We examine how options trading affects voluntary corporate disclosure to explore how managers strategically disclose in light of potential managerial learning from the options market. We find that options trading reduces the likelihood and frequency of management earnings forecasts, suggesting...

How does a public announcement about a company exploring its potential sale or merger (“strategic alternatives”) affect the company and its shareholders? This study provides the first look at some of the positive and negative consequences to this unique disclosure of strategic alternatives....

Extensive evidence suggests that managers strategically choose the complexity of their descriptive disclosures. However, their motives in doing so appear mixed, as complex disclosures are used to obfuscate in some cases and as a means of informative communication in others. Building on these...

Prior literature demonstrates that an increased trading activity of a fi rm's stock is associated with abnormal future stock returns (the high-volume return premium) and interprets this phenomenon as evidence that increased visibility generates reductions in cost of capital. Motivated by this...

We provide the first large-scale study of the performance of expected-return proxies (ERPs) internationally. Analyst-forecast-based ICCs are sparsely populated and not robustly associated with future returns. Earnings-model-forecast-based ICCs are well-populated, but are unreliable outside the...

Disclosure of information triggers immediate price movements, but it mitigates price movements at a later date, when the information would otherwise have become public. Consequently, disclosure shifts risk from later cohorts of investors to earlier cohorts. Hence, disclosure policy can be...

This paper investigates the extent to which voluntary disclosure quality (VDQ) of firms is reflected in equity prices. As a novel contribution, we explore the idea that the speed with which equity prices reflect any benefits or costs of VDQ varies across firms. We find that in environments where...

The implied cost of capital (ICC), the internal rate of return that equates speculative stock price to discounted expected future dividends, includes a mispricing-driven component in addition to expected return. The estimated relation of a mispricing-associated factor (X) with ICC is thus a...

We investigate the change in the aggregate earnings-returns relation from negative to positive. We first identify a gradual structural break around the second quarter of 1991. We then find evidence of three contributing factors to the change in the relation. They are: i) an increase in the...

This paper reviews the statement of cash flow implications of stock compensation expense and the effect it can have on valuations. The paper suggests that treating stock compensation as a non-cash item in the statement of cash flows can be misleading from internal decision making and external...