We propose a measure of managerial ability, based on managers' efficiency in generating revenues, which is available for a large sample of firms and outperforms existing ability measures. We find that our measure is strongly associated with manager fixed effects, and that the stock price...

Corporate sustainability can be broadly defined as the pursuit of a business growth strategy by allocating financial or in-kind resources of the corporation to a social or environmental initiative. Today, more than ever, corporate sustainability has risen to the status of strategic business...

We introduce a measure of customer franchise value for subscription–based companies — a fast growing and vital sector of the economy. This measure is based on information voluntarily disclosed by some, but not all, firms. Controlling for self-selection, we examine the measure's information...

Estimates and projections are embedded in most financial statement items. These estimates potentially improve the relevance of financial information by providing managers the means to convey to investors forward-looking, inside information (e.g., on future collections from customers via the bad...

Financial scholars who research the initial underpricing and long-term underperformance of IPOs generally attribute these phenomena to information asymmetry and investors' misevaluations. Here, we identify, on a sample of 2,696 US IPOs issued during 1980-1995, a widespread source of information...

We hypothesize that the root cause of many goodwill write-offs - managers' public admission of ill-advised corporate acquisitions - is the overpriced shares of buyers at acquisition. Overpriced shares provide managers with strong incentives to invest, and particularly to acquire businesses, even...

Research has established that Ramp;D-intensive firms are characterized by substantial future risk-adjusted stock returns. The reasons for this phenomenon and its policy implications, however, are widely debated. Some attribute the excess returns to investors' systematic undervaluation of Ramp;D...

This study documents an association between changes in institutional ownership during a calendar quarter and abnormal returns at the time of subsequent announcements of quarterly earnings. The result is driven by the portfolio returns of the extreme deciles of changes in institutional ownership,...

Financial scholars who research the initial underpricing and long-term underperformance of IPOs generally attribute these phenomena to information asymmetry and investors' misevaluations. Here, we identify, on a sample of 2,696 US IPOs issued during 1980-1995, a widespread source of information...

It is widely agreed that corporate financial reports provide deficient information about intangible assets. However, investors are exposed to substantial information beyond financial reports, such as managers' direct communications to capital markets and analysts' reports. We ask: To what extent...