The signaling or information content hypothesis is amongst the most prominent theories attempting to explain dividend policy decisions. However, no research has, to date, examined the information content of dividends in conjunction with generalized economic adversity. With the majority of the...

Since 2004, Chinese government requests the local banks to invite foreign financial institutions to be one or more of the large shareholders in the local banks. These foreign financial institutions are commonly referred to as the foreign strategic investors (FSIs), whose aim is to improve the...

This paper surveys the literature on payout policy. We start out by discussing several stylized facts that are important to the development of any comprehensive payout policy framework. We then describe the Miller and Modigliani (1961) payout irrelevance proposition, and consider the effect of...

One of the central puzzles of signaling theory is how to assess signal quality, in particular the potential for signal mimicking. Our study provides evidence of signal mimicking in the context of stock repurchases. Employing an ex-ante proxy for the likelihood of mimicking stock repurchases and...

We ask whether the quality of internal information matters for investment decisions. We predict that investment is more sensitive to internal profit signals and less sensitive to external price signals when managers have higher quality internal information. Consistent with recent theoretical and...

This study examines the effect of the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act (JOBS Act) on information uncertainty in IPO firms. The JOBS Act creates a new category of issuer, the Emerging Growth Company (EGC), and exempts EGCs from several disclosures required for non-EGCs. Our findings are...

Prior studies document that investors value persistent earnings more than transitory earnings. This argument offers incentives to managers to smooth their reported earnings and make them look more persistent. This study examines whether investors are misled by management’s income-smoothing...

Prior studies document that book-tax differences (BTDs) reflect divergent reporting rules for book and tax purposes, and contain information about earnings management and tax planning. In this paper, we investigate whether the regulatory and opportunistic information impounded in BTDs...

Prior research shows that banks have strong incentives to use loan loss provisions to smooth income. Using a sample of 878 US bank holding companies over the period 2001–2009, I find strong evidence of income smoothing behavior. Additionally, bank holding companies accelerate loan loss...