Increasing globalization has meant the internet becoming ever more part of the routine of people around the world. With the evolution of the internet, social networks have emerged in order to facilitate communication between people, communities and even between corporations. Social networks...

The United States has over 115 different state and federal government agencies regulating financial services, which encompasses banking, securities and insurance firms and products. Various commentators have noted that at least part of the blame for the financial crisis of 2007-2009 in the...

This study examines the unintended effects of a pre-Reg FD practice that gave a broad group of sophisticated market participants 15-minute earlier access to all corporate press releases than the general public. We find that this priority dissemination practice contributed to 22 percent of the...

Reverse termination fees (RTFs) are required payments by bidders when they “walk away” from a merger or acquisition, and vary significantly in size and design. In a large sample of manually collected U.S. deal contracts involving publicly traded bidders and targets, we examine the...

We identify the tension created by the dual demands of financial institutions to be value-maximizing entities that also serve the public interest. We highlight the importance of information in addressing the public's desire for banks to be safe yet innovative. Regulators can choose several...

Surveys of corporate risk management document that selective hedging, where managers incorporate their market views into firms’ hedging programs, is widespread in the U.S. and other countries. Stulz (1996) argues that selective hedging could enhance the value of firms that possess an...

We show that managerial overconfidence, which has been found to influence a number of corporate financial decisions, also affects corporate risk management. We find that managers increase their speculative activities using derivatives following speculative gains, while they do not reduce their...

This paper examines the price effects following credit rating revisions. We find a new return series after the announcement of credit downgrades. Contrary to the most recent US studies by Griffin and Sanvicente (1982), Holthausen and Leftwich (1986), Hand et al. (1992), and Dichev and Piotroski...

I study the effect of increasing competition on financial performance through labor leverage. To capture competition, I exploit variation in product market contestability in the U.S. airline industry. First, I find that increasing competitive pressure leads to increasesing labor leverage,...

We use historical particularities of pension funding law to investigate whether managers of U.S. corporate defined benefit pension plan sponsors strategically use regulatory freedom to lower the reported value of pension liabilities, and hence required cash contributions. For some years, pension...