<heading id="h1" level="1" implicit="yes" format="display">ABSTRACT</heading>A principal-components analysis demonstrates that common earnings factors explain a substantial portion of firm-level earnings variation, implying earnings shocks have substantial systematic components and are not almost fully diversifiable as prior literature has concluded. Furthermore,...

A well-developed body of literature has detected positive effects of technology investments on economic growth. We contribute to this literature by studying the joint effects of technology and economic freedom on economic growth. Using two different time points, 1990 and 2000, and a sample of...

We assess the stock market reaction to proposals of incentive plans for directors in a sample of 289 firms. The reaction is both economically and statistically insignificant. This result suggests that shareholders do not necessarily benefit from the adoption of such plans. Across firms, we find...

Purpose – The specific purpose of this study is to understand how firm size and public/private affiliation (employment status) affect voluntary disclosure decisions concerning quantitatively immaterial nonfinancial information. Although the prior disclosure literature is large and has...

This paper examines the relationship between debt contracts and state contract law. We first develop an index to evaluate whether each state’s law is favorable or unfavorable to lenders. We then analyze how the contract terms, the frequency of covenant violations, and the repercussions of...

This paper studies the effects of predictability on the earnings-returns relation for individual firms and for the aggregate. We demonstrate that prices better anticipate earnings growth at the aggregate level than at the firm level, which implies that random-walk models are inappropriate for...