Corporate Finance.

• Position: Program and Working Group Meetings

The NBER's Program on Corporate Finance met at the University of Chicago on March 30. Program Director Raghuram G. Rajah, NBER and University of Chicago, organized the meeting and chose these papers for discussion:

Morten Bennedsen, University of Copenhagen and CEBR; Francisco Perez-Gonzalez, Columbia University; and Daniel Wolfenzon, New York University and NBER, "Do CEOs Matter?"

Discussant: Antoinette Schoar, MIT and NBER

Greg Nini, Board of Governors; David C. Smith, University of Virginia; and Amir Sufi, University of Chicago, "Creditor Control Rights and Firm Investment Policy"

Discussant: Matias Braun, University of California, Los Angeles

Yael V. Hochherg, Northwestern University, and Paola Sapienza and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, Northwestern University and NBER, "A Lobbying Approach to Evaluating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002"

Discussant: Morten Sorensen, University of Chicago

Andrew Hertzerg and Jose Maria Liberti, Northwestern University, and Daniel Paravisini, Columbia University, "Information and Incentives Inside the Firm: Evidence from Loan Officer Rotation"

Discussant: Ulrike Malmendier, University of California, Berkeley and NBER

Efraim Benmelech, Harvard University and NBER, and Nittai K. Bergman, MIT, "Liquidation Values and the Credibility of Financial Contract Renegotiation: Evidence from U.S. Airlines"

Discussant: Bilge Yilmaz, University of Pennsylvania

Bo Becker and Zoran Ivkovich, University of Illinois, and Scott Weisbenner, University of Illinois and NBER, "Local Dividend Clienteles"

Discussant: Christian Leuz, University of Chicago

Asim Ijaz Khwaja, Harvard University; Atif Mian, University of Chicago and NBER; and Abid Qamar, State Bank of Pakistan, "The Value of Business Networks"

Discussant: Krishnamurthy Subramanian, Emory University

Estimating the value of top managerial talent is a central topic of research that has attracted widespread attention from academics and practitioners. Yet, testing for the importance of chief executive officers (CEOs) on firm outcomes is challenging. Bennedsen, Perez-Gonzalez, and Wolfenzon test for the impact of CEOs on performance by assessing the effect of CEO deaths and the deaths of CEOs' immediate family members (spouse, parents, children, and so on), which arguably affect CEOs' focus. Using a unique dataset from Denmark, they find that CEO's (but not board members') own and family members' deaths are strongly correlated with declines in firm operating profitability...