Is bank- versus market-based financing different in its attitudes towards Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) risk? Using a novel sample covering 3,783 U.S. public firms from 2007 to 2020, we study how firm-level ESG risk affects its financing outcomes. We find that companies with higher...

We examine the nature of information contained in insider trades prior to corporate events. Insiders' net buying increases before open market share repurchase announcements and decreases before seasoned equity offers. Higher insider net buying is associated with better post-event operating...

We reconcile two seemingly contrasting empirical facts, active capital structure rebalancing and slow adjustments towards target leverage, through the lens of a standard dynamic capital structure model. In the model, firms adjust leverage towards a dynamic target, which is firm specific and...

Between 2007 and 2016, 7.6% of publicly listed U.S. firms disclosed that their CEOs had pledged company stock as collateral for a loan. On average, CEOs pledge 38% of their shares. The mean loan value is an economically sizeable $65 million. CEOs use the funds to either double down (6.0%), hedge...

We analyze a novel data set of corporate contributions to ballot initiatives and referendums at the U.S. state level. Firms make significant contributions to ballot measures in favor of or against specific initiatives. Firms that contribute to successful (failed) direct initiated state...

This paper uses mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and textual analysis of firms' financial filings to show that competitive strategy constitutes an important determinant of firms' investment decisions. The analysis reveals that becoming an acquirer or a target depends on the strategy. Moreover, M&A...

The financial crisis of 2008, which started with an initially well-defined epicenter focused on mortgage backed securities (MBS), has been cascading into a global economic recession, whose increasing severity and uncertain duration has led and is continuing to lead to massive losses and damage...

By combining (i) the economic theory of rational expectation bubbles, (ii) behavioral finance on imitation and herding of investors and traders and (iii) the mathematical and statistical physics of bifurcations and phase transitions, the logperiodic power law (LPPL) model has been developed as a...

We show that financial risk-taking originates in preindustrial ancestral population diversity. We use data on immigrants residing in the United States and show that controlling for all known determinants of portfolio decisions, diversity positively affects stock market participation and asset...

Based on the insight that risk exposure as quantified in the consumption based asset pricing model (CCAPM) is linearly proportional to the cash flow growth rate, we introduce a discounted cash flow model with a time-varying expected return structure matching the implicitly assumed risk exposure...