This study explores whether firms with powerful CEOs tend to invest (more) in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities as the over-investment hypothesis based on classical agency theory predicts. In addition, this paper tests an alternative hypothesis that if CSR investment is indeed an...

In an "activist risk arbitrage," a shareholder attempts to reshape an announced M&A through public campaigns, profi ting from improved terms. Activists target deals with low premiums, and those susceptible to managerial conflicts of interest, including going-private deals and deals upon which...

We analyze dynamic trading by an activist investor who can expend costly effort to affect firm value. We obtain the equilibrium in closed form for a general activism technology, including both binary and continuous outcomes. Variation in parameters can produce either positive or negative...

Two duration factors that arise from the downward-sloping term structure of equity returns explain the value, profitability, and investment premiums. One duration-factor captures the spread of returns between short and long durations, and the other duration-factor {measures the difference in...

Pump-and-dump schemes (P&Ds) are pervasive in the cryptocurrency market. We find that P&Ds lead to short-term bubbles featuring dramatic increases in prices, volume, and volatility. Prices peak within minutes and quick reversals follow. The evidence we document, including price run-ups before...

We estimate institutional investor preferences from proxy voting records. The W-NOMINATE method maps investors onto a left-right dimension based on votes for fiscal year 2012. Public pension funds and other investors on the left support a more social and environment-friendly orientation of the...

This is the first comprehensive study of mutual fund voting in proxy contests. Mutual funds tend to vote for dissident nominees at firms with weak operating and financial performance, and when dissidents are hedge funds. Notably, passive funds are more likely to support incumbent management than...

Problem definition: We study a problem of a retailer who orders from two competing strategic suppliers subject to independent or correlated disruptions and responds by setting the retail price upon delivery, which we call responsive pricing. The suppliers compete by setting their wholesale...

The paper documents evidence regarding the asymmetric short-term market reactions to analysts' recommendations, in which the favorable recommendations consistently underperform the corresponding unfavorable recommendations across ratings and revisions. This market reaction asymmetry is...

We use a social network framework to study the alliance building process that involves activists and other institutional investors and the channels that facilitate such interactions. Actively-managed funds whose managers are socially connected to activists are more likely to increase holdings in...