Efficient contracting predicts that ex-ante severance pay contracts are offered to CEOs as protection against downside risk and to encourage investment in risky positive net-present-value projects. Consistent with this prediction, we find that ex-ante contracted severance pay is positively...

We show that location within a dense regional cluster of interconnected businesses increases a firm’s resiliency in responding to changing economic conditions and is a key driver of competitive success. Compared to their rivals in less dense regional clusters, firms located in dense clusters...

The target’s valuation is the cornerstone of merger negotiations and hinges on expectations of after-tax cash flows. But how do buyers and sellers adapt when the underlying tax parameters are in flux? Focusing on the months-long legislation process behind major corporate tax reform in 2017...

We argue that a firm’s suppliers and customers prefer it to account more conservatively due to information asymmetry and these stakeholders’ asymmetric payoffs with respect to the firm’s performance. We predict that a firm meets this demand for accounting conservatism when suppliers or...

Industry concentration measures calculated with Compustat data, which cover only the public firms in an industry, are poor proxies for actual industry concentration. These measures have correlations of only 13% with the corresponding U.S. Census measures, which are based on all public and...

In the context of large acquisitions, we provide evidence on whether firms have target capital structures. We examine how deviations from these targets affect how bidders choose to finance acquisitions and how they adjust their capital structure following the acquisitions. We show that when a...

Utama and Cready [Utama, S., Cready, W.M., 1997. Institutional ownership, differential predisclosure precision and trading volume at announcement dates. Journal of Accounting and Economics 24, 129-150] use total institutional ownership to proxy for the proportion of better-informed traders, an...

I investigate what leads controlling families of publicly traded firms to sell their remaining ownership stake. The sale of a controlling stake is best explained in the context of theories of the firm related to optimal risk bearing, the separation of ownership and management expertise, the CEO...

We argue that a firm's suppliers and customers prefer it to account more conservatively due to information asymmetry and these stakeholders' asymmetric payoffs with respect to the firm's performance. We predict that a firm meets this demand for accounting conservatism when suppliers or customers...