We survey CFOs throughout the COVID-19 crisis to learn how multiple dimensions of corporate flexibility affect their short- and long-term business plans. We find that i) workplace flexibility, namely the ability for employees to work remotely, plays a central role in modulating firms’...

We explore a long standing prediction in the international business literature that managers' subjective perceptions of political risk – not just the level of risk – are important for how firms manage political risk. The importance attributed to political risk by corporate executives has...

An employee's annual earnings fall by 13% the year her firm files for bankruptcy, and the present value of lost earnings from bankruptcy to six years following bankruptcy is 87% of pre-bankruptcy annual earnings. More worker earnings are lost in thin labor markets and among small firms. Ex ante...

We use a unique data set that contains information on more than 1,000 Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) around the world to investigate the degree to which executives delegate financial decisions and the circumstances that drive variation in delegation....

We investigate how the length of the net operating loss carryback period affects corporate liquidity and marginal tax rates. We estimate that extending the carryback period from two to five years, as recently proposed in President Obama's budget blueprint, would provide $19 ($34) billion of...

This paper is the first to study the effect of financial restatement on bank loan contracting. Compared with loans initiated before restatement, loans initiated after restatement have significantly higher spreads, shorter maturities, higher likelihood of being secured, and more covenant...

Miscalibration is a standard measure of overconfidence in both psychology and economics. Although it is often used in lab experiments, there is scarcity of evidence about its effects in practice. We test whether top corporate executives are miscalibrated, and whether their miscalibration impacts...

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 survey 401 financial executives, and conduct in-depth interviews with an additional 20, to determine the key factors that drive decisions related to reported earnings and voluntary disclosure. The majority of firms view earnings, especially EPS, as the key metric for outsiders, even more so...