ABSTRACT We examine the effect of individual wealth taxes on dividend policy. Using a comprehensive sample of European public firms from 26 countries, we document that wealth taxes paired with substantial increases in stock prices are associated with significantly larger dividend payouts. This pattern is stronger among closely held firms, family firms, and firms with shares directly owned by individuals. We also find evidence suggesting that the dividends induced by wealth taxes have meaningful economic consequences; the announcement of dividends with a higher probability of being induced by wealth taxes elicits lower stock returns, and such dividends are associated with lower levels of subsequent investment. Overall, our evidence contributes to the rekindled debate on wealth taxes by showing that this type of taxation affects corporate financial policies. JEL Classifications: G14; G20; G28; G30; K2.

ABSTRACT Research suggests that employees work harder under penalty contracts than under economically equivalent bonus contracts. We build on this literature by examining how the motivational advantage of penalty contracts depends on a common aspect of real-world contracts: payoff ambiguity. With payoff ambiguity, employees provide effort without knowing how much pay they will receive for a given level of performance. According to our theory, this ambiguity opens the door for employee optimism, which has contrasting effects under each contract frame. Results from an experiment support this theory, with an increase in ambiguity leading to less employee effort with penalty contracts (as employees optimistically expect small penalties) and more effort with bonus contracts (as employees optimistically expect large bonuses). We also find that these effects are stronger for more dispositionally optimistic employees. Overall, our results suggest that bonus contracts may be more motivating and penalty contracts less motivating than previously thought.

ABSTRACT Approaches to risk governance are not homogeneous across organizations. Some organizations invest heavily in building formal and strategically focused enterprise-wide risk governance processes whereas others exhibit reduced formality and focus, allowing risk governance to be less structured. We argue that risk governance may best be described as a service dependent upon a network (or ecosystem) of participants who include users of risk information and providers who design and implement risk governance processes. Using a survey sample of 2,380 observations from 2011 to 2016, we find that external calls for enhanced risk governance are positively associated with risk governance processes having greater formality and strategic focus. We find this relationship is partially mediated by internal demands for enhanced risk governance. Further, we find that the positive association between internal demands and enhanced risk governance is reduced by resource constraints and that a risk-seeking attitude is negatively associated with enhanced risk governance. Data Availability: Contact the authors. JEL Classifications: G30; M10; M14; M40.