An important question in banking is how strict supervision affects bank lending and in turn local business activity. Forcing banks to recognize losses could choke off lending and amplify local economic woes, especially after financial crises. But stricter supervision could also lead to changes...

We study the potential negative externalities of mandatory environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure. Our analysis exploits a unique regulatory change in China that requires a subset of firms to report their contributions to poverty alleviation—on top of reporting general ESG...

Accounting is imperfect, leading to errors in financial reporting. This paper links accounting errors to firms' incentives to bias reported earnings. We hypothesize that while errors discourage reporting bias by lowering earnings' value relevance, they also incentivize bias by providing...

Errors and bias are both inherent features of accounting. In theory, while errors discourage bias by lowering the value relevance of accounting, they can also facilitate bias by providing camouflage. Consistent with theory, we find a hump-shaped relation between a firm's propensity to engage in...

We study the extent to which market participants are informed about firms' political connections when the connections are not publicly disclosed and how it affects pricing efficiency. Using a sample of public announcements of government officials' corruption investigations, we find that, on...

Numerous influential critics and corporate managers allege that activist investors demand changes that increase short-term stock prices at the expense of long-term shareholder value (“short-termism”). Research to-date focuses on hedge funds. We provide new evidence by using a larger sample...

This study seeks to examine the impact of Block Ownership structure on risk-taking as measured by R&D Intensity in OECD countries. The study uses a panel data of 200 companies from Anglo American and European countries between 2010 and 2014. The ordinary least squares regression is used to...

This paper examines the issue of perceived value generated by the assignment of financial value to intangibles in financial reporting. In particular, values assigned to goodwill and other intangibles in mergers and acquisitions are examined, and the impact of such intangible valuations as a...

The allegation that activist investors demand changes that increase short-term stock prices at the expense of long-term shareholder value (“short-termism”) has led to extensive research on interventions by hedge funds. Few studies include other private (non-hedge fund) activists, even though...

Based on a unique arrangement of trading and disclosure times around earnings announcements in the Chinese stock market, we provide evidence of a striking overnight-intraday disparity in terms of the reaction to earnings news. Specifically, we find that the overnight period exhibits a strong and...