[We examine the role of board connections in explaining how the controversial practice of backdating employee stock options spread to a large number of firms across a wide range of industries. The increase in the likelihood that a firm begins to backdate stock options that can be explained by having a board member who is interlocked to a previously identified backdating firm is approximately one-third of the unconditional probability of backdating in our sample. Our analysis provides new insight into how boards function and the role that they play in providing managerial oversight and determining corporate strategy.]

Theoretically and empirically, debt and leases have been shown to be both substitutes and complements. To explore the relation, we divide our sample into two subsets: those that exhibit a complementary relation (43% increase debt after increasing leases), and those that exhibit a substitutionary relation (57% decrease debt after increasing leases). For complement firms, we find a significant negative relation between leasing and the firm's size, marginal tax rate, and z-score, consistent with “complementary” theories. For substitute firms, we find a positive and significant relation between leasing, the marginal tax rate and changes in cash. We also find a significant positive stock market reaction to the announcement of the SLB, which is stronger for the complement subset of firms.

Abstract This study examines whether the gambling behavior of investors affects volume and volatility in financial markets. Focusing on the options market, we find that the ratio of call option volume relative to total option volume is greatest for stocks with return distributions that resemble lotteries. Consistent with the theoretical predictions of Stein (1987), we demonstrate that gambling-motivated trading in the options market influences future spot price volatility. These results not only identify a link between lottery preferences in the stock market and the options market, but they also suggest that lottery preferences can lead to destabilized stock prices.

A broad stream of research shows that information flows into underlying stock prices through the options market. For instance, prior research shows that both the Put–Call Ratio (P/C) and the Option-to-Stock Volume Ratio (O/S) predict negative future stock returns. In this paper, we compare the level of information contained in these two commonly used option volume ratios. First, we find that P/C ratios contain more predictability about future stock returns at the daily level than O/S ratios. Second, in contrast to our first set of results, O/S ratios contain more predictability about future returns at the weekly and monthly levels than P/C ratios. In fact, our tests show that while P/C ratios contain predictability about future daily returns and, to some extent, future weekly returns, the return predictability in P/C ratios is fleeting. O/S ratios, on the other hand, significantly predict negative returns at all levels: daily, weekly, and monthly. While Pan and Poteshman (2006) show that signed P/C ratios, which require proprietary data, have predictive power, we find that unsigned P/C ratios, which do not require proprietary data, also have predictive power.

We examine the role of board connections in explaining how the controversial practice of backdating employee stock options spread to a large number of firms across a wide range of industries. The increase in the likelihood that a firm begins to backdate stock options that can be explained by having a board member who is interlocked to a previously identified backdating firm is approximately one-third of the unconditional probability of backdating in our sample. Our analysis provides new insight into how boards function and the role that they play in providing managerial oversight and determining corporate strategy. The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]., Oxford University Press.