We develop a dynamic model where each generation in a family firm can continue operating its inherited production technology or it could hire a professional to do the same. Though the professional is more qualified, his interests are not aligned with the interests of the family. In the context...

We analyze the financial statements of 58,653 firm-years from 34 countries for the period 1985-1998 to construct a panel data set measuring three dimensions of earnings opacity for each country - earnings aggressiveness, loss avoidance, and earnings smoothing. We combine these three dimensions...

Why is the mere announcement of an open-market share repurchase program, which involves no commitment to purchase shares, regarded as good news by the market? The first part of this paper provides a theoretical model to resolve this puzzle. The model predicts that firms with large underpricing...

We document that there was media hype about internet stocks during the bubble. However, the media hype about internet stocks during the bubble was discounted: though the media coverage positively affected pre-IPO value revisions, it affected internet IPOs more than non-internet IPOs only after...

We read all news items that came out between 1996 and 2000 on 458 internet IPOs and a matching sample of 458 non-internet IPOs - a total of 171,488 news items - and classify each news item as good news, neutral news, or bad news. We first document that the media was more positive for internet...

In a country where individualism is emphasized less than in Western countries, we ask whether the CEO (shacho) of a Japanese corporation positively affects firm performance. To answer this question, we construct a shacho-firm matched panel data set in the period 1990 through 2002 of all listed...

We develop a dynamic model where each generation in a family can continue operating its inherited production technology or it could hire a professional to do the same. Though the professional is more qualified, his interests are not aligned with the interests of the family. In the context of an...

We analyze financial statements from 34 countries for the period 1985-1998 to construct a panel data set measuring three dimensions of reported accounting earnings for each country - earnings aggressiveness, loss avoidance, and earnings smoothing. We hypothesize that these three dimensions are...

In a country where individualism is emphasized less than in Western countries, we ask whether the CEO (shacho) of a Japanese corporation positively affects firm performance. To answer this question, we construct a shacho-firm matched panel data set in the period 1990 through 2002 of all listed...

On August 12-13, 2005, the department of finance at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, collaborated with the Review of Financial Studies to host a conference titled The Causes and Consequences of Recent Financial Market Bubbles. This article begins with our overview of the themes...