We examine how product market threats influence firm payout policy and cash holdings. We develop new measures of competitive threats using firms' product text descriptions. Our primary measure, product market fluidity, captures changes in rival firms' products relative to the firm's products. We...

We use text-based computational analysis of business descriptions from 10-Ks to examine in which industries conglomerates are most likely to operate and to understand conglomerate valuations. We find that conglomerates are more likely to operate in industry pairs that are closer together in the...

We introduce a new framework for forming peer firm portfolios that can account for firm uniqueness and organizational form. Our new vocabulary-based peer firm portfolios explain much cross sectional dispersion in firm valuations and generate a direct measure of firm product market uniqueness. We...

We examine how product differentiation influences mergers and acquisitions and the ability of firms to exploit product market synergies. Using novel text-based analysis of firm 10K product descriptions, we find three key results. (1) Firms are more likely to enter restructuring transactions when...