This paper examines the effect of income smoothing on information uncertainty, stock returns, and cost of equity. I show that income smoothing through both total accruals and discretionary accruals tends to reduce firms' information uncertainty, as measured by stock return volatility, analyst...

We explore how managers adjust voluntary disclosure in response to local policy uncertainty generated by gubernatorial elections. We show that the securities of firms headquartered in election states experience transitory deterioration in firm-level measures of uncertainty and information...

We examine the relationship between economic policy uncertainty, information disclosure and stock liquidity using a large sample of Chinese firms. We first establish that economic policy uncertainty leads to declining stock liquidity. Next, we provide evidence that managers respond to...

The "quant crisis" of 2007 and subsequent unfolding of the global financial crisis highlighted the importance of the "crowded-trade" problem (not being able to know how many others are taking the same position). To investigate the crowded trading, we present a model in which informed and...

Countercyclical dispersion of firm outcomes (micro dispersion) is commonly used as a proxy for micro uncertainty. In this paper, we characterize conditions under which micro dispersion and micro uncertainty co-move positively in the context of a large Cournot economy with dispersed information...

Quarterly earnings conference calls convey fundamental information, as well as manager and analyst opinion about the firm. We examine how market uncertainty regarding firm valuation is affected by conference call tones. Using textual analysis of all publicly available earnings calls (2002-2012)...

This paper analyzes costly information acquisition in asset markets with Knightian uncertainty about the asset fundamentals. In these markets, acquiring information not only reduces the expected variability of the fundamentals for a given distribution (i.e., risk). It also mitigates the...

Financial markets enable risk sharing and efficient allocation of capital. We characterize how these roles interact in a “feedback effects” model with diversely informed, risk-averse investors and a manager who learns from prices when making an investment decision. While learning from prices...

In this paper, I develop a model in which risk-averse investors possess private information regarding both a stock's expected payoff and its risk. These investors trade in the stock and a derivative whose payoff is driven by the stock's risk. In equilibrium, the derivative is used to speculate...

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...