannot hedge the risks of these awards.