This paper argues that book-to-market and size attributes represent sensitivities of firm returns to several risk factors, and in so doing they subsume the information in other attributes.

Extant research shows that CEO characteristics affect earnings management. This paper studies how investors infer a specific characteristic of CEOs, namely moral commitment to honesty, from earnings management and how this perception - in conjunction with their own social and moral preferences -...

Although examples of deception and fraud in business have generated widespread interest in themotivations for honest behavior, little is known about individual differences in the propensity totell the truth. This paper highlights the role of honesty as a protected value, maintaining thatsome...

There are people who are motivated by the non-selfish, non-strategic, and non-consequentialist“protected value” of truthfulness. We conduct an experiment directly assessing thisphenomenon. We find that people differ substantially in their truthfulness, with a largeminority powerfully...

We investigate the suitability of securitization as an alternative to reinsurance forthe purpose of transferring natural catastrophe risk. We characterize the conditionsunder which one or the other form of risk transfer dominates using a setting in whichreinsurers and traders in financial...