We examine the effect of audit committee social diversity on financial reporting quality, as measured through gender, age, and/or ethnic diversity. Considering these dimensions simultaneously, we find that only ethnic diversity is associated with a lower likelihood of financial statement...

This paper investigates how director incentives affect the occurrence of firms' backdating employee stock options. Directors with more wealth tied up in stock options may pursue activities that lead to personal gain, such as option backdating, which potentially increases the option recipient's...

Two recent papers document a significant relation between valuation multiples and governance indices during the 1990s. We test whether causation runs from governance to valuation or vice versa. We find that valuation multiples during the early 1980s, a period preceding the adoption of the...

Cross-sectional research finds that corporate financing choices are not only affected by firm and industry factors, but also by country institutional factors. This study focuses on the roles of public governance in firm financing patterns. To conduct a natural experiment that avoids endogeneity,...

Previous studies have shown that high short interest stocks have low subsequent returns. We test whether the persistence of this effect is due to costs limiting arbitrage. The arbitrage cost that we focus on is idiosyncratic risk which, regardless of the arbitrageur's level of diversification,...

This paper tests whether the persistence of the momentum and reversal effects is the result of idiosyncratic risk limiting arbitrage. Idiosyncratic risk deters arbitrage, regardless of the arbitrageur’s diversification. Reversal is prevalent only in high idiosyncratic risk stocks, suggesting...

Using a sample of 97 stock return anomalies, we find that anomaly returns are 50% higher on corporate news days and are 6 times higher on earnings announcement days. These results could be explained by dynamic risk, mispricing via biased expectations, and data mining. We develop and conduct...

We study how 9 different market participants trade with respect to 130 different stock return anomalies and how each participant's trades predict returns. Retail investors trade against anomalies, while firms' and short sellers' trades agree with anomalies. Institutional portfolios are weighted...