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...

We examine the impact of global IFRS adoption on cross-border equity investments by individual investors. Our proxy for cross-border equity investments is trading volume in the Open Market at Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The Open Market is a segment designed for German individual investors to trade...

Despite the importance of sell-side analysts in the capital markets, we know little about the effectiveness of routine monitoring of the sell-side industry. We examine the attributes of sell-side research issued by analysts before and after their brokerage faces regulatory sanctions. We find...

Despite the importance of sell-side analysts in the capital markets, we know little about the effectiveness of routine monitoring of the sell-side industry. We examine the attributes of sell-side research issued by analysts before and after their brokerage is subject to regulatory sanctions. We...

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...

This paper reviews the literature examining how costs of monitoring for, acquiring, and analyzing firm disclosures – collectively, “disclosure processing costs” – affect investor information choices, trades, and market outcomes. The existence of disclosure processing costs means that...

Inadequate sleep is a public health epidemic in the U.S., and poor sleep habits are especially common among professional investors. Neuroscience research finds that sleep disruption inhibits information processing by impairing higher-order cognitive functions. Using Daylight Saving Time (DST)...

We show that U.S. analysts alter their behavior in response to a randomly assigned shock that exogenously varies the timeliness and cost of accessing companies' mandatory disclosures in the cross-section of investors: analysts reduce the number of stocks they cover, issue less optimistic and...

This study experimentally examines the effect of different types of environmental information on investors’ judgment regarding long-term investments. Based on three experimental cases (financial; financial & additional common environmental; financial & additional common environmental &...

The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) of 1995 requires SEC 10B-5 lawsuits to cite facts supporting a strong inference of fraud but there is little evidence of an association between the market's reaction to SEC 10B-5 lawsuit filing announcement and lawsuit filing attributes that...