This paper uses a unique transaction-level fund trading dataset to evaluate institutional investors' trading performance. Our research design follows a two-step procedure. In the first stage, we identify funds that heavily sold shares in firms before their public revelation of stock option...

This paper studies the impact of public audit oversight on financial reporting credibility. We analyze changes in market responses to earnings news after public audit oversight is introduced, exploiting that the regime onset depends on fiscal year-ends, auditors, and the rollout of auditor...

This paper studies the impact of public audit oversight on financial reporting credibility. We analyze changes in market responses to earnings news after public audit oversight is introduced, exploiting that the regime onset depends on fiscal-year ends, auditors, and the roll-out of auditor...

This paper uses transaction-level fund trading data from the United States to study the information advantage of institutional investors. Our research design follows a two-step procedure. In the first step, we identify funds that sell shares in firms before their unexpected revelation of stock...

By exploring a natural experiment where the Chinese regulatory body introduced a dividend regulatory change, this paper investigates wealth effects of dividend regulation which increases firms' dividends. The efficient contract viewpoint of dividends suggests that the observed dividend level is...

We document pervasive informed trading activity in equity options before M&A announcements. About 25% of takeovers have positive abnormal volumes. These volume patterns indicate that informed traders are likely using bullish directional strategies for the target and volatility strategies for the...

We construct a dynamic takeover law index using hand-collected data on legal provisions and empirically examine the effect of takeover regulation to protect shareholders on shareholder wealth for bidders and targets in a multi-country setting. We find that a stricter takeover law increases the...

The financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent 2010 Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) led to a revision of shareholder proxy access rules by the SEC in August 2010. Seemingly technical in nature, proxy access -- the right for shareholders to nominate a candidates...

We find a significant decline in average corporate bondholder value around events leading up to the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), but only among bonds issued by firms that are expected to experience relatively large governance changes under SOX. Further, we do not find evidence that...

Using daily short sale transactions data for firms traded in the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE) from January 1991 to January 2007, we examine the pattern of short selling trading prior to 338 acquisition announcements. Consistent with the view that short sellers act as informed traders, we find...