This paper examines the effect of accounting conservatism on firm-level investment during the 2007-2008 global financial crisis. Using a differences-in-differences design, we find that firms with less conservative financial reporting experienced a sharper decline in investment activity following...

This paper investigates the relationship between leverage and returns in private equity buyout transactions. In contrast to the predictions of traditional capital structure theory, we find that transactions financed with large amounts of debt are associated higher transaction prices and lower...

In recent years considerable attention has been devoted to differences across countries in the institutional environments in which corporations operate, and the consequences of these institutional differences for corporate performance. In this paper we test for the presence of differences in...

This paper studies the long-run effects of credit market disruptions on real firm outcomes and how these effects depend on nominal wage rigidities at the firm level. I trace out the long-run investment and growth trajectories of firms which are more adversely affected by a transitory shock to...

A recent reform in China, the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect program, made a subset of Chinese stocks investable for foreign investors, thus partially opening China's stock market. We use this reform to examine the quantity and quality effects of stock market liberalization on corporate...

This paper examines the impact of internal governance on a CEO's investment cycle. Extant literature defines internal governance as the mechanism by which senior executives help discipline the CEO to maximize shareholder value. Weisbach (1995) finds that a year or two before the CEO retires, the...

The investment cycle literature suggests that older CEOs with short investment horizon may be myopic and as result incur agency costs as they try to extract rents by under-investing. Acharya, Myers and Rajan (2011) theorize that internal governance may mitigate the CEO horizon problem. We find...

This paper studies how people in certain country view their status relate to corporate investment decisions. Utilizing the data from the World Happiness Report published by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, we find that country's overall happiness is positively...

We find that shocks to aggregate geopolitical uncertainty are associated with an average decline in firm-level capital investment. The decline in investments increases in the degree of external financial constraints faced by firms, with the effect being stronger for more irreversible...