I examine the influence of sell-side financial analysts on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and find that firms with greater analyst coverage tend to be less socially responsible. To establish causality, I employ a difference-in-differences (DiD) technique, using brokerage closures and mergers as exogenous shocks to analyst coverage, as well as an instrumental variables approach. Both identification strategies suggest that analyst coverage has a negative causal effect on CSR. Analyst coverage seems to influence CSR activities via analysts' influence on the value of managerial ownership and discretionary spending. My findings are consistent with the view that spending on CSR is a manifestation of an agency problem and that financial analysts curb such discretionary spending by disciplining managers.

Using a large sample of US public companies, we find robust evidence that firms' payout policies, i.e., dividends and share repurchases, are significantly influenced by the policies of their industry peers. To overcome endogeneity problems, we employ instrumental variable techniques based on peers' stock price shocks. Peer influence on payouts is more pronounced among firms that face greater product market competition and operate in better information environments. With regards to dividends, firms, especially smaller and younger firms, are more sensitive to industry peers that are similar to them in size and age. However, mimicking repurchases is concentrated among large and mature firms only. Peer influence on dividends, compared to repurchases, seems more stable across firm and industry conditions. Overall, peer influence on dividends, and, to a less extent, on repurchases, is consistent with a rivalry-based theory of imitation, which posits that firms imitate peers' actions to maintain their competitive parity.

We study the impact of shareholder-initiated litigation risk on a firm's stock price crash risk. Our empirical analysis takes advantage of the staggered adoption of universal demand laws, which led to an exogenous decline in derivative litigation risk. We find that a decline in the threat of derivative litigation reduces crash risk and that information hoarding associated with earnings management is a channel through which litigation risk affects crash risk. The relationship is also moderated by how exposed firms are to the other primary form of shareholder litigation, namely securities class-action lawsuits.