This study investigates the association between uncertain media tone and risk-taking measures that capture CEO risk-taking incentives, corporate investment, and financial policies. The study predicts that CEOs who attract greater uncertain media tone have more risk-taking incentives. We find a...

This dissertation consists of three essays on empirical finance. In the first essay, I examine whether firms strategically substitute equity for debt to exploit market mispricing. I argue that previous studies reach conflicting conclusions about equity market timing because they neglect a...

Extant research on the accruals anomaly is based on returns starting a few months after fiscal year ends, not when accruals are publicly known. We explore the nature of the accruals anomaly by analyzing the speed of price adjustment to accruals information from the date when accruals first...

In this paper, we examine whether managers time their debt-equity choices to exploit market mispricing. Controlling for the level of external financing and corporate investment activities, we find evidence consistent with the market timing hypothesis. We find managers issue more equity relative...

In this paper, we examine whether the relative price ratio of gold to platinum (GP ratio) can predict the aggregate stock market return in the US and China. We confirm that the GP ratio is a strong predictor of US market excess return; however, it is not a reliable predictor for excess return in...

We document that historical patterns of accruals seasonality predict future stock returns. Firms with historically larger accruals in a given quarter of the year earn lower stock returns when those accruals are expected to be announced. The accruals seasonality spread is significant only in the...

We find the limited supply of female directors, rather than gender differences or boardroom biases, can create an informational disadvantage for some female independent directors, as measured by their open market trading profits. The information disparity is largely isolated to firms with...

The existing literature attributes the recent decay of stock market anomalies to increased arbitrage (e.g., Chordia, Subrahmanyam and Tong, 2014; Engelberg, McLean and Pontiff, 2016; Green, Hand and Zhang, 2016). In this paper, we present evidence that the apparent demise of several prominent classes of...

We study the causal effects of short selling on real earnings management by exploiting an exogenous shock to short selling costs under the pilot program of Regulation SHO. We find the removal of short selling constraints leads to a reduction of real earnings management in pilot firms relative to...

Oxy-fuel circulating fluidized bed combustion (CFBC) is an alternate technology to oxy-fuel pulverized combustion (PC), which has a number of advantages that can often make it a better choice for CO2 capture. This paper presents experimental results and operating experiences from a 0.8MWth...