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We test whether pornography causes divorce. Using state-level panel data on the divorce rate and sales of Playboy magazine, we document a strong cross-sectional and time-series relation between lagged sales of Playboy and the divorce rate. The simple correlation between divorce and sales lagged...

This article focuses on the widely held views that antitakeover charter and bylaw provisions (ATPs) increase agency costs, thereby reducing firm value, but that firms going public minimize agency costs, thereby maximizing firm value. We show that these views cannot comfortably coexist: ATPs are...

We examine how directors' reputations are managed through disclosure choices. We focus on disclosures in the director biographies in proxy statements filed with the SEC. We find that a directorship on another board is more likely to be undisclosed when the other firm experienced an adverse event...

We review and evaluate the methods commonly used in the accounting literature to correct for cross-sectional and time-series dependence. While much of the accounting literature studies settings where variables are cross-sectionally and serially correlated, we find that the extant methods are not...

Prior research generally interprets complex language in firms' disclosures as indicative of managerial obfuscation. However, complex language can also reflect the provision of complex information, e.g., informative technical disclosure. As a consequence, linguistic complexity commingles two...

Prior research generally interprets complex language in firms' disclosures as indicative of managerial obfuscation. However, complex language can also reflect the provision of complex information; for example, informative technical disclosure. As a consequence, linguistic complexity commingles...