This paper examines whether a country's corporate transparency environment, which includes the quality of accounting information, contributes to efficient resource allocation. Based on a cross-country study of 37 manufacturing industries in 37 countries, we provide three pieces of related...

While extensive research examines the relation between option incentives in executive compensation and risk-taking by managers, the impact of capital structure on this relationship has received little empirical attention. Prior work suggests that heightened managerial career concerns arising...

I/B/E/S removes 6% of one-quarter-ahead earnings forecasts from the calculation of the consensus forecast. This study examines managers' role in these removals. We show optimistic forecasts are removed more often than pessimistic forecasts, after controlling for removal policies that I/B/E/S...

We construct an information factor (INFO) using the informed stock buying of corporate insiders and the informed selling of short sellers and option traders. INFO strongly predicts future stock returns -- a long-short portfolio formed on INFO earns monthly alphas of 1.24%, substantially...

Using two randomized field experiments, we examine how warning borrowers that their loan performance will be reported to a public credit registry affects their loan take-up and repayment decisions. We show that credit warnings increase loan take-up rates. Reducing incumbent lenders'...

We study whether accounting information quality (AIQ) is priced in the executive labor market. Focusing on externally hired CEO compensation at their initial appointment, we find a 7.38% pay premium for a one-standard deviation decline in AIQ measured in the years preceding the appointment. This...

Using the introduction of high-speed rail (HSR) as an exogenous shock to costs of information acquisition, we show that reductions in information-acquisition costs lead to (i) a significant increase in information production, evidenced by a higher frequency of analysts visiting portfolio firms,...