We propose the visual attention hypothesis, that visuals in firm earnings announcements increase attention to the earnings news. We find that visuals in firm Twitter earnings announcements are associated with more retweets, consistent with greater follower engagement with announcements with...

Although many studies show that the presence of institutional investors facilitates the incorporation of accounting information into financial markets, the evidence of informed trading by institutions is rather limited in the extant literature. We address these inconsistent findings by proposing...

Using aggregate data from national accounts, we study whether strengthening and harmonizing securities regulation across the European Union increases household equity ownership. We find a significant increase in the proportion of liquid assets invested in equity, both when a household's own...

Using data from the SEC's EDGAR server log, we examine the consumption of financial information in filings from 2003 through 2012. The EDGAR filings represent a first-source database for investors doing fundamental research on stock valuations. The magnitude of daily EDGAR requests for 10-Ks is...

The SEC mandates firms to inform investors about their assessment of future contingencies in their 10 Ks. However lengthy and complex disclosures – mostly for dozens of firms in an investor’s portfolio – can barely be processed by a human being. To cope with the flood of information, we...

In 2007, the SEC eliminated the Form 20-F reconciliation requirement for cross-listed firms that prepare financial statements under IFRS (IFRS filers). We examine the effect of this elimination on investors' information acquisition decisions and how accounting information is used across multiple...

The literature on short selling restrictions focuses mainly on a ban's impact on market efficiency, liquidity and overpricing. Surprisingly, little is known about the effects of short selling restrictions on institutional investors' trading behavior.Since institutional investors dominate mature...

This paper investigates the motive of option trading. We show that option trading is mostly driven by differences of opinion, a finding different from the current literature that attempts to attribute option trading to information asymmetry. Our conclusion is based on three pieces of empirical...

Short sellers are routinely blamed for destabilizing stock markets by exacerbating deviations from fundamental values. In response, regulators periodically impose short sale constraints aimed at preventing excessive stock market declines. One explanation is that policy makers regard short...

This multi-faceted analysis of institutional investment defines fiduciary finance institutions as the third pillar of the financial system, alongside banks and insurers. It documents the role played by investment funds and the money management industry during the recent financial crisis, and...