Using a propensity-score matched sample and a difference-in-differences research design, we find that stock price crash risk increases after a firm voluntarily incorporates clawback provisions in executive officers' compensation contracts. This heightened crash risk is concentrated in adopters...

In recent years, firms (and lawmakers) have sought to mitigate the dysfunctional effects of incentive-based executive compensation by adopting clawbacks. However, extant clawbacks (whether firm-initiated or as mandated by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act) do not go far enough in that they seem to allow...

There is tension underlying whether asset redeployability, which refers to the salability of corporate capital assets, shapes crash risk. On one hand, asset redeployability enables managers to opportunistically exploit asset sales to manage earnings upwards to hoard bad news, which, in turn,...

We analyze the importance of policy uncertainty to textual disclosure in the U.S. over the 1996 to 2015 period. We find that policy uncertainty increases textual disclosure length, lowers readability, and increases the tone of uncertainty and negativity. Our strong, robust evidence implies that...

Relying on their history of legal infractions to measure individuals' risk tolerance, we examine the association between engagement partners' risk appetites and audit quality in the U.S. Criminology and economics research links criminal activity with enduring personality traits that capture an...

Prior research documents that information transmitted via director networks affects firms' policies and real economic activities. We explore whether information flow through director networks influences managers' ability to hoard bad news. We find that the extent of external connections of the...

We analyze the importance of policy uncertainty to textual disclosure in the U.S. over the 1996 to 2015 period. Consistent with the information-acceleration view, we find that policy uncertainty increases textual disclosure quantity evident in disclosure length. We also document that policy...