Using electronic-markets data, this paper investigates partial determinants of change in Graham's price-earnings ratios (P/E) during US presidential election cycles. We document evidence over six elections, that as the probable winner of the election becomes clearer, markets surprisingly respond...

Economic policy uncertainty (EPU) relates to ambiguity surrounding possible changes in government policy and their associate impact on firm performance. This uncertainty places additional stress on economic agents and has implications for the global economy via delays in firm investment and...

Construction of efficient portfolios is reliant on understanding the correlation between assets. If correlations change markedly during times of economic turmoil then investors are exposed to greater than desired risk levels at the most inopportune time. We examine the linkages between global...

Greater partisan alignment among lawmakers enhances their ability to respond rapidly to adverse shocks, but it also undermines the quality of checks and balances and encourages excessive governmental intervention in local areas aligned with the ruling party. We investigate how this form of local...

The credit default swaps (CDS) market provides a trading venue for downside price movement. We find that future stock price crashes are less frequent after the inception of CDS trading on the firm's debt. The causal effect of CDS trading on stock crash risk is supported by multiple approaches,...

Investor attention is central to explaining the mean-variance puzzle. Using Google Search Volumes as a proxy to attention, I document a positive trade-off during low attention periods that is significantly undermined when attention is high. The negative association between on-line searches and...

This paper investigates the impact of Brexit events on the behaviour of 34 financial indices from 1st January 2012 to 26th April 2017. Our focus is to evaluate whether the impact of Brexit on financial markets is consistent with rational asset pricing models. The empirical research uses a...

Economic policy touches most facets of corporate decision-making and variations in policy can elicit significant changes in financial performance and asset prices. We utilise the EPU measure of Baker et al. (2016) to investigate the extent to which policy uncertainty influences Australian...

During the global financial crisis, stressed market conditions led to skyrocketing corporate bond spreads that could not be explained by conventional modeling approaches. This paper builds on this observation and sheds light on time-variations in the relationship between systematic risk factors...

This paper investigates how the disclosure tone of earnings conference calls predicts future stock price crash risk. Using U.S. public firm earnings conference call transcripts from 2010 to 2015, we find that firms exhibiting more pessimistic tone during the current year-end call experience...