Hundreds of articles have been written about various aspects of insider trading. It is one of those topics that is truly interdisciplinary, touching on finance, economics, law, business ethics and perhaps a few other disciplines. Yet with all this research there is still no consensus about when...

A standard result in the voluntary disclosure literature is that when the manager's private information is a signal correlated with the firm's liquidation value, mandatory disclosures substitute for voluntary disclosures. In this paper, we assume that the manager's private information...

This article argues that mandatory securities disclosure regulation has unanticipated and ill-considered consequences. Disclosure regulation makes some forms of behavior more expensive relative to others. Rational actors will respond by shifting some conduct into comparatively cheaper outlets....

From its inception, the federal securities law regime created and enforced a major divide between public and private capital raising. Firms that chose to “go public” took on substantial disclosure burdens, but in exchange were given the exclusive right to raise capital from the general...

This paper discusses the empirical literature on the economic consequences of disclosure and financial reporting regulation, drawing on U.S. and international evidence. Given the policy relevance of research on regulation, we highlight the challenges with (1) quantifying regulatory costs and...

We analyze the question whether and when access to refinancing via repurchase agreements as opposed to asset liquidation increases efficiency to financial intermediators ('banks'). By pledging assets in form of a repo contract the bank can raise cash, by this preventing to forgo returns on sold...

We examine whether politically active firms play a role in disseminating political information via their management guidance. We use multiple proxies based on campaign financing activity or the presence of a government affairs office to capture whether a firm is politically active. We find that...

While developments in the law of insider trading usually attract significant scholarly interest, far less attention has been paid to the design and effects of the Securities and Exchange Commission's complementary Regulation Fair Disclosure. Yet, this article argues that the SEC's current...

This paper evaluates the impact of the recently passed JOBS Act on IPO outcomes. A significant number of IPO firms use provisions of this act. For firms taking advantage of the JOBS Act, we find that, relative to a matched set of peer firms, (1) IPO underpricing increases, (2) post IPO liquidity...