We examine the issue of auditor independence in a unique setting. Specifically, we test for auditor independence impairment among (1) private client firms, for which the risk of auditor reputation loss is lower than for publicly traded firms, and (2) in a low litigation environment (i.e.,...

Evidence from an interactive experiment indicates that the tendency of users to anchor on one-sided disclosures of risk (i.e., disclosing upside potential or downside risk, but not both) is robust to whether disclosures are determined randomly or chosen strategically by opportunistic agents with...

We discuss the valuation of credit derivatives in extreme regimes such as when the time-to-maturity is short, or when payoff is contingent upon a large number of defaults, as with senior tranches of collateralized debt obligations. In these cases, risk aversion may play an important role,...

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...

In 2001, Nevada significantly limited the personal legal liability of corporate officers and directors. We use this exogenous shock to implement a differences-in-differences design that examines the impact of officer and director litigation risk on agency costs. We find decreased firm value,...

The purpose of the current study is to examine the extent to which audit risk and litigation risk cause auditors to increase reliance on decision aids. These are particularly relevant issues in the era of Sarbanes-Oxley and abundant audit litigation, as decision aids hold the potential to...

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...

We find a significant positive relation between changes in policy uncertainty and changes in credit spreads. Macroeconomic conditions, including general uncertainty, do not explain this result, which also holds when we use instrumental variables to address endogeneity issues. Policy uncertainty...

An emerging stream of literature investigates the impact of political uncertainty on financial markets. In this survey, we review this line of literature from four perspectives, namely, asset prices, corporate policies, financial intermediaries, and economy and households, suggesting that...

Using the Baker, Bloom, and Davis (2013) news-based measure to capture economic policy uncertainty (EPU) in the United States, we find that EPU positively forecasts log excess market returns. A one-standard deviation increase in EPU is associated with a 1.5% increase in forecasted 3-month...