This paper models firms' choices between alternative means of presenting information, and the effects of different presentations on market prices when investors have limited attention and processing power. In a market equilibrium with partially attentive investors, we examine the effects of...

Psychological evidence indicates that it is hard to process multiple stimuli and perform multiple tasks at the same time. This paper tests the investor distraction hypothesis, which holds that the arrival of extraneous news causes trading and market prices to react sluggishly to relevant news...

This is the set of presentation slides for the paper "Are Overconfident CEOs Better Innovators?"Previous empirical work on adverse consequences of CEO overconfidence raises the question of why firms hire overconfident managers. Theoretical research suggests a reason: overconfidence can benefit...

These are the presentation slides for the paper. We test whether and how equity overvaluation affects corporate financing decisions using an ex ante misvaluation measure that filters firm scale and growth prospects from market price. We find that equity issuance and total financing increase with...

In a setting with information asymmetry and a tradable value-weighted market index, ambiguity averse investors hold undiversified portfolios, and assets have non-zero alphas. But when a passive fund offers the risk-adjusted market portfolio (RAMP) whose weights depend on information precisions...

These slides summarize a paper which offers the psychological attraction approach to accounting and disclosure rules, regulation, and policy as a program for positive accounting research. We suggest that psychological forces have shaped and continue to shape rules and policies in two different...

Evolved dispositions influence, but do not determine, how people think about economic problems. The evolutionary cognitive approach offers important insights, but underweights the social transmission of ideas as a level of explanation. The need for a social explanation for the evolution of...

We propose that when firm agents, such as managers and employees, perceive the board to have congruent values about ESG activities with them, then they are more willing to commit their human capital and effort to the ESG activities to increase firm value. Potentially positive NPV ESG projects...

In October 2014, Estimize.com began providing management guidance on its platform for firms that provide guidance. We exploit this exogenous shock to salience of management guidance as a quasi-natural experiment to study how salience of management guidance affects forecasting behavior. Using a...

Psychological evidence indicates that decision quality declines after an extensive session of decision-making, a phenomenon known as decision fatigue. We study whether decision fatigue affects analysts' judgments. Analysts cover multiple firms and often issue several forecasts in a single day....