We examine how exogenous increases in foreign competition affect firms' earnings management behavior, using import tariff reductions as a natural experiment. Using a Difference-in-Differences framework, we find a significant increase in earnings management (and financial restatements) after...

We examine how firms react to their competitors' highly publicized technology breakthroughs measured by the renowned R&D 100 Award. These awards have been granted to top 100 technological inventions every year since 1965 and have come to be known as the “Oscar of Invention” (e.g., Verhoeven,...

Takeover targets covered by more equity analysts receive higher premiums while their acquirers earn lower merger announcement returns. We confirm these results using exogenous shocks to coverage as instruments for coverage loss. The analyses also show that covered targets experience a permanent...

We study the effect of corporate cultural similarity on merger decisions and outcomes. Using the similarity in firms' corporate social responsibility characteristics to proxy for cultural similarity, we find that culturally similar firms are more likely to merge. Moreover, these mergers are...

Theory and recent evidence suggest that overvalued firms can create value for shareholders if they exploit their overvaluation by using their stock as currency to purchase less overvalued firms. We challenge this idea and show that, in practice, overvalued acquirers significantly overpay for...

Using unique, hand-gathered data, this paper examines how public news about the target firmreleased publicly during the private merger negotiation process affects bidding strategies. Weprovide strong evidence that market reactions to information events during the private sale processhave a...

Using unique data, this paper examines investment banks’ choice of peers in comparable companies analysis in mergers and acquisitions. We find strong evidence that product market space is amongst the most important factors in peer selection, but we provide evidence indicating that Standard...

We argue that the method of payment in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) can mitigate country-level governance risk for the acquirer. We find a greater use of stock as the method of payment in cross-border deals involving targets from countries with high governance risk relative to...

Using a comprehensive sample of cross-border mergers, we find that acquirers from countries experiencing large currency appreciations realize higher abnormal announcement stock returns during both the announcement period and the post-merger period. Importantly, this shareholder wealth creation...