We examine the effects of nonmonetary benefits on overall executive compensation from the perspective of the living environment at the firm headquarters. Companies in polluted, high crime rate, or otherwise unpleasant locations pay higher compensation to their chief executive officers (CEOs) than companies located in more livable locations. This premium in pay for quality of life is stronger when firms face tougher competition in the managerial labor market, when the CEO is hired from outside, and when the CEO has short-term career concerns. Overall, the geographic desirability of the corporate headquarters is an effective substitute for CEO monetary pay.

We investigate the impact of mutual fund herding behaviours on stock price crashes. There are competing hypotheses with respect to how investors’ herding behaviours are associated with information processing. Our empirical evidence shows that mutual fund herding is associated with a poor information environment and low disclosure quality. More importantly, mutual fund herding amplifies stock price crash risk afterwards. The main finding is concentrated on buy-herding rather than sell-herding. To mitigate the endogeneity concern, we use the 2004 SEC mutual fund disclosure regulation change as an exogenous shock and the results hold. We further use propensity score matching to alleviate the impact of information asymmetry. Finally, additional analysis reveals that our results are not driven by the price impact hypothesis.

Using a large sample of mergers in the US, we examine whether corporate social responsibility (CSR) creates value for acquiring firms' shareholders. We find that compared with low CSR acquirers, high CSR acquirers realize higher merger announcement returns, higher announcement returns on the value-weighted portfolio of the acquirer and the target, and larger increases in post-merger long-term operating performance. They also realize positive long-term stock returns, suggesting that the market does not fully value the benefits of CSR immediately. In addition, we find that mergers by high CSR acquirers take less time to complete and are less likely to fail than mergers by low CSR acquirers. These results suggest that acquirers' social performance is an important determinant of merger performance and the probability of its completion, and they support the stakeholder value maximization view of stakeholder theory.