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Three Essays On Ceo Characteristics And Corporate Bankruptcy, Rajib Chowdhury

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

Scholarly studies have focused on the impact of managerial characteristics on various corporate activities. Following this stream of literature, this dissertation empirically examines the potential effects of three major Chief Executive Officer (CEO) characteristics, i.e., CEO ability, CEO risk taking behavior induced by compensation structure, and CEO overconfidence on corporate bankruptcies. Essay 1 examines whether chief executive officers (CEOs) are to be blamed for corporate failure. Using alternative measures of CEO ability, we document that high-ability CEOs are less likely to be associated bankruptcy. Bankruptcy-related high-ability CEOs manage to salvage their post-bankruptcy careers either with the reorganized firms or with …

Three Essays On Strategic Risk Taking, Krista Burrill Lewellyn

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

The three essays that comprise this dissertation collectively explore strategic risk taking. The dissertation is underpinned by the notion that corporate executives take strategic risks not randomly, but based on the expectation that outcomes are more likely to be positive rather than negative. Each essay examines how and why decision makers come to vary in their cognitive evaluation of the acceptability of strategic risk taking.

Essay 1 draws from the approach/inhibition theory of power, to explore how power not only provides the means for CEOs to exert their risk preferences, but actually affects what the risk preferences are. Power is …

Determinants Of Ceo Pay: A Critical Assessment, W. Otto Carroll

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

This research expands the study of determinants of CEO pay. Previous studies have found conflicting results regarding the importance of firm size and firm performance in influencing the amount of CEO compensation. Other studies are incomplete with respect to the measurement of both executive pay and its determinants. Traditional theories of executive compensation such as equity theory, expectancy theory, human capital and labor market theory provide the starting point for determinants of CEO pay. However, to more fully understand these determinants, the model includes a test of agency theory showing the relationship between board control and pay. It tests the …