We find that U.S. corporations' demand for liquidity is sensitive to two important factors: uncertainty facing the firm and the quality of corporate governance. Following prior research, we find that both factors have important influences on firms' cash holdings. Our results also indicate that...

This paper is concerned with extending the familiar notion of fixed effects to nonlinear setups with infinite dimensional unobservables like preferences. The main result is that a generalized version of differencing identifies local average structural derivatives (LASDs) in very general...

We give two new approaches to testing a conditional form of exogeneity. This condition ensures unconfoundedness and identification of effects of interest in structural systems. As these approaches do not rely on the absence of causal effects of treatment under the null, they complement earlier...

This paper demonstrates the extensive scope of an alternative to standard instrumental variables methods, namely covariate-based methods, for identifying and estimating effects of interest in general structural systems. As we show, commonly used econometric methods, specifically parametric,...

The causal notions embodied in the concept of Granger causality have been argued to belong to a different category than those of Judea Pearl's Causal Model, and so far their relation has remained obscure. Here, we demonstrate that these concepts are in fact closely linked by showing how each...

We examine the relationship between outcomes of securities fraud class action lawsuits (SFCAs) and corporate board turnover rates. Our results indicate the strength of the allegations in lawsuits affects board turnover. The turnover rates for each type of board member: outsiders, insiders, and...

This paper examines the ways in which structural systems can yield observed variables, other than the cause or treatment of interest, that can play an instrumental role in identifying and estimating causal effects. We focus speciÖcally on the ways in which structures determine exclusion...

We investigate the relationship between a firm's measures of corporate governance, macroeconomic uncertainty and changes in leverage. Recent research highlights the role of governance in financing decisions. Previous research also indicates that macroeconomic uncertainty affects a firm’s...

We argue that the current framework for predictive ability testing (e.g.,West, 1996) is not necessarily useful for real-time forecast selection, i.e., for assessing which of two competing forecasting methods will perform better in the future. We propose an alternative framework for out-of-sample...

We test whether uncertainty in the CEO's compensation influences the firm's investment decisions, using panel compensation data and cross-sectional invetsment data. Given the prospect of bearing extra risk, a rational agent reacts to minimize the impact of such risk. We provide evidence that...