We present new evidence on the distribution of the ex ante risk premium based on a multi-year survey of Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) of U.S. corporations. Currently, we have responses from surveys conducted from the second quarter of 2000 through the third quarter of 2001. The results in this...

We analyze the advice contained in a sample of 237 investment letters over the 1980-1992 period. Each newsletter recommends a mix of equity and cash. We construct portfolios based on these recommendations and find that only a small number of the newsletters appear to have higher average returns...

We survey 384 CFOs and Treasurers, and conduct in-depth interviews with an additional two dozen, to determine the key factors that drive dividend and share repurchase policies. We find that managers are very reluctant to cut dividends, that dividends are smoothed through time, and that dividend...

We document that simulated corporate marginal tax rates based on financial statement data (Shevlin 1990 and Graham 1996a) are highly correlated with simulated rates based on corporate tax return data. We provide algorithms that can be used to estimate the book or tax simulated rates when they...

We conduct beauty contest experiments, using close to 2,000 subjects to study the facial traits of CEOs. In one experiment we use pairs of photographs and find that subjects rate CEO faces as appearing more "competent" and less "likable" than non-CEO faces. Another experiment matches CEOs from...

This article uses a unique dataset to study how firms managed liquidity during the 2008--2011 financial crisis. Our analysis provides new insights on interactions between internal liquidity, external funds, and real corporate decisions, such as investment and employment. We first describe how...

"We survey 328 financial executives to determine the effects of the May 2003 dividend tax cut. We find that the tax cut led to initiations and dividend increases at some firms. However, executives say that among the factors that affect dividend policy, the tax rate reduction is less important...

We use exogenous variation in tax benefit functions to estimate firm-specific cost of debt functions that are conditional on company characteristics such as collateral, size, and book-to-market. By integrating the area between the benefit and cost functions, we estimate that the equilibrium net...

We study the role of firm- and manager-specific heterogeneities in executive compensation. We decompose the variation in executive compensation and find that time invariant firm and especially manager fixed effects explain a majority of the variation in executive pay. We then show that in many...