Using a unique database of 190 newly privatized firms from 36 countries, we investigate the impact of shareholders’ identify on corporate risk-taking behavior. We find strong and robust evidence that state (foreign) ownership is negatively (positively) related to corporate risk-taking....

Cash holdings as a proportion of total assets of U.S. corporations have roughly doubled between 1971 and 2006. Prior research attributes the large cash increase to a rise in firms’ idiosyncratic risk. We investigate two mechanisms by which increased idiosyncratic risk can lead to higher cash...

In this paper, we analyze whether the state of the limit order book affects future price movements in line with what recent theoretical models predict. We do this in a linear vector autoregressive system which includes midquote return, trade direction and variables that are theoretically...

We study the impact of political institutions on foreign firms’ choice of their U.S. cross-listing venue. Using two measures of political institutions (an index of political rights and a political constraint index) and controlling for various firm-level and country-level characteristics, we...

In this study, we investigate the short run effect of the October 30th, 1995 Quebec referendum on the common stock returns of Quebec firms. Our results show that the uncertainty surrounding the referendum outcome had an impact on stock returns of Quebec firms. We also find that the effect of the...

This paper finds that about one-quarter of analyst forecast dispersion and one-half of the dispersion-return relationship between 1985 and 2012 are explained by analyst overconfidence. In particular, the firm’s analyst overconfidence mean and analyst overconfidence dispersion are the two most...

I hypothesize that the stock market overreacts to management earnings forecasts. I find that negative management forecast surprises lead to a -5.9% abnormal return around the forecast and a 1.9% correction in the 2-month period after earnings are announced. Positive surprises work in the...

The paper presents a theory of optimal transparency in the financial system when financial institutions have short-term liabilities and are exposed to rollover risk. Our analysis indicates that transparency enhances the stability of the financial system during crises but may have a destabilizing...

Securitization is one of the most important innovations in financial markets. It is a process of converting illiquid loans that cannot be sold readily to third-party investors into liquid securities and selling them to dispersed investors. As a result, securitization improves liquidity in...