We examine whether Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs), an external governance mechanism, stimulate cross-border mergers by protecting the property rights of foreign acquirers. Exploiting the staggered adoption and bilateral nature of the treaties, we find that BITs have a large positive effect...

We adopt a novel empirical approach to show that the risk attitudes of professional investors are affected by their catastrophic experiences – even for catastrophes with no economic impact on these investors or their portfolio firms. We study the portfolio risk of U.S.-based mutual funds that...

Prior research shows that technology spillovers across firms increase innovation, productivity, and value. We study how firms finance their own growth stimulated by technology spillovers from their technological peer firms. We find that greater technology spillovers lead to higher leverage. This...

This paper studies how corporate board diversity affects disruptive innovation. We find that director boards with diverse demographic and cognitive traits are positively related to not only the quantity of disruptive and novel patents invented by their firms but also to these patents’...

The literature on managerial style posits a linear relation between a CEO's past experiences and firm risk. We show that there is a non-monotonic relation between the intensity of CEOs' early-life exposure to fatal disasters and corporate risk-taking. CEOs who experience fatal disasters without...

Using staggered changes in state corporate income tax rates, we document that firms are more likely to undertake an acquisition and pay cash for it when taxes increase. The likelihood is greater for financially constrained firms. We find no change in the CAR and takeover premia after tax...

We examine the impact framing of information has on the ability of market participants to process information in an earnings conference call. Following conference calls' use of greater linguistic framing, uncertainty is higher. We show that firms experience up to three months of higher total and...