We investigate the relation between a country's first-time enforcement of insider trading laws and stock price informativeness using data from 48 countries over 1980--2003. Enforcement of insider trading laws improves price informativeness, as measured by firm-specific stock return variation,...

This paper challenges the widely accepted stylized fact that chief executive officers (CEOs) in the United States are paid significantly more than their foreign counterparts. Using CEO pay data across fourteen countries with mandated pay disclosures, we show that the U.S. pay premium is...

Sweden offers a unique natural experiment to analyze the effects of institutionalized saving on the ownership structure, corporate governance, and firm performance. The Swedish pension reform increased the stock market participation of pension funds, causing a significant reshuffling in the...

We relate trade credit to product characteristics and aspects of bank--firm relationships and document three main empirical regularities. First, the use of trade credit is associated with the nature of the transacted good. In particular, suppliers of differentiated products and services have...

This paper shows that during episodes of market turmoil, 13F institutional investors with short trading horizons sell their stockholdings to a larger extent than 13F institutional investors with longer trading horizons. This creates price pressure for stocks held mostly by short-horizon...