CEO Turnover and Volatility under Long-Term Employment Contracts Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • We study the role of the contractual time horizon of chief executive officers (CEOs) for CEO turnover and corporate policies. Using hand-collected data on 3,954 fixed-term CEO contracts, we show that remaining time under contract predicts CEO turnover. When contracts are close to expiration, turnover is more likely and is more sensitive to performance. We also show a positive within-CEO relation between remaining time under contract and firm risk. Our results are similar across short and long contracts and are driven neither by firm or CEO survival, nor technological cycles. They are consistent with incentives to take long-term projects with interim volatility.

published proceedings

  • JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL AND QUANTITATIVE ANALYSIS

altmetric score

  • 2.35

author list (cited authors)

  • Cziraki, P., & Groen-Xu, M.

citation count

  • 22

complete list of authors

  • Cziraki, Peter||Groen-Xu, Moqi

publication date

  • September 2020