In within-firm analysis of 1,805 executives, executives implicated in financial reporting fraud cases have significantly stronger equity incentives than their within-firm peers who are not implicated in the fraud. Executives implicated in fraud cases also have significantly stronger equity incentives than executives at non-fraud firms in similar roles. However, the equity incentives of non-implicated executives at fraud firms are no different than those for executives at non-fraud firms. The results are significant across executive roles and for equity incentives measured as wealth sensitivity to changes in stock price or stock price volatility. Executive-level analysis that considers which executives are implicated in the fraud may provide more precise measurement of the association and statistical significance of the relationship between equity incentives and fraud. Finally, firm-level measures that consider the equity incentives of all members of the top management team may better identify fraud firms than do measures focusing on one executive.

We study the link between the individual propensity to violate moral principles and the demand for finance based on two data sets: the World Values Survey and a data set with the legal records of U.S. chief executive officers (CEOs). We find that individuals who are more tolerant of moral principle violations are more likely to borrow. Corporate executives with legal records are also associated with larger mortgages. Reverse causality and attitudes toward risk are unlikely explanations for our findings. We contend that noncompliance relaxes participation constraints in capital markets by lowering the psychological costs of entering and breaking a contract.

We study whether the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms varies depending on the characteristics of the executives subject to these mechanisms, namely their “psychological type,” as proxied by their history of legal infractions. In particular, we examine insider trading, where we can compare the trading behavior of different types of executives in the same firm. We find that “recordholder” executives, that is, those with prior legal infractions, earn significantly higher profits from purchases and sales than nonrecordholder executives. Furthermore, the profitability of both purchases and sales is significantly increasing in the severity of the infraction. Governance mechanisms, such as blackout policies, lower profits of executives with only traffic infractions; however, profits for executives with serious infractions appear insensitive to blackout policies. Insiders with serious infractions are also more likely to trade during blackout periods and before large information events and are more likely to report their trades to the SEC after the filing deadline. Collectively, our evidence suggests that while governance mechanisms can discipline executives with minor offenses, they appear largely ineffective for those with more serious infractions.

We analyze whether exposure to an SEC insider trading enforcement action affects how insiders trade. We find that following an insider trading enforcement action at one firm, exposed insiders earn significantly lower abnormal profits from their trades at other firms compared to non-exposed insiders. The deterrent effect is stronger when a fellow insider is convicted, and is similarly significant both pre- and post-SOX. Following the enforcement event, exposed insiders do not trade less frequently, but do trade significantly fewer shares per trade. Insiders who have witnessed an enforcement action have a lower probability for future conviction than their unexposed peers. Data Availability: Data are available from the public sources cited in the text.

We study the role of individual CEOs in explaining corporate social responsibility (CSR) scores. We find that CEO fixed effects explain 59 percent of the variation in CSR scores, whereas firm fixed effects explain 23 percent of the variation in CSR scores. Specifically, firms led by materialistic CEOs have lower CSR scores, fewer strengths, and more weaknesses. Finally, we document that CSR scores in firms with non-materialistic CEOs are positively associated with accounting and stock price performance. In contrast, CSR scores in firms with materialistic CEOs are unrelated to profitability.

We investigate how the prevalence of materialistic bank CEOs has evolved over time, and how risk management policies, non-CEO executives’ behavior and tail risk vary with CEO materialism. We document that the proportion of banks run by materialistic CEOs increased significantly from 1994 to 2004, that the strength of risk management functions is significantly lower for banks with materialistic CEOs, and that non-CEO executives in banks with materialistic CEOs insider trade more aggressively around government intervention during the financial crisis. Finally, we find that banks with materialistic CEOs have significantly more downside tail risk relative to banks with non-materialistic CEOs.