This paper investigates whether systematic liquidity risk is priced by implementing an empirical test on the recently proposed float-adjusted return model. For testing purposes, we obtain an appropriate (and arguably unique) empirical measure of so-called liquidity beta based on Chinese...

We examine changes to the products of public target firms after LBO using a novel dataset of firm products. We find that private equity funds cut target firms' new products after LBO, especially when there is less room to improve the target firm's performance through financial engineering....

We show that distribution of stock dividends is costly to stockholders of levered firms. In addition, it is associated with reductions in future profits. Yet consistent with past studies, we document positive and significant announcement returns for the 1954-2017 period, perhaps responding to...

We investigate investor reactions to merger and acquisition rumors. Employing a large and comprehensive sample of acquisition rumors, we find that the rumor target firms experience average cumulative abnormal returns of 4.78% over the three days around the rumor, and abnormal returns of -4.48%...

We study how common ownership among potential acquirers influences the firm selling process. We find that, when potential acquirers share a common owner, the target firm is more likely to be sold through auction rather than negotiation with a single acquirer. The presence of common owner does...

In two natural experiments based on H-1B visa lotteries and a drastic cut in the annual H-1B visa quota, we document that firms respond to shortages in high-skilled workers by acquiring target firms that have these workers. Additional tests show that desire for the target's skilled labor is an...

We use accounting theory to develop a new measure of the quality of mergers and acquisitions, implied return-on-equity improvement (IRI), which quantifies the minimum improvement in the target’s accounting returns after acquisition needed to justify the offer price. We validate our measure by...

Alpha depends on return measurement horizon, both theoretically and empirically. We demonstrate how alphas depend on horizon, introduce a procedure to estimate long-return-horizon alphas from short-horizon returns, and find that among those mutual funds with positive alphas estimated from...

Emerging phenomena of ubiquitous multi-source data provide promising avenues for making breakthroughs in financial risk prediction. While most existing methods for financial risk prediction are based on a single information source, which may not adequately capture various complex factors that...

Corporate managers frequently announce corporate distributions, including stock splits, stock dividends, special dividends, and increases in regular dividends, on the anniversary of a like announcement at the same firm. The market appears to not fully appreciate the implications of current...