The theory of tax clienteles for dividend policies predicts that after a firm initiates a cash dividend, the ownership of its equity by tax-exempt/tax-deferred and corporate investors will increase as these investors purchase shares of stock that are being sold by individual investors for whom...

This paper evaluates the impact of corporate tax avoidance on the level and valuation of firm cash holdings. Two conflicting views motivate this inquiry. One view is that tax avoidance merely limits tax payments. Hence it may or may not increase firm cash holdings, depending on whether the tax...

Theory suggests that information asymmetry between supplier and customer firms exacerbates the holdup problem. We investigate if an auditor common to the supplier and customer firm improves information flows leading to reduction in the holdup problem. Consistent with this notion, we find that...

We examine whether it is incentives or standards that determine firms' financial reporting quality using a natural experiment in Taiwan. Before 2001, Taiwan's Company Act required private firms with capital levels exceeding a certain threshold to file and publish audited financial statements....

This paper investigates the association between taxes and the cost of equity capital in an international setting that allows for exogenous, cross-sectional variation in corporate and investor tax rates. Using a sample of firms from 33 countries over a 21-year period, we find that the cost of...

This study investigates the relation between customer concentration and a supplier's cost of equity capital. We hypothesize that a more concentrated customer base increases a supplier's risk, which results in a higher cost of equity. Our results show a positive association between customer...

We examine the impact of shared auditors, defined as audit firms that provide audit services to a target and its acquirer firm prior to an acquisition, on transaction outcomes. We find shared auditors are observed in nearly a quarter of all public acquisitions and targets are more likely to...

We show that firms located in states where property crime is more prevalent have more uncertain earnings and higher financing costs. Specifically, firms located in states with higher property crime rates have more volatile and less persistent earnings as well as lower quality analysts' earnings...

We investigate the relation between firms' weighted average cost of capital and internal financial resources, using mandatory pension contributions as a proxy for internal financial resources. Rauh (2006) documents a negative association between mandatory pension contributions and capital...