Knowledge that Transforms

We examine whether the recent regime of increased liquidity and trading activity is associated with attenuation of prominent equity return anomalies due to increased arbitrage. We find that the majority of the anomalies have attenuated and the average returns from a portfolio strategy based on prominent anomalies have approximately halved after decimalization. We provide evidence that hedge fund assets under management, short interest and aggregate share turnover have led to the decline in anomaly-based trading strategy profits in recent years. Overall, our work indicates that policies to stimulate liquidity and ameliorate trading costs improve capital market efficiency.

The recent economic downturn resulted in firms generating significant tax losses, which they risked losing if they experienced an ownership change. In response, a number of loss firms adopted poison pill plans. We document a significant negative market reaction to the announcement of 62 poison pill adoptions related to net operating losses (NOLs), suggesting that in general investors do not consider management׳s claim that the pills are adopted to preserve a valuable tax asset to be credible. However, we find cross-sectional variation consistent with investors considering whether a pill is legitimately adopted to preserve the NOL or to entrench management.

We examine the effect of large shareholders׳ ex ante selling incentives on firms׳ voluntary disclosure choices in the setting of IPO lockup expirations. We find evidence that managers delay disclosures of bad news, not for their own benefit, but to enable influential pre-IPO shareholders to sell their shares at more favorable prices. Delays are more pronounced when aggregate selling incentives are greater, when uncertainty is high, and when venture capitalists, influential investors with strong selling incentives, own more shares. Simultaneously, managers׳ disclosure decisions reflect litigation concerns; no significant delays occur when litigation risk is high or when managers trade themselves.

This study examines the association between U.S. Census industry concentration measures and the informativeness of corporate disclosure policy. We find that in more concentrated industries firms׳ management earnings forecasts are less frequent and have shorter horizons, their disclosure ratings by analysts are lower, and they have more opaque information environments, as measured by the properties of analysts׳ earnings forecasts. Also, when these firms raise funds they prefer private placements, which have minimal SEC-mandated disclosure requirements, over seasoned equity offerings. Overall, our findings suggest that firms in more concentrated industries disclose less and avoid certain financing decisions that have non-trivial disclosure implications, presumably due to proprietary costs of disclosure.

Earnings asymmetric timeliness captures both accrual and operating cash flow (CFO) asymmetric timeliness. Because recognition of operating cash flows does not reflect differential verification thresholds for recognizing unrealized gains versus losses, CFO asymmetry adds noise or bias to tests of conditional conservatism. We show that CFO asymmetry is predictable in the cross-section, and varies systematically with life-cycle characteristics. Removing CFO from earnings and using accruals-based measures of asymmetric timeliness eliminates several biases that prior studies have attributed to other sources. Moreover, accrual asymmetric timeliness varies in the cross-section as theory predicts. Going forward, we recommend researchers use accruals-based asymmetric timeliness measures when testing for conditional conservatism.

We examine the determinants and consequences of broker-hosted investor conferences. We find the number of brokers hosting a firm at conferences is positively related to institutional ownership and intangible assets, consistent with greater client demand for management access among hard-to-value firms. Younger firms and those that issue equity in the future attend more conferences, suggesting firms view conference participation as a means to enhance investor recognition. Hosting brokers are rewarded with increased commission revenue. Commission share increases by 0.61% during the conference week, with larger increases following more informative conference disclosures. Firms also benefit from conference participation. In the subsequent year, conference firms are followed by an additional 0.34 analysts, undergo a 6% reduction in bid-ask spread, and experience a 0.03 increase in Tobin׳s q.

Watts (2003) and Ball and Shivakumar (2005) argue that accounting conservatism decreases managerial incentives to make negative net present value investments. I develop and test a new hypothesis that accounting conservatism is associated with managers making less risky investments. I find that under more conservative accounting managers make less risky acquisitions and that firms with accounting-based debt covenants drive this association. This result is consistent with conservative firms avoiding risky investments because of the potential for large losses to trigger debt covenants. Conservatism reducing risk-shifting can in part explain debt holders׳ demand for conservative accounting.

Despite a substantial literature linking industry concentration, proprietary costs and disclosure, existing evidence is mixed. We discuss three challenges to the literature: lack of strong theoretical predictions, difficulty in measuring relevant aspects of industry concentration and difficulty in identifying disclosures that are likely to carry significant proprietary costs. We link each of the issues to the findings in Ali et al. (2014) and identify potential opportunities for future research.

Divergent views exist about whether boards must tradeoff advising for monitoring performance when utilizing outside versus inside directors. We suggest a dichotomous tradeoff focus underestimates outside directors׳ impact on board performance. We find outside director tenure positively associated with firm acquisition/investment policy advising performance and CEO compensation monitoring performance, suggesting that advising and monitoring do not always compete for directors׳ time. However, tenure is not a panacea – it marginally weakens financial reporting monitoring performance which is instead enhanced by outside directors׳ financial expertise. Overall, the results suggest outside director tenure and diverse expertise support both advising and monitoring performance.

This study examines whether and how the properties of corporate bond ratings change following Moody׳s and S&P׳s adoptions of the issuer-pay business model in the early 1970s. Regulators and debt market observers have criticized the issuer-pay model for creating an independence problem. However, the issuer-pay model allows for economic bonding between rating agencies and issuers through explicit contractual arrangements, which should improve the flow of nonpublic information. Using a difference-in-difference research design, I find that more optimistic ratings by issuer-pay rating agencies predict greater future profitability, differences between the ratings of issuer-pay and investor-pay rating agencies are associated with narrower secondary bond market bid-ask spreads, and that issuer-pay rating agencies become relatively more accurate and timely predictors of default compared to investor-pay agencies after the adoption of issuer-pay. These results reinterpret the recent findings of optimistic ratings by Jiang et al. (2012) as consistent with more informative bond ratings.