Firms increasingly issue shares for the purpose of cash savings. During the 1970s, $1.00 of issuance resulted in $0.23 of cash savings; over the most recent decade $1.00 of issuance resulted in $0.60 of cash savings. This increase is caused by increasing precautionary motives. Proxies for...

Consistent with a costly arbitrage equilibrium in which arbitrage costs insulate mispricing, this study finds that mutual fund managers have stock-picking ability for stocks with high idiosyncratic volatility but not for stocks with low idiosyncratic volatility. These findings suggest that fund...

Share issuance predicts cross-sectional returns in a non-U.S. sample of stocks from 41 different countries. Issuance predictability has greater statistical significance than either size, or momentum, and is similar to book-to-market. As in the U.S., the international issuance effect is robust...

Previous studies have shown that high short interest stocks have low subsequent returns. We test whether the persistence of this effect is due to costs limiting arbitrage. The arbitrage cost that we focus on is idiosyncratic risk which, regardless of the arbitrageur's level of diversification,...

I test whether the persistence of the momentum and reversal effects is the result of idiosyncratic risk limiting arbitrage. Idiosyncratic deters arbitrage, regardless of the arbitrageur's level of diversification. Reversal is prevalent only in high idiosyncratic risk stocks, suggesting that...

At year-end, some allege that institutional investors try to mislead investors by placing trades that inflate performance (portfolio pumping) or distort reported holdings (window dressing). We contribute direct tests using daily institutional trades and find that year-end price inflation derives...

We provide a comprehensive review of China's financial system, and explore directions of future development. First, the current financial system is dominated by a large banking sector. In recent years banks have made considerable progress in reducing the amount of non-performing loans and...

We examine the determinants of the size and composition of corporate boards for a sample of 82 U.S. companies that survived during the period 1935-2000. Our hypotheses lead to predictions that firm size, growth opportunities, merger activity, and geographical expansion are important determinants...

After the completion of an Mamp;A transaction, the target firm is delisted but some analysts who covered it retain coverage of the merged firm. We hypothesize that this decision is based on two factorsmdash;the analyst's ability to cover the merged firm and his or her assessment of the Mamp;A...

Cross-sectional research finds that corporate financing choices are not only affected by firm and industry factors, but also by country institutional factors. This study focuses on the roles of public governance in firm financing patterns. To conduct a natural experiment that avoids endogeneity,...