We examine the performance of acquirers who hire an advisor that employs a “star” analyst covering the target (i.e., “star-crossed” deals) and show that such deals have lower abnormal announcement returns (2.1%), lower total acquisition returns (8.9%), and greater subsequent goodwill...

Top sportsmen often refer to competition against other top sportsmen as a motivation to exert more effort. We examine whether a similar pattern exists among another group of top professionals – star analysts. Our evidence suggests that star analysts concentrate their efforts and generate...

Past literature suggests that success rates in professional basketball are independent of past performance and this has been interpreted as evidence that the commonly shared belief in Hot Hands (<italic>HH</italic>) is a cognitive illusion. This is often cited as evidence of biased decision making, even when...

The authors investigate the cross-sectional relation between dividend yield and expected return and attempt to include various effects of changing risk measures and changing risk premiums. A stock's risk is measured by its sensitivities to two factors, a market factor and a changing-risk-premium...

We investigate the cross-sectional relation between dividend yield and expected return and attempt to include various effects of changing risk measure and changing risk premiums. A stock’s risk is measured by its sensitivities to two factors, a market factor and a changing-risk-premium factor....

Firms have not historically called their convertible bonds as soon as they could force conversion. Various explanations for the delay rely on the size of the dividends that bondholders forgo so long as they do not convert. We investigate an important change in convertible security design, namely...

The effectiveness of any sanction depends on the costs of avoiding its restrictions. We examine whether bearish option strategies were substitutes for short sales during the September 2008 short-sale ban. We find a significant diminution in option volumes and a significant increase in option...

We examine the optimal saving decision of individuals who face a multiplicative risk. An individual is defined to be multiplicative risk prudent if multiplying a pure risk to her future wealth raises her optimal savings. We show that convex marginal utility is not sufficient to induce...