Farre-Mensa, Michaely and Schmalz (2018) document that many firms issue new equity to finance their payouts to shareholders, despite the substantial cost of equity issuance. We find that equity-financed payouts are related to institutional investors’ horizon. Specifically, firms with a larger ownership by short-horizon institutions are more likely to have equity-financed discretionary payouts, and firms with equity-financed discretionary payouts tend to cut down their investments in the following years. Our results suggest that investor short-termism has significant effects on firms’ payout, financing and investment policies.

To avoid a tie in voting, most boards have an odd number of directors. We argue that boards with an even number of directors are more likely to be weak monitors because of inefficient decision making and being captured by controlling shareholders. Consistent with this argument, we find that in China boards with an even number of directors have fewer meetings and are more likely to have board members absent from board meetings. Firms with an even number of directors have more tunnelling through intercorporate loans and related party transactions, lower financial reporting quality and higher incidence of accounting irregularities. This evidence is stronger in firms with weaker external monitoring and for directors with weaker incentives to monitor. Finally, we show that firms with an even number of directors are associated with lower market valuation of equity. Our results suggest that corporate boards with an even number of directors in emerging markets are associated with more agency problems.

This study examines whether and how brokers manage the distribution of their stock recommendations. We document that if a broker's percentage of buy recommendations in a quarter is substantially higher than its target level, the broker issues significantly fewer buy recommendations than other brokers in the following quarter. This evidence remains robust after controlling for mean reversion in the data and varies systematically with brokers' expected benefits and costs of managing the distribution. Exploring possible methods to manage the distribution, we find evidence suggesting that brokers alter the timing of recommendation initiations and reiterations, and shift recommendations between adjacent quarters. Finally, we show that distribution management affects the informativeness of stock recommendations in the market.

This study investigates the time‐series trend and determinants of matching between revenues and expenses in a sample of 42 countries. We find that the decline in matching documented by Dichev and Tang ( ) is not unique to the United States, but is a worldwide phenomenon. Our results show that matching is weaker in countries with (i) wider use of accrual accounting; (ii) a larger proportion of firms reporting significant special items; (iii) slower economic growth; (iv) more research and development activities; (v) larger service sectors; and (vi) stronger investor protection. We find no evidence that mandatory adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards affects matching. Changes in accounting and economic factors collectively explain the downward trend in matching. Overall, the results suggest that both accounting and economic factors are important determinants of matching over time and across countries.

Using a large sample of firms from 45 countries, we find that firms in countries with high-climate risk reduce their cash dividends but increasingly use share repurchases to make payouts. The evidence suggests that firms substitute dividends with repurchases to increase their payout flexibility in response to heightened climate risk. Operating volatility and financial constraints are two channels through which climate risk affects firms’ payout flexibility. Further analysis shows that the effect of climate risk on payout flexibility is more pronounced for firms that are more vulnerable to climate risk, and in countries where people are more concerned about climate risk and the national culture emphasizes uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation.

We examine the effects of the world's first comply-or-explain dividend regulation in China's Shanghai Stock Exchange, which requires firms to either pay at least 30% of profits as dividends or explain the use of funds. We find that many firms increased their payout ratio to comply, by increasing dividends or decreasing earnings. Firms with high profitability, state ownership, and fewer agency conflicts were more likely to comply. However, complying firms subsequently issued more debt and had a decline in accounting performance and firm valuation. The evidence suggests that the comply-or-explain regulation increased firms' dividends at substantial costs.

Kothari, Lewellen, and Warner (2006) document that aggregate earnings changes in the United States are negatively related to contemporaneous market returns. In this study we show that this negative aggregate earnings-returns relation is unique to the United States. In 28 non-U.S. markets, aggregate earnings changes are positively associated with contemporaneous market returns. Further evidence shows that the aggregate earnings-returns relation becomes less positive in countries with more transparent financial disclosure that helps investors forecast earnings more precisely. Our result supports Sadka and Sadka’s (2009) argument that predictability of aggregate earnings leads to the negative relation between aggregate earnings and market returns in the United States.

We examine whether the average earnings surprises announced yesterday affect investors’ responses to earnings news announced today. We find that in the short window surrounding an earnings announcement, the market rewards today's earnings news that is above yesterday's average earnings surprises with a premium, consistent with yesterday's average becoming a reference point for investors to classify today's earnings news as a gain or a loss. The price premium for an above-average earnings surprise is larger when more earnings announcements are made on the same day and when investors face greater uncertainty in assessing firms’ performance. We interpret this evidence as suggesting that investors rely more on the average as a reference point when they are more likely to be subject to cognitive constraints in processing information. We also find that firms announcing above-average earnings surprises exhibit a greater abnormal trading volume, consistent with the notion that beating reference points prompts investors to trade.

We examine whether religion affects the terms of bank loans. We hypothesize that lenders value the traits of religious adherents, such as risk aversion, ethical behavior and honesty, and thus offer favorable loan terms to religious borrowers. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that corporate borrowers located in counties with a high level of religiosity are charged lower interest rates, have larger loan amounts and fewer loan covenants. These results suggest that the corporate culture of borrowers influences the availability and cost of bank loans.

We empirically examine whether adopting a uniform set of accounting standards mitigates information frictions in financial markets and facilitates market integration. Using a difference‐in‐difference design, we find that after the mandatory adoption of IFRS local stock returns incorporate more global information and at a faster speed. The effect of IFRS adoption is stronger in countries where there are larger improvements in accounting comparability and for firms with a larger increase in foreign ownership. Overall, our results suggest that accounting standards harmonization facilitates financial market integration.