We use the IPO setting to provide evidence that accounting measures of valuation uncertainty combine with short-sales constraints to generate significant equity market mispricing. The IPOs that we predict to be most susceptible to overpricing in the immediate aftermarket have first-day returns...

Previous research finds that EPS growth is difficult to predict and reasons that much of the observed variation in valuation multiples is due to mispricing (e.g., Lakonishok, Shleifer, and Vishny, 1994; Chan, Karceski, and Lakonishok, 2003; Israel, Laursen, and Richardson, 2021). We revisit these...

A firm in a steady state generates predictable income and investors can generally agree on its valuation. However, when a significant corporate event occurs this creates greater uncertainty and disagreement about firm valuation, and investors could prefer to avoid holding such a stock. We...

We investigate the impact of a firm's compensation consultant choice on executive compensation by examining shifts in consultant choice following a 2009 US Securities Exchange Commission requirement that firms disclose fees paid to compensation consultants for both consulting and other services....

From October 2013, UK law and regulations (the Reform) require periodic binding shareholders' approval of executive directors' remuneration policy, as well as enhanced disclosure in remuneration reports. These requirements supplement an ongoing requirement for an annual non-binding vote on...

We examine the implications of auditor education for audit quality and audit pricing. We exploit a novel institutional setting in the UK, where auditors major in many different degrees at university and signing auditors are identifiable. Using hand-collected data for a large sample of signing...