We construct a new measure to capture corporate political connections, which is based on the amount a corporation spends on socializing with government officials. We examine the validity of this measure using the exogenous turnover of top local officials and find that firms increase their...

Foreign firms face enormous obstacles in attracting investors and analysts when issuing securities in the United States. We use US-listed Chinese firms as our research sample and find that firms that hire top executives (i.e., Chief Executive Officer [CEO] or Chief Financial Officer [CFO]) with...

Using a sample of publicly-listed Chinese firms during the period 2009 to 2017, we investigate the impact of financial advisors' industry expertise on the quality of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in terms of goodwill impairment. Consistent with information transmission hypothesis, we find that...

When board gender quotas clash with gender stereotypes prevailing within an organization, do they trigger backlash and lead to worse female labor market outcomes? We examine staggered adoptions of quotas in Europe and document a significant drop in the share of female employment. Applying...

Brands are facing heightened consumer pressure to address social issues via social media channels. However, the social media strategy that brands should employ during social activism is still unclear. We clarify the conditions under which brands’ social media strategies (i.e., specific...

We construct a new measure to capture corporate political connections, which is based on the amount a corporation spends on socializing with government officials. We examine the validity of this measure using the exogenous turnover of top local officials and find that firms increase their...

Foreign firms face enormous obstacles in attracting investors and analysts when issuing securities in the United States. We use US-listed Chinese firms as our research sample and find that firms that hire top executives (i.e., Chief Executive Officer [CEO] or Chief Financial Officer [CFO]) with...

Individualism has long been linked to economic growth. Using the COVID-19 pandemic, we show that such a culture can hamper the economy's response to crises, a period with heightened coordination frictions. Exploiting variation in US counties' frontier experience, we show that more individualist...