We show that opportunistic insiders can be identified through the profitability of their trades prior to quarterly earnings announcements (QEAs), and that opportunistic trading is associated with various kinds of firm/managerial misconduct. A value-weighted trading strategy based on (not...

We examine how investor preferences and beliefs affect trading in relation to past gains and losses. The probability of selling as a function of profit is V-shaped; at short holding periods, investors are more likely to sell big losers than small ones. There is little evidence of an upward jump in...

We find that innovative efficiency (IE), patents or citations scaled by R&D, is a strong positive predictor of future returns after controlling for firm characteristics and risk. The IE-return relation is associated with the loading on a mispricing factor, and the high Sharpe ratio of the...

Previous empirical work on adverse consequences of CEO overconfidence raises the question of why firms would hire overconfident managers. Theoretical research suggests a reason, that overconfidence can sometimes benefit shareholders by increasing investment in risky projects. Using options- and...

Ambiguity aversion alone does not explain the market nonparticipation puzzle. We show that in a rational expectations equilibrium model with a fund offering the risk-adjusted market portfolio (RAMP), ambiguity averse investors hold the fund and an information-based portfolio, and thus...

We examine the causal effect of limits to arbitrage on 11 well-known asset pricing anomalies using the pilot program of Regulation SHO, which relaxed short-sale constraints for a quasi-random set of pilot stocks, as a natural experiment. We find that the anomalies became weaker on portfolios...

We test how market overvaluation affects corporate innovation. Estimated stock overvaluation is very strongly associated with measures of innovative inventiveness (novelty, originality, and scope), as well as R&D and innovative output (patent and citation counts). Misvaluation affects R&D more...

We analyze capital allocation in a conglomerate where divisional managers with uncertain abilities compete for promotion to CEO. A manager can sometimes gain by unobservably adding variance to divisional performance. Capital rationing can limit this distortion, increase productive efficiency,...

This paper studies information blockages and the asymmetric release of information in a security market with fixed setup costs of trading. In this setting, 'sidelined' investors may delay trading until price movements validate their private signals. Trading thereby internally generates the...