Recent anecdotal evidence suggests that high litigation risk may induce firms to cut dividends. By comparison, litigation can be an effective governance tool for shareholders to force firms to distribute cash. Therefore, it is unclear how litigation risk affects dividend payouts on average. To...

Investors tend to litigate large stock price declines, i.e., file “stock-drop lawsuits”. Enterprising plaintiffs' attorneys seek to take advantage of the stock market declines that have accompanied the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020 by filing class action lawsuits. However, it is less clear...

Exploiting the staggered adoption of universal demand (UD) laws as exogenous shocks to filing derivative lawsuits, we find that weakened shareholder litigation rights cause a significant increase in the cost of debt. Deteriorated corporate governance, increased information asymmetry, and...