For the last decade, investors, scholars and regulators have turned to independent directors in key leadership positions as a means to safeguard corporate boards' ability to serve as a robust check on management's power. As a result, a vast majority of public companies' boards are now led by an...

When lenders decide whether to extend credit to a prospective borrower they pay careful attention to how their loan would fare relative to other lenders should the borrower encounter financial difficulties during the life of the loan. They consider the borrower’s existing capital structure and...

In October of 2021, the Department of Labor proposed a rule-making on prudence and loyalty in selecting plan investments and exercising shareholder rights. In general, we are supportive of the Proposal’s main purpose of clarifying that ESG investing is not inherently suspect. In our previous...

Congress enacted a new disgorgement statute and limitations periods for enforcement cases brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. A major and remarkable consequence of the statute is that a limitations period now governs most types of SEC enforcement cases. That is a significant...

This paper investigates whether and how federal judges’ political ideology affects opportunistic insider trading. Although federal judges are the ultimate arbiters of insider trading enforcement, whether their ideology matters to insiders’ trading decision is unclear because the primary...

Recent disclosure models predict that firms with more pessimistic private information about future operating performance will make more disaggregated discretionary disclosures. We use the IPO S-1 filing setting to address this question, arguing that this setting closely matches the theory...

This study examines whether ex ante securities litigation risk prompts firms to make more or less voluntary restatements. The litigation risk is captured by a new measure based on the dismissal rate of the district court where the firm is headquartered. We find that misreporting firms...

We study the effect of stricter enforcement of the dividend-withholding tax (DWT). We focus on a 2016 Danish reform and compare Denmark to its Nordic neighbors. Before the reform, all countries have strong spikes in stocks on loan centered around the ex-dividend day, consistent with the most...

We examine the relation between creditor rights and stock price crash risk by exploiting the staggered enactment of anti-recharacterization laws that gives lenders greater access to the collateral and thus strengthens creditor rights. We find robust evidence that stock price crash risk subsides...