In recent years, the proportion of after‐hours earnings announcements has increased to more than 40%. For after‐hours announcements, earnings‐related volume and price changes are not observed on the Compustat or I/B/E/S earnings announcement date, but one trading day later. This study demonstrates the importance of accounting for after‐hours announcements for event studies around earnings announcements.

This study examines whether cultural dimensions such as individualism and uncertainty avoidance can explain the variation in the profitability of the earnings momentum strategies in international markets. Using the time‐varying cultural indices of Tang and Koveos (2008) for 30,383 firms from 41 countries over the period 1995–2008, we show that the level of individualism in a country is positively associated and the level of uncertainty avoidance is negatively associated with earnings momentum profits. Our findings are robust to the inclusion of a comprehensive set of control variables and alternative cultural metrics. The central message is that we emphasize the necessity to go beyond the assumption of perfect rationality and to account for innate differences among international investors to explain how accounting information is incorporated into stock prices. We recommend that cultural dimensions be included in cross‐country research to account for innate differences among international investors.

This study proposes that naming a firm eponymously is a mechanism that small private firms can use to signal their superior financial performance and commitment to fulfill debt contract obligations. Using 621,614 small private firms in Europe over the period 2008–2018, we find that small private eponymous firms pay significantly lower interest on their debts and have more long-term debt than non-eponymous firms. Our findings are robust to various controls and placebo tests. Additional analyses show that eponymy lowers the cost of debt and facilitates long-term debt via reputation signaling and private information. We also document that the effect of eponymy on debt contracting is most pronounced when there is less financial development and when firms’ dependence on external financing is low, consistent with the idea that high-quality firms opt for eponymy when they consider less external financing.

This paper examines whether cultural dimensions explain the variation in corporate cash holdings around the world as well as within the United States. We establish four major findings. First, in an international setting, corporate cash holdings are negatively associated with individualism and positively associated with uncertainty-avoidance. Second, individualism and uncertainty avoidance influence the precautionary motive for holding cash. Third, firms in individualistic states in the United States hold less cash than firms in collectivistic states. Fourth, we show that individualism is positively related to the firm’s capital expenditures, acquisitions, and repurchases while uncertainty avoidance is negatively related. Our findings remain unchanged after controlling for governance factors, firm attributes, and country characteristics.