We study the effects of local religious beliefs on mutual fund risk-taking behaviors. Funds located in <i>low</i>-Protestant or <i>high</i>-Catholic areas exhibit significantly higher fund return volatilities. Similar differences persist when we use the religiosity ratios at fund managers' college locations....

<heading id="h1" level="1" implicit="yes" format="display">ABSTRACT</heading>This study examines firm performance surrounding insiders' prepaid variable forward (PVF) transactions to infer insiders' information when they enter these off-market contracts. PVFs allow insiders to hedge downside risk, share performance gains, and obtain immediate large-sum cash...

We argue that a firm's suppliers and customers prefer it to account more conservatively due to information asymmetry and these stakeholders' asymmetric payoffs with respect to the firm's performance. We predict that a firm meets this demand for accounting conservatism when suppliers or customers...

Bayesian theory predicts an increase in market participants' reliance on reported current earnings to revise their expectations of future earnings when the uncertainty in future earnings is higher. Prior studies focus on price reactions and find negative associations between measures of earnings...

We provide evidence that the presence of technical expertise in a firm's governance structure allows the firm to reduce reliance on contractual incentives to control the potential agency problem. Specifically, we find that firms with a board finance committee, or a Chief Executive Officer (CEO)...

This study examines firm performance surrounding insiders' Prepaid Variable Forward (PVF) transactions to infer insiders' information when they enter these off-market contracts. PVFs allow insiders to hedge downside risk, share performance gains, and obtain immediate large-sum cash payments for...

We investigate whether the positive associations between discretionary accrual proxies and beating earnings benchmarks hold for comparisons of groups segregated at other points in the distributions of earnings, earnings changes, and analysts-based unexpected earnings. We refer to these points as...

We examine whether the two distinct post-earnings-announcement drifts associated with seasonal random walk-based and analyst-based earnings surprises are attributable to the trading activities of distinct sets of investors. We predict and find that small (large) traders continue to trade in the...