This paper analyzes the reputational effects of forced CEO turnovers on outside directors. We find that directors interlocked to a forced CEO turnover experience large and persistent increases in withheld votes at subsequent re-elections relative to non-turnover-interlocked directors. Directors are not penalized for an involvement in a turnover per se but for forced CEO turnovers that are related to governance failures by the board. Our results challenge the widespread view that forcing out a CEO can generally be understood as a sign of a well-functioning corporate governance.

We study the impact of financial advice on retirement savings. We document that advisors help clients to prepare for retirement by inducing them to take advantage of tax incentives offered on retirement accounts. Advisors particularly promote retirement funds as compared to savings accounts. After-tax returns of advisor-induced retirement fund investments exceed returns of plausible alternative investments. We find no indication that advisor-induced contributions to retirement accounts lead to negative side effects, such as reductions in other savings or liquidity constraints. Hence, we provide evidence of a bright side of financial advice. Furthermore, investments in retirement funds increase bank profits, pointing toward a win–win situation with rent-sharing between the bank and its clients. However, advisors do not in particular target clients that are at a higher risk of under-saving for retirement, such as female clients, clients with lower wealth, and less-educated clients.

We use a dataset from a large retail bank to examine the impact of financial advice on investors’ stock trading performance and behavioral biases. Our data allow us to classify each individual trade as either advised or independent and to compare them in a trade-by-trade within-person analysis. Thus, our study is not plagued by the endogeneity problems typically faced by studies on financial advice. We document that advisors hurt trading performance. However, they help to reduce some of the behavioral biases retail investors are subject to, but this does not overcompensate the negative performance effects of the bad stock recommendations.

We study the role of competition in customers’ reactions to litigation against firms, using anonymized mobile phone location data. A class action lawsuit filing is followed by a 4% average reduction in customer visits to target firms’ outlets in the following months. The effect strongly depends on competition. Outlets facing more competition experience significantly larger negative effects. Closer competition matters more, both in terms of geographic and industry proximity. Announcement returns and quarterly accounting revenues around lawsuit filings also strongly depend on competition. Our results suggest that competition is an important component in customers’ ability to discipline firms for misbehavior.

We investigate whether the diversification discount occurs partly as an artifact of poor corporate governance. In panel data models, we find that the discount narrows by 16% to 21% when we add governance variables as regression controls. We also estimate Heckman selection models that account for the endogeneity of diversification and dynamic panel generalized method of moments models that account for the endogeneity of both diversification and governance. We find that the diversification discount persists even with these controls for endogeneity. However, in selection models the discount disappears entirely when we introduce governance variables in the second stage, and in dynamic panel GMM models the discount narrows by 37% when we include governance variables.

Our study is the first to provide systematic evidence of a hump-shaped CEO tenure-firm value relation. Cross-sectionally, firm value starts to decline after fewer years of CEO tenure in more dynamic industries, if CEOs are less adaptable to changes, and in the presence of greater labor market frictions. Overall, the dynamics of CEO-firm match quality appear to be a first-order driver of the CEO tenure-firm value association, as explained by CEO characteristics (adaptability), firm/industry characteristics (dynamism), and labor market characteristics that facilitate optimal matching between firms and CEOs. Data Availability: Data used in this study are available from public sources identified in the study.