We extend the Pukthuanthong and Roll (2009) measure of integration to provide an estimate of systemic risk within international equity markets. Our measure indicates an increasing likelihood of market crashes. The conditional probability of market crashes, especially across markets, increases...

Human capital is the largest component of aggregate wealth, but its relation to other macroeconomic variables is murky due to the lack of market prices. Valuing human capital using historical costs or expected income is characterized by substantial measurement error. We develop a human capital...

We propose a novel risk measure that relates to subsequent negative conditional stock market returns. Our risk measure considers both the fragility and stress of the market. Fragility is measured by the Fragility Index developed by Berger and Pukthuanthong (2012) and market stress is based on...

We document the effects of institutional investors on the qualitative information disclosure of firms within earnings conference calls. Utilizing conference call and institutional ownership data between 2005 and 2016, we find that aggregate institutional ownership dampens conference call tone....

Human capital is the largest component of aggregate wealth, but its relation to other macroeconomic and financial variables is opaque. Using historical costs or expected income, valuing human capital is characterized by substantial measurement errors. We construct a human capital index using...

We provide an analysis of frontier market equities with respect to world market integration anddiversification. Principal component results reveal that frontier markets exhibit low levels of integration. In contrast with developed and emerging markets, frontier markets offer no indication of...

We employ a conditional event study to analyze managers' motives to announce a share repurchase in the context of a model of economic factors that impact a firm's abnormal announcement return. Firms with greater free cash flow and less debt are more likely to initiate a repurchase. Share...

We consider the importance of legal opportunism as an explanation for observed litigation following a large sample of initial public offerings (IPOs). We characterize legal opportunism as litigation based on the potential to recover losses after negative stock price developments rather than the...