Traditional tradeoff theories puzzlingly predict that firms use high leverage, issue debt carrying a high duration and low yield spread, and have optimal debt policies highly affected by managerial risk-shifting behavior. We offer an ambiguity-based explanation for these corporate debt puzzles....

The relationship between societal trust and stock price delay is examined across 33 countries for the period from 1985 to 2021. The results showed that societal trust positively impacts investors' perception of information credibility, resulting in a shortened stock price delay. This effect is...

Research question/issue: This study examines whether geographic proximity produces a proximity preference as interlocking frms observe each other and learn innovative behaviors through information transmission among interlocking directors. Research fndings/insights: We study the performance of...

This study examines the impact of crises caused by modern health pandemics on price efficiency, proxied by measures of stock price delay. We analyze 381,688 firm-year observations across 39 countries during six recent pandemic crises: SARS (2003), H1N1 (2009), MERS (2012), Ebola (2014), Zika...

This study examines the formal and informal institutions that affected trade credit during the pandemic periods. To this end, we analyze 590,025 firm-year observations across 107 countries during six recent pandemic crises: SARS (2003), H1N1 (2009), MERS (2012), Ebola (2014), Zika (2016), and...

We investigate the impact of the crises caused by the modern health pandemics on the firm stock price’s risk of crashing. Further, we explore these associations by utilizing a comprehensive cross-country sample of 265,983 firm-year observations, collected from 39 countries during the five...

Research Question/Issue: La Porta et al. (2000) examine the impact of corporate governance on dividend policies by testing two hypotheses, the outcome hypothesis and the substitution hypothesis. The former argues that firms with better governance may pay higher dividends to mitigate agency...

A long-term orientation influences a country’s use of trade credit. We examine 519,805 firm-year observations across 71 countries from 1990 to 2020. Considering endogeneity and checking robustness, the main finding suggests that the effect of long-term orientation is related to the greater use...

This research examine the effects of information disclosure ratings on firm-specific stock price crash risk. We present evidence that there is a statistically significant negative relationship between stock price crash risk and information disclosure ratings. Our evidence further shows that the...

We examine the impact of information asymmetry on a firm's capital structure decisions with a unique information rating scheme that draws from 114 measures over five dimensions of information disclosures on each firm from 2006 to 2012. We found that a firm with high (low) information rating is...