Purpose: This paper aims to investigate whether the level of social capital of the region in which a firm is headquartered affects its tax avoidance activities. Social capital can be defined as the mutual trust in society and literature shows that firms headquartered in high social capital...

The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA) of 2005 significantly expanded the exemptions from the normal workings of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. Using a large sample of U.S. banks we study investors' reaction to news about the promulgation of the BAPCPA repo ‘safe...

We predict that a firm's greater accounting comparability with its industry peers facilitates its learning from those peer firms' research and development (R&D) investments, allowing that firm to have greater innovative efficiency. We estimate accounting comparability using pro-forma capitalized...

This study examines the association between 10-K filing length and M&A returns. We posit that 10-K filing length influences shareholder information acquisition and processing costs. Longer 10-K filings reduce information acquisition costs by making more information about the target available to...

Using a comprehensive sample of US banks for years 2001 to 2016, we split the pay gap between the CEO and rank-and-file employees into two: CEO pay gap and VP pay gap. We examine the effect on bank performance of the tournament incentives arising from these different pay gaps. We find that CEO...

Using a comprehensive sample of cross-country mergers and acquisitions for the period 2000 to 2014 we examine the effect of common auditors on the efficiency of cross-country M&A transactions. We predict that the use of common auditors reduces uncertainty, resulting in higher M&A efficiency. We...

This study addresses two related research questions concerning a new requirement in the United Kingdom that auditors disclose the materiality thresholds they apply when conducting the audit of listed companies. First, are cross-sectional differences in materiality thresholds associated with...

Using a sample of 91,020 VC investments in the US, we study whether religiosity influences VC investment decisions. Based on prior literature that finds a positive relation between religiosity and risk aversion we posit that VC located in more religious counties make less risky investments. We...