Motivated by theoretical models in economics which show that there is matching between CEO skill and firm size, we introduce a new measure of director skill which is based on the aggregate size of firms on which the director serves as an independent director. We validate our measure by showing...

Using comprehensive timestamp data on earnings announcements collected from newswires, we show that earnings news announced within trading hours results in approximately 50% smaller immediate reaction compared to similar earnings announced outside trading hours. Negative news tends to be...

While knowledge production is central to economic growth, little is known about how differences in research environments across universities contribute to the differences in productivity of their faculty. We analyze the productivity of researchers employed at the top-20 (top-tier) research...

We study the effect of a firm's dividend policy on the relation between the levels of institutional ownership and stock return volatility. We find that the sign of the correlation between institutional ownership and volatility depends on the firm's dividend policy: institutional ownership is...

In recent years firms have greatly increased the amount of resources allocated to activities classified as Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). While an increase in CSR expenditure may be consistent with firm value maximization if it is a response to changes in stakeholders' preferences, we...