We examine how product market threats influence firm payout policy and cash holdings. We develop new measures of competitive threats using firms' product text descriptions. Our primary measure, product market fluidity, captures changes in rival firms' products relative to the firm's products. We...

We use text-based computational analysis of business descriptions from 10-Ks to examine in which industries conglomerates are most likely to operate and to understand conglomerate valuations. We find that conglomerates are more likely to operate in industry pairs that are closer together in the...

We introduce a new framework for forming peer firm portfolios that can account for firm uniqueness and organizational form. Our new vocabulary-based peer firm portfolios explain much cross sectional dispersion in firm valuations and generate a direct measure of firm product market uniqueness. We...

We score 10-K text to obtain annual measures of financial constraints, with separate measures for firms reporting equity and debt financing issues. Equity market constraints are associated with firms funding growth opportunities, have more severe consequences for the firm following large...

Using word content analysis on the time-series of IPO prospectuses, we find evidence that issuers trade off underpricing and strategic disclosure as potential hedges against litigation risk. This tradeoff explains a significant fraction of the variation in prospectus revision patterns, IPO...

We test for potential collaboration between underwriters, venture capitalists, and other major owner managers in initial public offerings (IPOs). We find that VCs who are more loyal and tolerate higher underpricing receive long-term marketing support and favorable analyst revisions, allowing...

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. (1) Risk is a significant determinant of the propensity to pay dividends, and it...