We examine the prevalence and determinants of CEOs' use of tax-advantaged trusts prior to their firm's IPO. Twenty-three percent of CEOs use tax-advantaged pre-IPO trusts, and share transfers into tax-advantaged trusts are positively associated with CEO equity wealth, estate taxes, and dynastic...

The SEC adopted Rule 10b5-1 to provide an affirmative defense against allegations of insider trading to executives whose jobs regularly expose them to material nonpublic information. In this Closer Look, we present evidence on the trading behavior of corporate executives using a unique dataset...

We examine the relation between managerial trading and market sentiment. We investigate whether managers' trades are associated with changes in market sentiment, and we find they are negatively related. We then explore cross-sectional differences in managerial trading and find trading against...

We examine auditors' disclosure benchmarking, which we define as auditors' acquisition of non-client financial statement information for the purpose of evaluating a client's financial statement information. Employing a novel dataset that captures auditors' access of non-client annual and...

One of the hallmarks of the SEC's investigative process is that it is shrouded in secrecy––only the SEC staff, high-level managers of the company being investigated, and outside counsel are typically aware of active investigations. We obtain novel data on all investigations closed by the SEC...

We examine whether tax-motivated income shifting by U.S. multinational corporations affects information asymmetry. Using a new firm-year measure of income shifting and a two-stage least squares approach, we find income shifting is positively associated with four measures of information...

Little is known about why CEOs voluntarily purchase shares of their firm other than because they expect to directly profit from doing so. However, since CEOs are risk-averse, highly un-diversified, and face litigation costs from trading on favorable private information, direct profits are...

Multiemployer pension plans (MEPPs) provide retirement benefits for 11 million participants, yet until recently, hundreds of these pension plans – covering 3 million participants – faced insolvency. We use the 2021 passage of the American Rescue Plan Act to examine how pension bailouts...

We provide evidence that existing studies relating financial condition to product market cooperation produce mixed results because of unique features of the industries examined. In particular, all evidence suggesting that poor financial condition decreases cooperation comes from the airline...

We provide evidence that existing studies relating financial condition to product market cooperation produce mixed results because of unique features of the industries examined. In particular, all evidence suggesting that poor financial condition decreases cooperation comes from the airline...