We explore the influence of customer perceptions from the product market on firms’ return characteristics in the stock market. Using customers’ opinions on over 1200 brands, we find that stocks of companies with prestigious brands have high market-to-book ratios and large negative loadings...

Not all corporate bailouts are the same. We study corporate bailouts from around the world during 1987–2005. Among these bailed-out firms, some firms are economically distressed while others are financially distressed. Some firms are bailed out with cash (either as equity or as loans) while...

Change-in-control covenants first became commonplace towards the end of the takeover wave in the 1980s. We examine merger and acquisition activity from 1991 to 2006 to see how such covenant protection influences the wealth effects and probability of takeovers. Examining a sample of leveraged...

This paper introduces the Journal of Multinational Financial Management's special issue on financial management in China. We provide a brief literature review of China's financial management policies, practices, and recent research findings, and describe how papers published in this special...

We first extend Baker and Wurgler's (2004a) catering theory of dividends to share repurchases. Consistent with the notion that firms cater to investor demand for share repurchases, we report evidence that the market's time-varying repurchase premium positively affects firms' choice to repurchase...

We examine the effect of agency cost on the relation between top executives' overconfidence and investment-cash flow sensitivity using the data from Chinese listed companies. We find that on average top executives' overconfidence leads to increased investment-cash flow sensitivity. However, this...

We study CEO successions in China and focus on the decision to appoint outsiders as CEOs. In doing so, we also differentiate our sample into SOEs (state-owned enterprises) and non-SOEs. We find that firm-specific factors can predict external successions for SOEs, but not for non-SOEs. Further,...

We study whether Chinese CEOs with financial experience engage in more earnings management or less earnings management than those without such experience. In doing so, we distinguish between accrual-based earnings management and real earnings management. Overall, we find that CEOs with financial...

Compared to matched conventional mutual funds, socially responsible mutual funds outperform during periods of market crises. This dampening of downside risk comes at the cost of underperforming during non-crisis periods. Investors seeking downside protection would value the asymmetry of these...

Japan's most powerful known earthquake struck at 2:46p.m. on Friday, March 11, 2011. We study the unusual trading behaviors of individual and foreign investors in Japan during the aftermath of this natural disaster. Individual investors typically show contrarian trading patterns, so the sharp...