The number of public firms in the United States has halved since the beginning of the twenty-first century, causing consternation among corporate and securities law regulators. The dominant explanations, often advanced by Securities and Exchange commissioners when considering policy initiatives,...

The new lease standard (ASC 842) allows firms to keep variable leases off-balance-sheet, on the assumption that future expenses cannot be estimated reliably. We show that variable-lease expenses are common and significant; they are as persistent and predictable as operating-lease expenses, and...

We outline a framework in which accounting “valuation anchors" could be connected to expected stock returns. Under two general conditions, expected log returns is a log- linear function of a valuation (market value-to-accounting) multiple and the expected growth in the valuation anchor. We...

We provide a comprehensive examination of whether, to what extent, and which accounting variables are useful for improving the predictive accuracy of GDP growth forecasts. We leverage statistical models that accommodate a broad set of (341) variables---outnumbering the total time-series...

We study the use of firms' book-to-market ratios (B/M) in value investing and its implications for comovements in firms’ stock returns and trading volumes. We show B/M has become increasingly detached from common alternative valuation ratios over time while also becoming worse at forecasting...

In July 2020, the European Commission published the “Study on directors’ duties and sustainable corporate governance” by EY. The Report purports to find evidence of debilitating short-termism in EU corporate governance and recommends many changes to support sustainable corporate...

We examine Korean business groups' transitions from circular-shareholding to (relatively simple) pyramidal-shareholding structures during 2011-2018. The transition did not impact chaebol families' degrees of control or incentive conflicts in firms belonging to circular-shareholdings ("loops"),...

The stock market generates less wealth than it appears. We show that total shareholder return (TSR), the standard measure of stock investor performance, substantially exaggerates returns earned by these investors in aggregate, and thus by most investors. The main reason: from investors'...

Difference-in-differences analysis with staggered treatment timing is frequently used to assess the impact of policy changes on corporate outcomes in academic research. However, recent advances in econometric theory show that such designs are likely to be biased in the presence of treatment...