Executive compensation is often closely linked to firm performance, and therein lies a temptation for managers to manipulate financial reports in their favour. To deter this behaviour, the US has moved towards requiring firms to have clawback provisions that authorise boards to recover compensation paid to executives if the company has to restate its ... Read More

Clawback provisions allow firms to recover compensation from corporate executives involved in accounting improprieties. But are they a deterrent? Do they improve financial reporting? These are important questions at a time when executive compensation is under the microscope. Lilian H. Chan, Kevin C.W. Chen, Tai-Yuan Chen and Yanxin Yu have been investigating ... Read More

Shareholder rights theoretically should lower the cost of capital by reducing overinvestment as well as investors' out-of-pocket monitoring costs and idiosyncratic risk. But evidence of these effects as so far has been mixed and somewhat surprising, suggesting that the predictions may not hold. One of the problems, say Kevin C.W. Chen, Zhihong Chen and K.C ... Read More

The effect of shareholder rights on firm value is a field of growing interest as corporate governance issues grow in importance. The theory states that strong shareholder rights should lower the cost of capital and mitigate over-investment, but the evidence to date has been inconclusive. Now, a new study suggests this may in fact be what is happening. Kevin ... Read More