Recent work has shown that the same neural circuitry that typically underlies risky behaviors also contributes to prosocial behaviors. Despite the striking overlap between two seemingly distinct behavioral patterns, little is known about how risk taking and prosociality interact and inform adolescent decision making. We review literature on adolescent brain development as it pertains to risk ta...

Executive compensation is designed to create incentives for CEOs to act in the best interest of shareholders. Short-term (bonus) and equity-based incentives induce risk taking behaviors of the CEO that could further change a firm’s risk exposure. This article examines the linkage between compensation components and the impacts on a firm’s credit risk using data from the U.S. and Germany. In the...

We examine the impact of board structure, CEO power and other bank-specific factors on bank risk-taking for a sample 72 publicly listed European banks in both stable crisis periods. Using simultaneous equations approach, our main findings indicate that proportion independent directors, size, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) affected negatively during recent financial crisis. On contrary, instituti...

This study explores the relation between credit risks of financial and non-financial firms and their corporate governance structures from the perspective of creditors. US based CDS spreads are used to measure firms’ risk taking behavior. Governance attributes have differential effects across firm types: Board independence and financial transparency have a greater impact on the default risk of f...

Does risk aversion amplify business cycle downturns? I study the risk exposure of CEOs and its effect on firm investment in times of high macroeconomic uncertainty. Exploiting exogenous variation in CEO equity ownership, I show that firms with larger CEO stakes decrease investment significantly more in periods of high uncertainty. I consider whether better shareholder alignment explains this fi...