Firm disclosures often reach only a portion of investors, which results in information asymmetry among investors, and therefore lower market liquidity. This issue is particularly salient for firms that are not highly visible, as they tend not to receive broad news dissemination via traditional...

This paper examines the relation between cognitive perceptions of management and firm valuation. We develop a composite measure of investor perception using 30-second content-filtered video clips of initial public offering (IPO) roadshow presentations. We show that this measure, designed to...

This paper investigates the press' role as a watchdog for accounting fraud. In choosing whether to fulfill this role, the press must trade off the benefits of providing interesting stories, and thus increasing circulation, with the costs of identifying such stories and potentially alienating...

A long-standing issue in the accounting literature is whether corporate managers exercise their accounting discretion to influence reported earnings. This paper extends this research by investigating whether managers manipulate the 'valuation allowance' for deferred tax assets. This account has...

We examine investors' perceptions of shareholder activism via voting. To identify instances of activism via voting, we focus on annual meetings with at least one ballot item where a substantial fraction of shareholders is expected to vote against management's voting recommendation, indicating an...

We examine how a manager's ethnic cultural background affects their communication with investors. Using a sample of earnings conference call transcripts with 24,901 executives from 42 countries, we find that managers from ethnic groups that have a more individualistic culture use a more...

We examine the importance of professional relationships developed between analysts and managers by investigating analyst coverage decisions in the context of CEO and CFO moves between publicly listed firms. We find that top executive moves from an origin firm to a destination firm trigger...

We define annual shareholder meetings as contentious if one or more ballot items are likely to obtain sufficient shareholder votes to induce a firm to implement governance changes. Using a sample of almost 28,000 meetings between 2003 and 2012, we find that abnormal stock returns over the 40-day...