We explore whether firms internalize the product market concerns of their economically linked peers by examining merger and acquisition decisions in the context of customer–supplier relations. Given the extensive transfer of capital, knowledge, and information between merging parties, we hypothesize that customers’ competition concerns discourage their suppliers from engaging in vertically conflicted

We highlight the limitations of using cumulative advertising expenses as an input measure of brand value. Using two output measures—Interbrand’s data and a novel text-based measure—we find that an equal-weighted portfolio of top brands yields an annual abnormal return of 3%. The excess returns are driven by companies that develop their brands internally. Intangible factors proposed in the literature

Chapter 7 is the most popular bankruptcy system for U.S. firms and individuals. Chapter 7 professional fees are substantial. Theoretically, high fees might be an unavoidable cost of incentivizing professionals. I test this empirically. I study trustees, the most important professionals in chapter 7, who liquidate assets in exchange for legally mandated commissions. Exploiting kinks in the commission

We study environmental and social (E&S) disclosures in annual reports. Using the word embedding model to examine over 210,000 annual reports from 24,271 public firms in 30 international countries/regions between 2001 and 2020, we create an E&S dictionary that allows us to document trends in annual report E&S disclosure. Specifically, we find: (1) increases in length and boilerplate language and (2)

RMBS sponsors contributed to the rise of new product features in securitized mortgages prior to the 2008 financial crisis. Using a regulatory shock to sponsor competition , we show securitization influences the design of mortgage contracts, empirically demonstrating a unique, feedback loop of product differentiation from the derived security (MBS) to the underlying asset (loans). Product differentiation

We examine the pricing of sustainability-linked bonds (SLBs), where the cash flows depend on the bond issuer achieving one or more Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) goals. Investors are willing to accept a 1–2bps lower yield due to the bond’s ESG label, providing evidence of investors caring about environmental impact. Furthermore, we find the average probability of missing the target is 14%–39%

We examine quantitative investors’ ability to navigate a common and occasionally material change to the financial data generating process: new accounting standards. Returns of quantitative mutual funds temporarily decrease relative to funds that rely more heavily on human discretion following the implementation of a few standards that significantly change key financial statement variables; however

This study investigates the asset pricing implications of war risks in global stock markets. We employ a novel war discourse index developed by Hirshleifer et al. (2023a), which captures market attention to war through news. Extending this approach to both developed and emerging markets, we uncover a significantly positive relation between war risks and global stock market excess returns, which is

We propose a model of the financial system in which banks are individually prone to runs and connected through fire sales. Strategic complementarities within and across banks amplify each other, making heterogeneity in bank risks a key factor shaping the fragility of each bank and the entire system. As long as different banks are interconnected, an increase in heterogeneity stabilizes all banks. Reductions

Drawing on the behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF), studies debate about whether underperforming firms will engage in more corporate social responsibility (CSR). In this study, we categorize CSR into CSR conformity and CSR differentiation, and find that underperforming firms are more likely to increase CSR conformity but decrease CSR differentiation. Furthermore, market strategy deviation strengthens

In this paper, we develop the Climate Policy Uncertainty Index (CPU) for the Italian context based on news from major Italian newspapers. The CPU index exhibits distinct movements around major national and international climate events. We also investigate the effects of CPU on the Italian financial market. The results provide evidence that a shock CPU has a negative impact on financial market performance

We find that, contrary to prior findings, tax avoidance has a non-linear relationship with cost of debt. Debtholders reward increasing tax avoidance with decreasing bond yields for “undersheltering” firms until reaching a minimum yield. Beyond that minimum yield, as tax avoidance increases, debtholders penalize firms with increasing costs of debt. We use secondary bond market as our empirical setting

Relative performance evaluation (RPE) intensifies competitive pressure by tying executive compensation to the profits of rivals. We show that these contracts make loan syndication harder by reducing banks’ willingness to participate in loans underwritten by banks named in their RPE contracts. Lead arranger banks, which are more frequently named in RPE, hold larger shares of the loans they syndicate

We study the quantitative impact of lender control rights on corporate investment, asset prices, and the aggregate economy. We build a general equilibrium model in which the breaching of a loan covenant (technical default) entails a switch in investment control rights from borrowers to lenders. Lenders optimally choose low-risk projects, thus mitigating borrowers’ risk-taking incentives and lowering

This paper provides novel evidence that increased student loan debts, caused by rising tuitions, increase borrowers’ demand for additional consumer debt, while simultaneously restricting their ability to access it. The net effect of student loan debt on consumer borrowing varies by market, depending on whether the supply or demand channel dominates. In loosely underwritten credit markets, increased

Using granular data on U.S. hotel investments over the past two decades, we show that industry-specialist PE firms achieve higher net income from operations and higher capital gains from sale than generalist PE firms for comparable properties. Those results are driven by specialists implementing more and larger cost savings without compromising revenues. Fundamentally, specialists utilize their hotel-specific

We introduce a measure to quantify shared information within household financial portfolios under extreme events. We employ mutual information and copula entropy to capture tail dependencies among investment assets. We then study the impact of socio-economic factors on proactive financial behaviors using data from the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances and highlight the necessity for tail-informed diversification

This paper selects data from A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2022 for empirical analysis. The empirical findings show that pay stickiness has a significant negative impact on the innovation ability of enterprises. There is a difference in the impact of pay stickiness on the innovation ability of state-owned enterprises and non-state-owned enterprises; the independence

This paper examines which VIX maturity to use in affine GARCH model estimation, when the objective is to do option pricing. Utilizing the Model Confidence Set approach repeatedly, we rank the best VIXs across different dynamic models. Our results highlight the importance of estimating with VIXs and show that with the appropriate VIX a reduction of up to 38% in option pricing errors can be obtained

We study how Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) affect firms’ engagement with shareholders. Our analyses exploit a quasi-natural experiment using say-on-pay voting outcomes near a threshold that triggers ISS to review engagement activities. Firms receiving ISS treatment exhibit swift and substantive increases in extensive and intensive margins of engagement, especially when their boards have

Our paper reexamines whether 29 variables from 26 papers published after Goyal and Welch 2008a, as well as the original 17 variables, were useful in predicting the equity premium in-sample and out-of-sample as of the end of 2021. Our samples include the original periods in which these variables were identified, but end later. More than one-third of these new variables no longer have empirical significance

We develop an algorithm for solving a large class of nonlinear high-dimensional continuous-time models in finance. We approximate value and policy functions using deep learning and show that a combination of automatic differentiation and Ito’s lemma allows for the computation of exact expectations, resulting in a negligible computational cost that is independent of the number of state variables. We

This study examines the impact of deposit insurance coverage on credit union earnings opacity. For identification, we employ the provisions outlined in Section 136 of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, which raised the upper limit of deposit insurance coverage from $100,000 to $250,000. Using variation in insured deposits brought about by the differential impact of the change to deposit insurance

Corporate ESG performance is increasingly recognized as crucial for sustainable development, yet the impact of CEO behavior on this metric remains understudied. This paper investigates how CEO hedging affects corporate ESG performance, addressing a significant gap in the literature. Using data from U.S. listed companies from 2013 to 2021, we employ regression analysis and propensity score matching

The increase in natural disasters due to climate change has prompted the adoption of measures to mitigate it, like the use of renewable energy sources. This study suggests that the transition risk associated with these policies will rise the demand for critical metals, increasing the systematic risk for companies that produce them. Using Bayesian structural time series, we find evidence suggesting

Inspired by experimental evidence, we amend the recursive utility model to let risk aversion decrease with the temporal horizon. Our pseudo-recursive preferences remain tractable and retain appealing features of the long-run risk framework, notably its success at explaining asset pricing moments. In addition, our model addresses two challenges to the standard model. Calibrating the agents’ preferences

During the revelation of the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the reemergence of the #MeToo movement, firms with a nonsexist corporate culture, proxied by having women among the five highest‐paid executives, earn excess returns of 1.3% relative to firms without female top executives. These returns are driven by changes in investor preferences toward firms with a nonsexist culture. Institutional ownership

Improving the legal structure of China's securities market depends on revising the Securities Law. Using data from A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2022, this paper uses the difference-in-differences (DID) approach to investigate the effect of implementing the New Securities Law on the audit quality of companies. The revelation shows how much the New Securities Law can improve the caliber of company

We provide a systematic empirical assessment of the Minsky hypothesis that business fluctuations stem from irrational swings in expectations. Using predictable firm-level forecast errors, we build an aggregate index of irrational expectations and use it to provide three sets of results. First, we show that our index predicts aggregate credit cycles. Next, we show that these predictable credit cycles

This paper investigates the role of corporate financial reports in the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) regulatory activities. By tracking the EPA's direct retrieval of SEC filings, we identify three key findings. First, the EPA retrieves a large volume of financial reports, especially from firms in high‐pollution industries. Second, the EPA is more likely to access financial reports during

This paper examines why private firms choose to be financially transparent or opaque by conducting a field experiment with more than 25,000 firms in Germany. We inform a randomly chosen set of firms about a disclosure option that allows eligible firms to restrict access to their otherwise publicly available financial statements. We also vary the messaging in subtle ways to induce experimental variation

Females are underrepresented in academic finance departments, especially among senior faculty. Using information on 2910 finance scholars from 387 universities worldwide, we show that although females have become more common in finance departments over the past 30 years, yet only one in ten full professors are women. We explore whether this gap is associated with a lower likelihood of female faculty

Through empirical analyses, this paper confirms the beneficial influence of digital governance on the information disclosure quality of listed companies. Additionally, it uncovers the intermediary roles played by managerial transaction costs and human capital structure. Furthermore, the study investigates the varying impacts of corporate geographical location and property rights characteristics on

This study explores the interconnection among major sporting events, corporate social responsibility (CSR), and the valuations of sports-listed companies. Sporting events now serve as global engagement platforms beyond mere competition. Through a mixed-methods approach including literature reviews, quantitative financial analyses, and qualitative CSR strategy explorations, this research examines how

We develop a general equilibrium model of self-fulfilling bank runs. The key novelty is the way in which the banking system’s assets and liabilities are connected. Banks issue loans to entrepreneurs who sell goods to households, which in turn pay for the goods by redeeming bank deposits. The return on bank assets is thus contingent on households being able to withdraw their deposits. In a run, not

The article study selects the panel data of 3407 A-share listed companies between 2010 and 2022, aiming at exploring the impact of fiscal incentives on firms' innovation performance and revealing the mediating role of financing constraints. The empirical results show that fiscal incentives have a significant positive impact on both corporate innovation performance and financing constraints; meanwhile

This paper examines the relationship between cryptocurrency returns and price sensitivity to unexpected changes in market uncertainty, as measured by U.S. stock market volatility, from June 2018 to February 2023. Cryptocurrencies with intermediate uncertainty risk earn a risk-adjusted weekly return of 5.73% higher than those with low and high uncertainty risk, after controlling for market, size, reversal

We develop a structural credit risk model, which allows us to price equity/credit indices and their options through the asset dynamics of index constituents. We estimate the model via MLE and find that equity and credit index option prices are well explained out-of-sample. Contrary to recent empirical findings, the two option markets are not inconsistently priced through the lens of our model. Returns

We provide the first analysis of the risk exposure and risk-adjusted performance of impact investing funds, private market funds with dual financial and social goals. We introduce a dataset of impact fund cash flows and exploit distortions in VC performance measures to characterize risk profiles. Impact funds have a lower market than comparable private market strategies. Accounting for , impact funds

We propose no-arbitrage term structure models with volatility factors that follow GARCH processes. The models’ tractability is similar to canonical affine term structure models, but they fit yield volatility much better, especially for long-maturity yields. This improvement does not come at the expense of a deterioration in yield fit. Because of the improved volatility fit, the model performs substantially

Based on automated credit lines to vendors trading on Alibaba's online retail platform and a discontinuity in the credit decision algorithm, we document that a vendor's access to FinTech credit boosts its sales growth, transaction growth, and the level of customer satisfaction gauged by product, service, and consignment ratings. These effects are more pronounced for vendors characterized by greater

Originating from the theory of organizational hierarchy, the concept of power discrepancy among corporate executives has garnered scholarly attention due to its roots in the unequal distribution of authority and influence within the upper echelons of management. This paper explores the realm of corporate ESG greenwashing, a deceptive practice masking genuine environmental, social, and governance responsibilities

Approximating arbitrage or a perfect hedge in a limit implies approximation in utility (formally, expected utilities are continuous in ), if and only if the utility function is bounded above and below by quadratics. We characterize when some special utility functions are continuous for all random consumptions with a common lower bound. Only linear, quadratic, and, in some cases, translated SAHARA utilities

We analyze an insider trading strategy and market professionals’ information acquisition strategies, and explore their impact on market liquidity and price efficiency in endogenous noise trading. Our findings highlight the negative precision effect on market professionals’ information acquisition. With an increase in market professionals, two opposing effects emerge on market liquidity and price efficiency:

The real estate market is highly intermediated, with 90% of buyers and sellers hiring an agent. However, low barriers to entry and fixed commission rates result in large market share for inexperienced intermediaries. Using micro-level data on 8.5 million listings and a novel research design, we show that house listings by inexperienced agents have a lower probability of selling, and this effect is

Previous studies have highlighted the importance of policy interventions in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, there is limited understanding within accounting literature about strategies to enhance sustainable development initiatives and address the challenges faced in varieties of capitalism. This study investigates the influence of accounting practices and public financial

We document aggregate outflows from corporate bond mutual funds days before and after the announcement of increases in the Federal Funds Target rate (FFTar). To rationalize this phenomenon, we build a model in which funds’ net-asset-values (NAVs) are stale and investors strategically redeem to profit from the mispricing when they learn about the increases of FFTar. Consistent with the model’s predictions

This study introduces an enriched framework depicting the channels through which managers can mitigate sales shock impacts on firm net income and dividends. Employing variance decomposition, this study provides insights into the proportion of sales shocks absorbed through different firm-level net income smoothing channels. We control for the nature (positive vs. negative) and duration (persistent vs

The recent April 2024 Israel-Iran conflict had a notable impact on global energy markets. Returns on the top ten global energy stocks indicate investor apprehension up to 10 days before the event started on April 13, 2024. Energy stocks had significant negative returns on the event day itself, with positive CAARs pre-event and negative CAARs post-event. The dynamic market response highlights the heightened

To explain the newly discovered coevolution of capital and labor structures, this study presents a modified capital-skill complementarity hypothesis within the framework of structural transformation. We propose that artificial intelligence (AI) and skilled labor exhibit relative complementarity. Specifically, advancements in AI services or AI-enhanced technologies incentivize the mobilization of skilled

This paper offers the first systematic evidence on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosures provided by a large global sample of private equity (PE) firms. Using historical websites from 2000 to 2022, we develop and validate a novel dictionary‐based measure of voluntary PE firm ESG disclosures. Descriptive statistics reveal an increasing time trend in these disclosures, with social topics

We examine whether and how the development of digital financial inclusion (DFI) affects firm environmental, social, and governance (ESG) greenwashing. Our findings indicate that local DFI prohibits firms' greenwashing behaviors. These conclusions are supported through robust analysis using a multidimensional fixed-effects model, alternative measures, and an instrumental variable approach. Our research

Suppose that insurer can control dividend, refinancing and reinsurance strategies dynamically. Different from the past, there are multiple reinsurers rather than sole reinsurer in the market. The insurer aim at finding the optimal strategies for maximizing the company’s value. It illustrates that refinancing can be considered iff the company has strong profitability; It should reduce reinsurance purchase

This study examines the impact of the business environment on economic development quality in 66 Belt and Road Initiative countries from 2015 to 2020. It finds that the business environment significantly boosts economic development quality, with the total labor force serving as a mediating variable. Further analysis shows that the impact is more pronounced in countries with higher economic development

Global carbon pricing has been recognized as one of the most efficient mechanisms that can be used to reduce CO emissions, but questions remain about the of the price and the of implementation. We examine this important issue by extending the Dynamic Integrated Climate and Economy (DICE) model to estimate global carbon prices that will be required to reach various warming scenarios. Our analysis suggests

To clarify the effect of green supply chain collaboration (GSCC) on the HSE performance of manufacturing SMEs, through theoretical and literature analysis, a conceptual model of the effect of GSCC on the HSE performance of manufacturing SMEs is constructed, and the model and hypotheses are empirically tested using structural equation modeling. The research results show that GSCC positively affects