This dissertation consists of three essays on the role of social values in financial markets. Chapter 1 uses geographic variation in religious concentration to identify the effect of people's gambling behavior in financial market settings. We argue that religious background predicts people's...

This paper investigates why the market fails to incorporate the adverse information conveyed by the going-concern (GC) opinion in a timely manner. Our main conjecture is that the lottery-like features of GC stocks attract a predominantly retail clientele who use those stocks to gamble in the...

This paper examines how gambling-motivated trading affects aggregate financial market outcomes. Using a unique global gambling data set covering 39 countries, we show that the dollar volume of stock market gambling is at least 3.5 times the combined volume of “traditional” gambling outlets...

Using Internet search volume for lottery to capture gambling sentiment shifts, we show that when the overall gambling sentiment is high, investor demand for lottery-like stocks increases, these stocks earn positive short-run abnormal returns, managers are more likely to announce stock splits to...

This study shows that correlated trading by gambling-motivated investors generates excess return comovement among stocks with lottery features. Lottery-like stocks comove strongly with one another and this return comovement is strongest among lottery stocks located in regions where investors...

This study investigates whether geographic variation in religion-induced gambling norms affects aggregate market outcomes. We conjecture that gambling propensity would be stronger in regions with higher concentrations of Catholics relative to Protestants. Consistent with our conjecture, we show...