We examine the effects of institutional ownership on firms' information and trading environments using the annual Russell 1000/2000 index reconstitution. Characteristics of firms near the index cutoffs are similar, except that firms in the top of the Russell 2000 have discontinuously higher...

The SEC promulgated the Securities Offering Reform (SOR) in 2005 to ease disclosure restrictions prior to seasoned equity offerings (SEOs). The SEC argued that SOR would improve the information environment, but critics claimed it would allow firms to hype their stock. This paper is the first to...

We examine the outside director selection process using unique data on appointments of academic directors. Overall, we find that academic directors tend to be appointed by small- and mid-cap firms expanding their boards. However, we find important differences in both the factors influencing...

We examine the real effects of disclosing information about the pay gap between the CEO and employees. Firms reporting higher pay ratios tend to include discretionary narrative portraying their employee relations or compensation practices in a positive light. Reporting higher ratios is...

Extant literature debates the role of news media in speculative markets. Some show media hype leads to irrational behavior, while others argue news attenuates market imperfections. To disentangle these roles, we study news about non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which are a natural laboratory since...

Human capital is a primary source of value in modern firms, yet little is known about what employee information firms disclose and whether it is timely and informative given the SEC's flexible disclosure rules. We examine the determinants of firms' human capital disclosures by combining textual...