Taxes have a first-order impact on portfolio returns. Most research mistakenly assumes that portfolios command similar tax burdens, or that tax burdens are proportional to dividend yields. Portfolio strategies differ in the pace of capital gains realization. We use the federal tax codes from...

Shareholder participation in domestic rights offerings averages only 64%, which is considerably lower than previously thought. This causes wealth transfers from nonparticipating to participating shareholders which average 7% of the value of the offering. Wealth transfers are larger in...

Post-1970, the change in shares outstanding exhibits a strong cross-sectional ability to predict stock returns. This predictive ability is more statistically significant than the individual predictive ability of size, book-to-market, or momentum. Our finding is related to research that finds...

Over the past forty years, the volatility of the average stock return has drastically outpaced total market volatility. Thus, idiosyncratic return volatility has dramatically increased. We estimate this increase to be 6% per year. Consistent with an efficient market, we show that this result is...

Transaction and holding costs make arbitrage costly. If some traders are rational, mispricing will only exist to the extent that arbitrage costs prevent rational traders from fully eliminating inefficiencies. Although the relation between mispricing and transaction costs is well-known, the...

We examine a type of distribution that is taxed as a capital gain rather than as a dividend. Since the distribution induces a realized capital gain while the price change on the ex-distribution day is an unrealized gain, ex-day return behavior provides evidence of the value of tax-timing capital...