Central banks unexpectedly tightening policy rates often observe the exchange value of their currency depreciate, rather than appreciate as predicted by standard models. We document this for Fed and ECB policy days using event-studies and ask whether an information effect, where the public...

Amid the COVID-19 outbreak and related expected economic downturn, many developed and emerging market central banks around the world engaged in new long-term asset purchase programs, or so-called quantitative easing (QE) interventions. This paper conducts an event-study analysis of 24 COVID-19...

As illustrated in the tale of "the dog that did not bark," the absence of news and the passage of time often contain information. We test whether markets fully incorporate this information using the empirical context of mergers. During the year after merger announcement, the passage of time is...

We examine abnormal stock returns surrounding contemporaneous earnings and dividend announcements in order to determine whether investors evaluate the two announcements in relation to each other.We find that there is a statistically significant interaction effect.The abnormal return...

It is sometimes argued that an increase in stock market volatility raises required stock returns, and thus lowers stock prices. This paper modifies the generalized autoregressive conditionally heteroskedastic (GARCH) model of returns to allow for this volatility feedback effect. The resulting...

Do financial markets properly reflect leverage? Unlike Gomes and Schmid (2010) who examine this question with a structural approach (using long-term monthly stock characteristics), my paper examines it with a quasi-experimental approach (using short-term a discrete event). After a firm has...

Acquisition announcement returns are widely considered market-based assessments of value creation. Unfortunately, the data do not support this conjecture. We show that commonly used and new measures of realized acquisition outcomes are correlated among themselves, though derived from different...

This paper evaluates skewness in the cross-section of stock returns in light of predictions from a well-known class of models. Cross-sectional skewness in monthly returns far exceeds what the standard lognormal model of returns would predict. However, skewness in long-run returns substantially...