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Journal of Financial Economics Vol. 123 No. 3 2017

Explaining CEO retention in misreporting firms

Messod D. Beneish1,2; Cassandra D. Marshall3; Jun Yang1,2

1 Indiana University Bloomington · 2 Indiana University · 3 University of Richmond

Abstract

We propose a framework that advances our understanding of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) retention decisions in misreporting firms. Consistent with economic intuition, outside directors are more likely to fire (retain) CEOs when retention (replacement) costs are high relative to replacement (retention) costs. When the decision is ambiguous because neither cost dominates, outside directors are more likely to retain the CEO when they both benefit from selling stock in the misreporting period. We show that joint abnormal selling captures director–CEO alignment incrementally to biographical overlap. This new proxy operationalizes information sharing and trust, making it useful for studying economic decision-making embedded in social relationships.

DOI
10.1016/j.jfineco.2016.12.004
Volume
123
Issue
3
Pages
512-535
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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