We exploit US states' staggered adoption of Universal Demand (UD) laws to study how the risk of shareholder lawsuits affects opportunistic insider trading. UD laws, which make it harder for shareholders to bring derivative lawsuits (DLs) against directors and officers (D&O), lead to...

Author's description of his article: This paper empirically examines whether the short swing trading rule (Section 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act) deters managers from trading before merger announcements. This rule bars insiders from profiting on round-trip trades completed within a six...

A substantial number of outside directors have experience in politics or government and in the private practice of law. We argue that, in part, these directors play a political role by providing advice and insight into the workings of government (or perhaps, by acting to influence the government...

We examine whether entrepreneurs with different racial backgrounds raise capital successfully. After controlling for measures of firm and offering quality, we find that Black (Hispanic) entrepreneurs have 7% (5%) lower funding success rate and raise 38% (50%) (or $2.3 million ($3 million)) less...

We study how the composition of the board of directors and incentives from direct shareholdings affect firm performance in a sample of large, publicly traded firms. We use an instrumental variables approach that controls directly for endogeneity of both shareholdings and board composition. We...