Using global mutual fund and American Depositary Receipt (ADR) data, we test if funds strategically trade cross-listed firms’ equity shares in the most liquid trading location. We find that especially funds that score high on traditional skill measures exhibit a liquidity-based trading venue preference. We identify an informed trading motive as the most likely driver for such behaviour rather than

For variables with a term structure, the standard difference-in-differences (DiD) model is predisposed toward misspecification, even under random assignment, because of heterogeneity over the maturity spectrum and imperfect matching between treated and control units. Estimated treatment effects that are false, biased, or hard to interpret become a concern. Neither unit fixed effects nor standard term-structure

Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are typically viewed as passive index trackers. In contrast, we show that corporate bond ETFs actively manage their portfolios, trading off index tracking against liquidity transformation. In our model, ETFs optimally choose creation and redemption baskets that include cash and only a subset of index assets, especially if those assets are illiquid. Our evidence supports

We document capital misallocation in the U.S. investment-grade (IG) corporate bond market, driven by quantitative easing (QE). Prospective fallen angels — risky firms just above the IG cutoff — enjoyed subsidized bond financing in 2009–19. This effect is driven by Fed purchases of securities inducing long-duration IG-focused investors to rebalance their portfolios towards higher-yielding IG bonds.

The European Banking Authority (EBA) provides limited standardization for Credit Spread Risk in the Banking Book (CSRBB), delegating its assessment to individual financial institutions. This has led to significant variation in how CSRBB guidelines are interpreted and applied across the banking sector. This study investigates how to model plausible but unlikely credit spread shocks using Principal Component

We model two methods of executing segregated retail orders: brokers' routing, whereby brokers allocate orders using the market maker's overall performance, and order‐by‐order auctions, where market makers bid on individual orders, a recent U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission proposal. Order‐by‐order auctions improve allocative efficiency, but face a winner's curse reducing retail investor welfare

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How do workplace social connections shape everyday entrepreneurship? Using comprehensive data on millions of American workers across the economy, I find three key patterns. First, entrepreneurial coworkers inspire and teach entrepreneurship: individuals are more likely to become entrepreneurs after working with coworkers who previously led young businesses. Second, these effects predominantly occur

This study explores dynamic contracting in venture capital investment, where entrepreneurial compensation integrates absolute and relative performance. We identify a paradox in investment strategies based on startup efficiency: fixed capital suits efficient startups, while dynamic investment benefits inefficient ones. If the Venture Capitalist (VC) can switch strategies, starting with dynamic early-stage

Banks use trading as a vehicle to take risk. Using high-frequency regulatory data, we estimate the sensitivity of weekly bank trading profits to aggregate equity, fixed-income, credit, currency, and commodity risk factors. Our estimates imply that U.S. banks had large trading exposures to equity market risk before the Volcker Rule, which they curtailed afterwards. Credit and currency risk exposures

When firms freeze their employees qualified defined benefit (DB) pension plans, they often re-evaluate and may similarly freeze their non-qualified supplemental executive retirement plans (SERPs). This study draws from agency theory to investigate the determinants and consequences of SERP freezes. We find that the decision to freeze SERPs is predominantly influenced by the power dynamics between top

This study investigates the impact of war-related risk on stock market volatility using a war discourse index. Drawing on a century of data, we show that the index significantly predicts U.S. stock market volatility up to 12 months ahead. This predictive power remains robust after accounting for macroeconomic conditions, market variables, and geopolitical risk. Furthermore, forecasts yield economically

This paper studies whether investor composition affects the sovereign debt market. We construct a data set of sovereign debt holdings by foreign and domestic bank, nonbank private and official investors for 101 countries across three decades. Compared with other investors, private nonbank investors absorb a disproportionate share of the debt supply, and their demand for emerging market debt is most

The disclosure of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) information by firms can signal to the capital markets the potential sustainable development capabilities of the company and provide oversight to curb opportunistic management practices. However, the continuous disclosure of ESG information not only leads to excessive investment and increased operational risks but also contributes to information

Frequent, yet uninformed, market timing recommendations by a financial advisory firm generate significant flows for Chilean pension funds. These flows induce substantial changes in the Chilean foreign exchange rate due to the funds’ high allocation to international securities. Local banks provide liquidity to pension funds in the spot market and their hedging transactions propagate the demand fluctuations

We study the aggregate consequences of dynamic lending relationships in a model of heterogeneous banks facing financial frictions. We estimate the model’s loan demand system on administrative loan-level data: the market power implied by the estimated strength and persistence of relationships yields a long run reduction in credit of 5.9%. Relationships amplify the negative real effects of credit supply

We analyze the trade-offs of having intermediaries originate government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) mortgages using proprietary GSE data. We first find evidence of lenders pricing for observable and unobservable default risk independently of the GSEs. We then develop and estimate a model of competitive lending in which lenders have skin-in-the-game and conduct additional screening beyond the GSEs’ criteria

This study examines whether cryptocurrency markets offer more resilient safe haven properties than gold for stock markets in the BRICS economies from 28th April 2013 to 27th September 2024. Unlike traditional studies that primarily focus on Bitcoin or top-market cap cryptocurrencies, we introduce a novel Crypto index that includes 9468 active and defunct cryptocurrencies, providing a comprehensive

The article selects the panel data of 4319 listed companies in A-share from 2010 to 2022, empirically examines the relationship between government subsidies and corporate environmental protection investment by using two-way fixed-effects model, explores the role of government subsidies on corporate environmental protection investment by using mediated-effects model and assumes that media attention

In this study, we use mandatory gender quota rule for corporate boards introduced in the year 2015 in India as an identification strategy to explore the relationship between women on board and accounting conservatism. Our results based on the difference-in-differences regression model, using firms that appointed women for the first time after the law as the treatment group, support the conjecture that

We integrate three enterprise networks, i.e., the stock return network, risk spillover network, and market transaction network to predict the credit risk in supply chain finance (SCF) by applying the explainable GraphSAGE model. We construct the aforementioned networks to comprehensively illustrate the relationships among enterprises, train the GraphSAGE model to classify the nodes in the graph structure

This study investigates the impact of geopolitical risk on the currency denomination of offshore corporate bonds. By analyzing a sample of listed firms across 27 economies from 2010 to 2023, we find that elevated geopolitical risk is associated with reduced offshore corporate bond issuance in local currency. This association is weaker in bonds with shorter maturity or higher credit rating, in firms

Amid the recent ESG de-institutionalization by major financial institutions, this study investigates market responses to ESG factors during two major events that shake the U.S. stock market in 2024: (1) an economic shock and (2) a political shock tied to Trump’s election victory. Overall, the market reacts negatively to higher-ESG stocks during both events. However, the economic shock does not trigger

This study examines how symbolic temporal landmarks, specifically corporate anniversaries, influence firm performance. Temporal landmarks simplify managerial decision-making by focusing attention and aligning strategic actions with stakeholder expectations. We investigate whether managers use anniversaries to enhance financial performance, potentially through earnings management (EM), while minimizing

This paper provides a comprehensive review of various measures of uncertainty and their asset pricing implications in the cross-section of U.S. stock returns. With a focus on survey-based uncertainty, we add to the list of uncertainty measures previously studied in the literature with novel measures of forecast disagreement sourced from three professional forecast datasets. Through portfolio analyses

We find that Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases are more likely to result in emergence if decided shortly before a gubernatorial election, where the incumbent seeks re-election. However, firms emerging from bankruptcy during this period have a lower chance of long-term survival. This suggests that governors promote the survival of bankrupt firms, even those without a sustainable business model, to enhance

This paper examines the impact of investor investigation activities on the refinancing sponsorship and underwriting expenses of listed companies, utilizing data from the Science and Technology Innovation Board (STIB) and Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) spanning the period from 2018 to 2023. Our findings reveal that investor research negatively affects the refinancing sponsorship and underwriting costs

This study utilizes the implementation of the Anti-Monopoly Law (AML) as a quasi-natural experiment and examines its impact on corporate governance using a sample of A-share listed companies from 2004 to 2022. Using a DID model, the analysis demonstrates that the implementation of the AML significantly improves corporate governance. Mechanism analysis indicates that this effect is primarily achieved

We compute the daily ambiguity of the S&P 500 using high-frequency (one-minute) data from 1998 to 2022. Ambiguity is defined as the variability in return distributions throughout the trading day. The findings reveal that ambiguity fluctuates across weekdays with a clear tendency to peak on Mondays, drops significantly on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and rises slightly on Fridays, forming a smile-like

This study demonstrates that the tone of the risk factors section in the 10-K reports of U.S. public companies predicts returns on major U.S. stock indices. We created five tone indicators using text mining, the Loughran-McDonald dictionary, and AI-calibrated alternatives (GPT-3.5-turbo-0125, GPT-4, GPT-4o, and GPT-4o-mini). These indicators showed significant predictive power for weekly returns, with

This paper investigates how firms’ pollution incentives are influenced by their ability to divest polluted assets. My empirical setting is a major reform that exempts purchasers from liability for past contamination. Using a difference-in-differences framework, I find that the reform reduces toxic emissions, lowers bankruptcy risk, and increases firm value. Cross-sectional tests show that the decline

We study block trades in the corporate bond market, where dealers buy or sell blocks from initiating customers and offset their positions with receiving investors. Our findings indicate that while receivers benefit from trading cost savings, they primarily bear adverse selection costs and experience worse outcomes when informed trading is prevalent. Mandatory trade reporting improves receiver outcomes

This paper investigates the impact of workplace inclusion—defined as the procedures organizations implement to integrate everyone in the workplace—on corporate financial performance, examining for the first time its effect on market valuation alongside profitability. We construct a composite, policy-based inclusion measure based on five observable components: flexible working hours, daycare services

This paper examines the impact of the recently developed investor sentiment index (Photo Pessimism) derived from a large sample of news photos on sustainable stock returns. Based on the quantile causality analysis, we demonstrate that Photo and Text Pessimism significantly influence S&P 500 ESG stock market returns, particularly at medium quantile levels. The findings also suggest that the Photo sentiment

This letter theoretically and empirically examines the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on business closures, using panel data from 26 countries over the period 2006–2022. We find that a one-unit increase in the EPU index significantly raises business closures by approximately 0.7 %–0.9 % per 1000 adults. Furthermore, we identify credit supply, household consumption, and stock market capitalization

We investigate the impact of the financial supervisory architecture on financial reporting outcomes by exploiting a quasi-natural experiment in Korea. In 2008, Korea consolidated financial policy-making and supervisory functions into a single entity. Employing a difference-in-differences approach with cross-country data, we provide novel evidence indicating that the financial reporting quality of Korean

The Financial Statement Divergence (FSD) score, a metric of the deviation of figures from Benford’s Distribution, has become increasingly popular in assessing financial information quality at the firm-year level. We test the validity of this metric by analyzing (1) if error-free financial statements conform to Benford and (2) if the FSD score increases with the presence of accounting errors or manipulations

ESG metrics play a crucial role in sustainable finance but face growing criticism for their inability to accurately capture actual sustainability improvements. This study investigates how methodological choices can introduce distortions in ESG scores, with a primary focus on Refinitiv ESG data, while offering insights applicable to other providers as well. We show that data aggregation and score normalization

Understanding how the arrival of pre-market information triggers intraday circuit breakers in post-IPO stocks is central to analyzing market behavior in emerging markets, where information asymmetry and heightened volatility are common. Using data on newly listed stocks from the Turkish stock exchange, this paper examines the drivers of circuit breaker activations in the first year following IPOs.

We examine the relationship between corporate site visits by institutional investors and the provision of trade credit to these firms by their suppliers and find a positive relationship between the frequency of site visits and the level of supplier trade credit. This relationship is more pronounced among firms with less transparent information environments and greater financial constraints. The findings

The special issue on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Accounting and Finance explores how AI technologies are transforming the fields of accounting and finance, examining both their practical applications and the associated challenges. The papers included in this issue demonstrate how AI can improve efficiency, enhance decision-making processes, and increase transparency across various domains, including

This paper examines the predictive role of two dominant climate risk categories – physical and transition risks – in forecasting U.S. equity market risk premiums. The results reveal a pronounced asymmetry: physical climate risk significantly and negatively predicts stock returns both in-sample and out-of-sample, whereas transition climate risk demonstrates insignificant forecasting ability. This superior

ESG (Environmental, social, and governance) has become increasingly crucial in the investment of pension funds. This paper develops a multi-objective dynamic model to analyze the ESG-integration investment strategy of Target Date Funds (TDFs). The model optimizes three objectives: expected return, variance, and ESG score, incorporating human capital in the budget constraint and considering inflation-linked

Considering the enactment of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) in India, we causally assess its impact on Indian firms’ audit fees. Using the difference-in-differences (DiD) technique, we find that financially distressed firms pay lesser audit fees than financially non-distressed firms in India post-bankruptcy reforms. The robustness of our findings is ensured using matching combined with DiD

This paper investigates the impact of climate risk on banks' credit risk. Using a sample of 102 banks across 21 countries in the European Economic Area (EEA) from Q3 2019 to Q2 2023, we develop a novel approach to quantifying climate risk based on banks' loan exposures to industries and countries. Our findings indicate that climate transition risk (CTR), climate physical risk (CPR), and total climate

We investigate the interrelationship between state-level economic policy uncertainty (SEPU), bank efficiency, and banks’ financial risk. Using a sample of US banks from 2011 to 2021, we show that banks with higher operational efficiency can mitigate the increased financial risk stemming from high SEPU. This association remains unchanged while considering the national-level economic policy uncertainty

This study quantitatively explores the relationships among the digital economy (DE), financial development, and industrial structure upgrading (ISU). Findings suggest that (1) the DE positively affects ISU; (2) financial development has a significantly positive spillover effect on ISU; and (3) under financial development regulation, the DE and ISU have an “inverted U-shaped” nonlinear relationship

This study investigates the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) adoption on credit risk assessment in OECD and BRICS economies by employing both System Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) and Random Forest models. As a first step, a composite AI Adoption Index is constructed to capture the technological maturity of financial institutions with indicators including banking technology spending, the

This study develops a model elucidating the mechanism by which CEO exaggeration triggers stock price collapses. CEOs leverage private information to attract investment through premarket boasting. Two investor archetypes interpret this information differently: Type I investors, possessing superior analytical capabilities, accurately discern true value; Type II investors, who rely on CEO pronouncements

This study explores the impact of cultural diversity on corporate artificial intelligence (AI) development and its underlying mechanisms. Empirical analysis demonstrates that cultural diversity significantly enhances AI development within firms, primarily by fostering innovation. Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that this positive effect is more pronounced in firms with lower financial constraints

We empirically investigate the effect of active style drift (i.e., changes in style resulting from managers’ deliberate rebalancing) on mutual fund performance. Our measure of active style drift is based on monthly holdings data, which enables us to capture short-term changes in style. We examine all active equity mutual funds registered in Korea between 2009 and 2023 and find that intermediate-term

We study the impact of global volatility on the equity portfolio flows of institutional investors worldwide. Aggregate equity allocations of institutional investors decrease during periods of high volatility, both in developed and, even more strongly, in emerging markets. Our granular portfolio-level data allows us to uncover disaggregated investor responses that are an order of magnitude larger than

Climate change is a growing challenge for global economic stability, with significant implications for financial sector development. This study examines the relationship between climate vulnerability and the growth and structure of financial systems across a global sample of 29 countries. Using panel data, we find a positive relationship between climate risks and the overall size of financial systems

We develop a two-stage model of capital investment and labor-augmenting innovations, considering the implications of market power on investment decisions (investment size and timing) and welfare. Capital size decreases with market power, while labor-augmenting technological investment scale increases. An inverted U-shaped relationship exists between investment thresholds and market power, resulting

We examine the effects of negative interest rate policy (NIRP) on the scale of shadow banking. Utilising a Triple Differences (TD) model and a cross-country dataset of 676 non-bank financial intermediaries from 28 OECD countries over the period 2011–2017, we observe a reduction in the size of shadow banking entities. Moreover, the impact of NIRP is heterogeneous based on country- and entity-specific

This study investigates the hedging and safe-haven properties of art investments relative to traditional financial assets, employing a Time-Varying Parameter Vector Autoregression (TVP-VAR) approach across major art market sub-indices during several periods of financial crises, including the collapse of the dot-com bubble, the Global Financial Crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Art indices are found

This paper investigates whether biodiversity risk drives firms’ digital transformation. We find that such risk positively influences digital efforts, especially among firms facing higher natural disaster exposure, policy uncertainty, and risk perception. The effect operates through disrupted supply chains, sustainability constraints, and incentives for green innovation, positioning digital transformation

Environmental disclosure is a topic of global importance. When negative environmental news emerges and is eventually revealed, it can influence investor decisions and lead to significant stock price movements, potentially resulting in stock price crashes. Therefore, using a sample of A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges from 2017 to 2022, we construct an environmental