We find that small innovators earn higher returns than small non-innovators for up to five years. We find no such innovation premium among large firms. A battery of tests shows that this innovation premium among small firms is explained by risk. Our findings, which are based on a simple measure...

In a game-theoretic model where agents compete for claims to a consumption stream, we characterize how creative destruction affects risk, wealth, and prices. Overinvestment not only imposes excessive disruption risk on existing assets and higher technological uncertainty, it also increases the...

Firms engaging in innovative practices have patents to prevent competitive forces from eroding the resulting economic rents; however, there is limited evidence regarding the impact of innovation on risk. We shed new light on how firms' involvement in innovation activities impacts their...

This study documents the prominent role of idiosyncratic risk in impeding arbitrage activities with regard to a new value-to-price anomaly. Adopting the theoretical foundation and empirical specification of Hwang and Sohn's (2010) real-option-based valuation model, we measure the intrinsic value...

A large body of literature demonstrates that acquisitions are on average value-destroying for the acquirer. We investigate whether the change in the acquirer's information uncertainty contributes to acquirer wealth losses. Information uncertainty affects the discount rate (the cost of capital),...

I investigate whether information quality affects the cost of equity capital through liquidity risk. Liquidity risk is the sensitivity of stock returns to unexpected changes in market liquidity; recent asset pricing literature has emphasized the importance of this systematic risk. I find that...

I show that variation in economy-wide uncertainty causes asymmetric stock price responses to firm earnings surprises. The uncertainty that attends bad earnings news that arrives during expansions with greater economy-wide uncertainty occasions larger price declines. This is because news...

Standard models of Bayesian updating predict a stronger investor reaction to new information when those investors are more uncertain about the firm. However, prior empirical literature has struggled to find widespread evidence in support of this prediction. This paper tests two explanations for...

While tax avoidance strategies result in greater after-tax cash flows, they can involve uncertain future outcomes, which can impose significant costs on firms. Thus, the extent to which tax avoidance increases firm risk is unclear. This paper re-examines the relation between tax avoidance and...

We show theoretically that when Bayesian investors face time-series uncertainty about assets' risk exposures, differences in their priors affect the pricing of risk in the cross-section: different priors for the same asset can generate differences in perceived risk exposures, and thereby...