This paper demonstrates that liquidity risk as measured by the covariation of fund returns with unexpected changes in aggregate liquidity is an important determinant in the cross-section of hedge-fund returns. The results show that funds that significantly load on liquidity risk subsequently...

Recent research shows that the implied cost of capital (ICC), measured from analyst forecasts and current stock prices, positively predicts returns at the aggregate level. In contrast, there is a strong negative relation between ICC and future returns in the cross-section. We hypothesize that...

Using a parsimonious measure of investor protection constructed from fund organizational characteristics, this paper documents that companies targeted by activists with better investor protection structures outperform those targeted by poor-investor-protection activists by roughly 10% per year....

We consider a firm's competitiveness based on the manner by which other firms mention it on their 10-K filings. Using all public firm filings simultaneously, we implement a PageRank-type algorithm to produce a dynamic measure of firm competitiveness, denoted C-Rank. A high-minus-low C-Rank...

This paper investigate the effects of investor protection on hedge fund activism. Using a parsimonious measure of investor protection constructed from fund organizational characteristics, we document that higher investor protection is strongly correlated with superior performance of activists....

This paper demonstrates that executive compensation convexity, measured as the sensitivity of managerial equity compensation portfolios to stock volatility, predicts firm-specific crashes. A bottom-to-top decile change in compensation convexity results in a 21% increase in a firm's crash risk...

We develop real-time proxies of retail corporate sales from multiple sources, including ~50 million mobile devices. These measures contain information from both the earnings quarter (“within quarter”) and the period between that quarter's end and the earnings announcement date (“post...

We develop real-time proxies of retail corporate sales from multiple sources, including ~50 million mobile devices. These measures contain information from both the earnings quarter (“within quarter”) and the period between that quarter's end and the earnings announcement date (“post...

The authors study whether the pricing of systematic factors depends on the investment horizon over which risk is measured. Market beta and Fama--French value beta are priced when risk is measured over intermediate horizons, while liquidity beta is priced over short horizons. Alpha on a...