In this paper, I investigate whether firms' risk-hedging incentives affect their choices between owned and rented capital (operating leases). In recessions, firms facing negative demand shocks are loaded with unproductive capital. Absent of any trading frictions, firms can trade their assets to...

This research is aimed at analyzing the causality puzzle on the correlation between financial leverage and systematic risk (beta). Financial leverage and beta are usually considered as two proxies of risk derived from different domains: one ends at financial decision outcome, and the other...

This research is aimed at analyzing the causality puzzle on the correlation between financial leverage and systematic risk (beta). Financial leverage and beta are usually considered as two proxies of risk derived from different domains: one ends at financial decision outcome, and the other...

This paper explores how variables measuring firms' sustainable competitive advantages influence profitability persistence. Using a large sample of firms from MSCI 23 developed countries during 1985-2013, I find that an index of economic rents (such as size and market share) significantly reduce...

In recent years, corporate filings and their important sections have become thicker and longer. At the same time investors are swamped with information that is available through media, analysts and other sources creating information overload. Using several firm level proxies of information...

Expectation errors, generally defined, have been used by previous studies to show why investors pay too much for growth. In contrast, our study analyses what actual mistakes investors have made and how they could have been avoided. We show that investors ignore the negative impact of growth on...

We document that the value-weighted aggregate discretionary accruals have significant power in predicting the one-year-ahead stock market returns between 1965 and 2004. The predictive relation is stable and robust to different ways to measure market returns and discretionary accruals as well as...

We examine the impact of corporate risk-taking on firm-level real earnings management. We find that firms with higher risk-taking engage in higher real earnings management. Our results are robust to a series of robustness tests, including simultaneous least squares approach, firm fixed effect,...

The initial coin offering (ICO) market relies on the “wisdom of crowds”, ratings given by the collective opinion of crypto experts, to overcome asymmetric information problems in the fundraising process. We investigate the biases of crypto experts in providing ratings in ICOs. We conjecture...

Using the percent accrual measure proposed by Hazfalla et al. (2011), we empirically evaluate the predictions of earnings fixation hypothesis and limits to arbitrage hypothesis on the accrual anomaly in the U.K. stock market. We show a strong negative relation of percent accruals with future...