Sky Blog
Around the time Tesla’s board granted CEO Elon Musk a massive 10-year, $2.3 billion equity award, a small number of companies offered similar “mega grants” to their CEOs. The outcome of Musk’s grant is known, but the outcomes of these …
Companies around the world are under pressure to diversify their executive leadership, while facing skepticism about their efforts. In a new study, we examine women’s entry into and exit from the highest levels of corporate leadership.
Research …
On September 15, 2025, Elon Musk filed a disclosure with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) indicating that he had acquired approximately 2.57 million shares of Tesla Inc. in open-market transactions on September 12, at a cost of nearly …
Despite decades of research on M&A outcomes, a puzzling question persists: Why do acquiring firms receive, on average, almost no cumulative abnormal returns around deal announcements (i.e., Betton, Eckbo, and Thorburn, 2008; Moeller, Schlingemann, and Stulz, 2004)? Numerous studies have …
The underrepresentation of women in the top executive ranks of U.S. corporations is well-documented. Less understood is what happens after women reach the C-suite: Do they keep these jobs as long as men?
Our research examines this question in depth, …
The growing gap between CEO compensation and typical worker pay has become one of the most visible signs of rising economic inequality. In the United States, this gap has widened dramatically over the past several decades. While CEOs in the …
In the debate over whether corporations should give priority to shareholder interests or stakeholder interests, among the thorniest issues is whether one approach creates more value for a company than the other. The challenge lies in the difficulty of assessing …
Whose interests do public pension funds serve? On the one hand, they have a fiduciary duty to maximize value for the pension fund participants whose retirement savings they invest. On the other, they can use their considerable ownership stakes to …
In a new article, we focus on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement of the CEO and CFO certification requirement pursuant to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). The article analyzes the appropriate interpretation of the statute’s reach, the SEC enforcement proceedings …
Stock trading by corporate insiders has long drawn interest because of its implications for corporate governance, market integrity, and regulatory oversight. However, the question of whether and how CEOs’ non-routine insider trading influences the trading behavior of other insiders remains …
Institutional investors such as mutual funds, pension funds, and exchange traded funds (ETFs) play a prominent role in today’s economy. According to the CFA Institute, institutional investors now hold over $70 trillion in investable assets and thus wield immense influence …
Each year, a significant number of publicly listed companies in the U.S. face the departure of their CEOs. While these transitions are inevitable, they represent critical moments in a company’s lifecycle, often leading to long-lasting financial and strategic problems when …
The decision to appoint a new CEO is among the most critical and strategic choices a corporation can face, as it can significantly influence the organization’s future. A key consideration is whether to promote an internal candidate or recruit one …
In recent years, scholars and other observers have expressed starkly different understandings of the political landscape of corporate America. While the conventional wisdom has cast large American businesses as a conservative stronghold, others have reached the opposite conclusion, arguing that …
In recent years, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics have become important factors in determining executive compensation as companies, investors, and regulators aim to align executives’ interests with broader societal goals. But are these metrics effective in generating incentives for …
The 2008-2009 global financial crisis (GFC) has cast a pall over several corporate governance mechanisms in many firms worldwide. Nonetheless, how the firms treated their female directors in the aftermath and whether they maintained gender diversity on their boards remain …
For decades, advocates of “shareholder primacy” as the North Star of corporate governance have steered our leading corporations and our Nation’s economic engine perilously off-course. Since the 1970s, when the work of Milton Friedman, Michael Jensen, and Frank …
After several years of dramatic growth, ESG investing seems to have entered a period of retrenchment. While it is impossible to predict the future trajectory of ESG, the movement has revealed important structural features of our financial system and the …
The media often highlights hefty CEO compensation packages featuring lucrative stock grants, restricted shares, and stock options. The rationale for offering such equity-type compensation to top executives is to align the interests of managers and shareholders to mitigate agency conflicts …
Managers have strong incentives to present a favorable image of their companies to investors, analysts, and the public, raising concerns about the credibility of voluntary disclosures. These concerns are particularly severe for unaudited forward-looking disclosures because they are often qualitative …