We examine the payout policy of U.S. firms over the period 1980-2008. Prior research indicates that firm characteristics, managerial preferences, and investor clienteles are all important factors in setting payout policy. Counter to the oft-reported positive relation between senior citizens and...

We consider which readily observable characteristics of individual stocks (e.g., option implied volatility, accounting data, analyst data) may be used to forecast subsequent extreme price movements. We are the first to explicitly consider the predictive influence of option implied volatility in...

We examine the response of U.S. (VIX) and German (VDAX) implied volatility indices to the announcement of interest rate policy decisions by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) and the European Central Bank (ECB). We confirm prior findings that VIX declines on FOMC meetings days. We present...

This paper is the first, to our knowledge, to make the distinction between the investment opportunity set of real assets versus portfolio securities. We perform a large scale formal investigation of the investment opportunity set in global acquisitions based on ownership type over the period of...

Contrary to existing event studies around option listing introductions, we show short selling and options trading are complements, rather than substitutes. Further, while a plethora of literature demonstrates both short sellers and option traders are informed traders, relatively little is known...

This paper proposes a new measure of firm information asymmetry. The information asymmetry measure is based on causality tests relating repurchase information to firm returns. Our results indicate that firms with greater information asymmetry show larger abnormal returns surrounding the...