In a comprehensive study of all shipping mergers and acquisitions since 1984 we document that the shareholders of both acquirer and target realize average abnormal gains of 1.2% and 3.3% respectively and both parties gain more from diversifying than focus-increasing deals. We find that acquirers...

It is a commonly held view that gold protects investors' wealth in the event of negative economic conditions. In this study, we test whether other metals offer similar or better investment opportunities in periods of market turmoil. Using a sample of 13 sovereign bonds, we show that other...

We examine the effect of annual report textual complexity on firms' stock liquidity. Using techniques from computational linguistics, we predict and find that less readable filings are associated with lower stock liquidity. Our study provides evidence that difficult-to-read annual reports...

Using the pay gap between a firm’s CEO and the highest-paid CEO among similar competing firms to conceptualize the prize of winning external promotion tournaments, we document a positive relationship between external tournament incentives (ETIs) and IPO underpricing – a proxy of the cost of...

The Bayes-Stein model provides a framework for remedying parameter uncertainty in the Markowitz mean-variance portfolio optimization. The classical version, however, suffers from estimation errors of model components and fails to consistently outperform the naive 1/N asset allocation rule. We...

We study how the regulator (SEC) responds to IPOs that have a higher political profile. We find that IPOs with issuers (intermediaries) that actively pursue political strategies receive more (less) SEC comment letters than IPOs without such actors. Cross-sectional analysis reveals that the...