Fama and French (2001a) show that the propensity to pay dividends declines significantly between 1978 and 1999. We examine this "disappearing dividends" puzzle through the lens of risk and report two main findings: (i) Risk is a significant determinant of the propensity to pay dividends, and it...

The literature on conditional event-study methods criticizes standard event-study procedures as being misspecified, if events are voluntary and investors are rational. We argue, however, that standard procedures (i) lead to statistically valid inferences, under conditions described in the paper...

We analyze characteristics of firms that reprice their executive stock options (ESOs). We document that repricings are economically significant compensation events but there is little else unusual about compensation levels or changes in repricers. Cross-sectionally, repricers are rapidly growing...

We propose a new market design for trading financial assets. The design combines three elements: (1) Orders are downward-sloping linear demand curves with quantities expressed as flows; (2) Markets clear in discrete time using uniform-price batch auctions; (3) Traders may submit orders for...