The earnings announcement premium, whereby a stock earns abnormal returns over its earnings announcement period, has been the subject of extensive research. We provide the first evidence that this premium has disappeared in the US in recent years. We show that the increased filings of material...

I find that the total asset (TA) growth anomaly (Cooper et al. 2008) is a noisy manifestation of the net operating asset (NOA) growth anomaly documented earlier in the accounting literature. To better understand the underlying causes of the growth anomalies, I decompose TA growth into NOA growth...

This paper provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical analysis of “creditor rights” and “information sharing” throughout over 1.8 million private firms in Europe. We show that many of the outcomes associated with greater levels of creditor rights can be obtained with higher...

This paper provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical analysis of "creditor rights" and "information sharing" throughout over 1.8 million public and private firms in Europe. We show that many of the outcomes associated with greater levels of creditor rights can be obtained with higher...

United States Senators' equity trades outperformed the market before 60 Minutes exposed arguably unethical trading activity by Congress members, leading to the passage of the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act. However, all evidence of abnormal returns is limited to the...

A growing number of corporations and politicians have acknowledged the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Recent legislation proposes that corporations may become more stakeholder-focused if employees are given more power. We examine the impact of employee labor unions on...

We examine whether the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) uniformly enforces the Clean Air Act for politically connected and unconnected firms using a close election setting. We find no difference in regulated pollutant emissions or EPA investigations between the two groups, though connected...

Using a proprietary database of failed bank auction participants, I examine whether acquiring a failed bank creates shareholder value by using the losers' post-acquisition performance as a counterfactual. In the three years post-acquisition, acquirers with Shared-Loss Agreements (SLAs), where...

Using a proprietary set of transaction-level HELOC data from five banks, we explore whether banks actively manage HELOCs for periods prior to and during bank distress. Banks are more likely to revoke credit lines that exhibit potentially problematic characteristics at origination and...