Country-level institutional quality is positively correlated with the underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs). The association is strong for IPOs issued in developed markets, but nearly absent for emerging market IPOs. We hypothesize that extra-legal institutions, including financial...

We study the impact of country-level short selling constraints on IPO underpricing. Examining 17,151 IPOs from 36 countries, we find that IPO underpricing tends to be greater in countries that ban short selling or security lending and in countries where short selling is not practiced....

We use the presence of a Wikipedia article for initial public offering (IPO) firms to test theories of information asymmetry and investor awareness. While we find limited support for the former, our results provide strong support for theories of investor awareness. Specifically, IPO firms with a...

We study the impact of country-level accounting conservatism on international IPO underpricing. Examining 13,285 IPOs from 36 countries, we find that IPOs are underpriced less in countries where existing public firms practice more accounting conservatism. The link between conservatism and...

We investigate stock returns, market quality, and options market activity around the flash crash of May 6, 2010. Abnormal returns are negative on the day of and the day after the flash crash for stocks that had trades that executed during the crash subsequently cancelled by either Nasdaq or NYSE...

Studying a large sample of publicly available data on failures to deliver, we find that stocks reaching threshold levels of failures become significantly overvalued. Where short sale constraints are especially binding, we report extreme overpricing and subsequent reversals. These findings...

We study the shareholder wealth effects of the adoption and subsequent litigation confirming the validity of shareholder right plans that are enacted to protect a firm's net operating loss carryforwards (tax benefit preservation plans). We find that abnormal returns are negative at the...

As volume increasingly migrates away from exchanges to dark pools, we revisit the link between disclosure opacity and volume, conditional on the choice to trade in a dark venue. We exploit the exogenous variation in home-country reporting opacity to examine how disclosure opacity affects the...

We use actual negotiations between angel investors and entrepreneurs to study the impact of personal characteristics on investment outcomes. We construct a unique dataset with 707 investment requests led by 1,089 entrepreneurs and find that the personal characteristics of the entrepreneur,...

Theory is conflicted on the impact of equity-based compensation on managerial risk taking. We explore this issue by studying the relation between equity-based compensation and firms' propensity to make acquisitions. Consistent with the notion that equity-based compensation encourages managerial...