We study how the popularity of an incumbent president can influence the generosity of the relief effort in response to a natural disaster as reflected in the federal SBA loan program. We document that the loan amounts relative to reported damages are higher when popularity of the incumbent...

We exploit the arrival of industry-wide synergistic merger waves to identify whether classifiedboards deter takeover bids. In a stylized model, we show that when target classified boards arecostly to bidders, their negative effect on takeover likelihood is more pronounced during mergerwaves....

We highlight that the inalienable nature of human capital can crucially determine corporate payouts. Exploiting the staggered rejections of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD) across 15 U.S. states as exogenous shocks that potentially increase the mobility of key talents, we find that...

This paper examines the outcomes and characteristics of corporate acquisitions from the perspective of stakeholder-shareholder agency conflicts. Using state variation in labor protections, we find that acquirers with strong labor rights experience lower announcement returns. Combined acquirer...

We test several hypotheses on how takeover premium is related to investors’ divergence of opinion on the target’s equity value. We show that the total takeover premium, the pre-announcement target stock price runup and the post-announcement stock price markup are all higher when investors...

We study how corporate payout policy responds to changing investor tastes for non-dividend over dividend paying stocks following an increase in housing prices. Exploiting the crossregional dispersion in housing prices within the U.S. market, we find a significant negative effect of growth in...

Employing the American Inventor’s Protection Act (AIPA) that mandates, all patent applications are to be published within 18 months after filing, as a quasi-natural experiment, we find that accelerated patent disclosure increases stock price crash risk. This effect is stronger when treated...

Distressed firms and the banks that lend to these firms often have conflicting interests when going through the Chapter 11 process, freefall bankruptcy vs prepack bankruptcy. We examine whether common ownership, i.e., an institution with holdings in both the borrowing and the lending firms,...