Kothari, Lewellen and Warner (2006) document that in the U.S. market aggregate earnings changes are negatively related to contemporaneous market returns. This is puzzling given the well-documented evidence that firm-level earnings changes are positively related to stock returns. In this study we...

In 2016 the Chinese government initiated a nationwide campaign aiming to eliminate poverty in China by 2020. Over 20% of listed firms in China have made significant contributions to the campaign. Using hand-collected data on listed firms' contributions to the campaign and multivariate analyses,...

We examine whether the average earnings surprises announced yesterday affect investors' responses to earnings news announced today. We find that in the short window surrounding an earnings announcement, the market rewards today's earnings news that is above yesterday's average earnings surprises...

Using data from 43 markets around the world, we document that firms with larger goodwill balances have a higher stock price crash risk in future years. The positive association between goodwill balances and future crash risk is stronger for firms with weaker incentives to provide transparent...

Prior research (Behn et al. 2008) suggests that higher audit quality is associated with increased accuracy and reduced dispersion in earnings forecasts issued by sell-side analysts. We extend this work to consider how audit quality impacts the information environment in which analysts operate....

Using a large sample of firms from 43 markets, we find significant time-series variations in firms’ leverage ratios around the world. Industry median leverage ratios and aggregate leverage ratios also change substantially over time. Relative to actual leverage ratios, target leverage ratios...

We examine the effect of increased regulatory enforcement threat on the dividend policies of foreign firms listed in US stock exchanges. The staggered signing of the Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MMoU) by the US and foreign regulators facilitates cross-border regulatory cooperation...

Using a large sample of firms from 45 countries, we find that firms in countries with high climate risk reduce their cash dividends but increasingly use share repurchases to make payouts, suggesting that firms substitute dividends with repurchases to increase their payout flexibility in response...