Employee compensation may impact payout policy by (i) incentivizing managers with non-dividend-protected options to favor repurchases over dividends and (ii) diluting earnings, which firms can neutralize through share repurchases. Both the dividend-protection and dilution channels imply a...

Both risk management and payout decisions affect a firm's financial flexibility — the ability to avoid costly financial distress as well as underinvestment. We provide evidence of substitution between hedging and payout decisions using samples of both financial and nonfinancial firms. We find...

This paper studies the strategic use and timing of share repurchases by insiders for personal gain. Using grant level compensation data and a hand-collected sample of monthly repurchases, I find a positive causal relation between CEO equity sales and share repurchases. I identify the relation...

Though short sellers on average succeed at identifying overvalued equity, firms often signal disagreement with short sellers by repurchasing stock when short interest increases. We investigate whether this disagreement reflects a myopic defense of inflated prices, or positive private...

We construct a large sample of announcements that firms have authorized, suspended, resumed, or completed open market repurchase (OMR) programs. Starting or continuing repurchases is associated with positive average announcement period abnormal returns. Stopping repurchases, either by suspending...