We study the effects of a direct high-speed rail (HSR) service between two cities on investors and firms in China. We find that, after an HSR introduction, investors make more cross-city searches and block purchases of firms in connected cities. An HSR introduction also leads to less co-movement...

Using a relatively common phenomenon of eponymy in the hedge fund industry where funds are named after their founder-managers, we examine if eponymy is associated with skilled managers signaling their ability. Our results suggest that eponymous fund managers are neither necessarily skilled nor...

We show that the dynamics of Bitcoin (BTC) price are strongly influenced by the level of global geopolitical risk. Indeed, a number of well established stylized facts about BTC cease to be true when we condition the evolution of BTC returns on the GPR index. In particular, we find that when...

The global pandemic of coronavirus has created an unprecedented economic lockdown. Although past pandemics have caused a short run market shock with quick recovery, this pandemic is believed to last as some sectors are deemed to disappear or change. Accordingly, this paper investigates the...

An extant literature rooted in Iannaconne’s club-theoretic approach, advances a social insurance channel via which financial crises lead to increases in religious intensity defined to include religious affiliation and participation. Since variation in religious intensity has implications for;...

This paper examines the hypothesis that religious firms are more socially responsible. By utilizing a novel measure of religiosity that reflects firm-level adherence to Christian values, we find that religiousness is positively associated with the CSR engagement of large U.S. firms after...

We investigate the effect of the accelerated depreciation Policy (ADP) on the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of Chinese A-share firms from 2010 to 2016. The results of difference-in-differences estimation reveal that the ADP has a considerable effect on CSR performance, particularly in...

Equity rights offerings are the predominant SEO floatation method in many European and Asian countries. Several previous studies focus on rights offerings, but these studies often measure solely the announcement effects of these offerings and pay little attention to the discount. This study...

We study the impacts of local gender imbalance on corporate risk-taking. We find that firms in areas with higher local male-female ratios have higher stock volatilities and leverage, less corporate hedging, and more capital expenditures. Consequently, such firms face higher loan spreads and more...

Many institutional investors publicly commit to some form of responsible investment. This raises concerns about the credibility of such claims. We use participation in collaborative engagements to identify "Leaders", i.e., institutional investors that are truly committed to improving firms'...