Stock exchanges are important intermediaries in how firm information enters price. Trading halts are a key tool, often exercised at the exchanges’ discretion, to prevent extraordinary price volatility when new information arrives. We investigate how exchanges use discretion and whether the...

We examine the relation between disclosure tone and shareholder litigation to determine whether managers’ use of optimistic language increases litigation risk. Using both general-purpose and context-specific text dictionaries to quantify tone, we find that plaintiffs target more optimistic...

<heading id="h1" level="1" implicit="yes" format="display">ABSTRACT</heading>I investigate how the use and voluntary disclosure of synthetic leases is affected by incentives to defer cash outflows and manage the financial statements by keeping debt off the balance sheet. I find that managers of cash-constrained firms with incentives to defer cash payments are...

Boston's high housing costs reflect a historic failure to build enough units to satisfy demand. Interest rates and construction costs have risen recently, and the flow of new market-rate residential housing projects has slowed. To spur more construction, the City of Boston is considering various...