ABSTRACT We examine whether voluntary disclosure is associated with incentives for firms to collude. Public disclosure can facilitate collusion by aiding with coordination and monitoring for defections. Using common ownership (investors holding stock in competing firms) to identify reduced incentives to compete, we find a positive association between public disclosure and these incentives. We also find that common ownership is positively associated with measures of disclosure that are likely to facilitate tacit collusion and that this association is stronger in industries where collusion is easier. Our study expands the literature on disclosure and competition among firms by showing that public disclosure is positively associated with incentives for tacit collusion. This finding is consistent with managers facilitating anticompetitive outcomes using voluntary disclosure.

ABSTRACT Recent regulatory amendments aimed at modernizing disclosures and enhancing their usefulness focus on repetition and interactivity within firms’ disclosure filings. We use two experiments to provide evidence on the effects of disclosure repetition (repeating of information in the filing) and disclosure interactivity (user involvement in directing the form or content of the information displayed) on investors’ information processing and investment judgments. Results show that repetition increases investors’ processing of repeated information, consistent with the informational role of repetition documented in prior research. In contrast, repetition reduces investors’ processing of other, nonrepeated information when the filing is less interactive. This evidence corroborates concerns that repetition can obscure value‐relevant information from investors. However, we find that more interactive disclosures mitigate this harmful effect of repetition on investors’ processing of nonrepeated information. Further, more interactive disclosures lead to deeper overall processing of both repeated and nonrepeated information, rather than more interactive disclosures redirecting investors’ attention and processing away from repeated information. Thus, our evidence suggests that disclosure interactivity is an important disclosure attribute that counteracts the potentially harmful effects of repetition on investors' processing of nonrepeated information, while preserving repetition's informational role.

Abstract We study a coordination game among agents in a network. The agents choose whether to take action (e.g. adopting a new technology) in an uncertain environment that yields increasing value in the actions of neighbours. We develop an algorithm that fully partitions the network into communities (coordination sets) within which agents have the same propensity to adopt. Our main finding is that a novel measure of network connectedness, which we term “social connectedness,” determines the propensity to adopt for each agent. Social connectedness captures both the number of links each agent has within her community (interconnectedness) as well as the number of links she has with members of other communities who have a higher propensity to adopt (embeddedness). There is a single coordination set if and only if the network is balanced—that is, the average degree of each subnetwork is no larger than the average degree of the network. Finally, we demonstrate that contagion is localized within coordination sets, such that a shock to an agent uniformly affects this agent and all members of her coordination set but has no impact on the other agents in the network.

Abstract We investigate how ownership structure influences operating performance and implied agency costs. Our sample includes over 42,000 U.K. private and public firms. We document several new results of considerable economic significance relating to i) horizontal agency costs arising from unequal ownership within private firms, ii) amplification of agency costs from joint presence within the same firm of horizontal agency problems and vertical agency problems arising from separation of ownership and control, iii) mitigation in agency costs wrought by a second large shareholder, iv) impact of complex ownership structures, and v) agency cost differences between public firms and comparable private firms.

This paper analyzes the costs and benefits of a no-fault-default debt structure as an alternative to the typical bankruptcy process. We show that the deadweight costs of bankruptcy can be avoided or substantially reduced through no-fault-default debt, which permits a relatively seamless transfer of ownership from shareholders to bondholders in certain states of the world. We show that potential costs introduced by this scheme due to risk shifting can be attenuated via convertible debt, and we discuss the relationship of this to bail-in debt and contingent convertible (CoCo) debt for financial institutions. We then explore how, despite the advantages of no-fault-default debt, there may still be a functional role for the bankruptcy process to efficiently allow the renegotiation of labor contracts in certain cases. In sharp contrast to the human-capital-based theories of optimal capital structure in which the renegotiation of labor contract in bankruptcy is a cost associated with leverage, we show that it is a benefit. The normative implication of our analysis is that no-fault-default debt, when combined with specific features of the bankruptcy process, may reduce the deadweight costs associated with bankruptcy. We discuss how an orderly process for transfer of control and a predetermined admissibility of renegotiation of labor contracts can be a useful tool for resolving financial institution failure without harming financial stability.

We find that Chinese-listed firms are more likely to pay dividends and implement larger payout ratios when their directors have foreign experience. This finding remains after using various methods to address potential endogeneity concerns. The positive association is stronger for low-growth firms, non-state-owned firms, and when directors obtain foreign experience in countries with stronger investor protection. The effect of directors' foreign experience on dividend payouts is also more pronounced for independent directors than for executive directors. Directors with foreign experience appear to overcome the weak investor protection environment as the effects are more pronounced among poorly governed firms and before the regulatory dividend reforms in 2013. Overall, our findings identify a mechanism through which better governance practices are propagated.

We examine how societal secrecy affects the underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs). Using a large sample of 18,304 IPOs across 38 countries, we find robust evidence that IPO underpricing is positively related to societal secrecy. Additional analyses reveal that investor protection, market openness, and third-party certification moderate the effect of societal secrecy on IPO underpricing. We find that societal secrecy influences IPO underpricing through the information asymmetry, demand for control, and information cascade channels. Collectively, we show that societal secrecy exerts a strong influence on IPO underpricing globally.

Abstract We document that the relation between firm value and the use of takeover defenses is positive for young firms but becomes negative as firms age. This value reversal pattern reflects specific changes in the costs and benefits of takeover defenses as firms age and arises because defenses are sticky and rarely removed. Firms can attenuate the value reversal by removing defenses, but do so only when the defenses become very costly and adjustment costs are low. The value reversal explains previous mixed evidence about takeover defenses and implies that firm age proxies for takeover defenses’ heterogeneous impacts on firm value. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

We investigate the impact of job loss on crime and the mitigating role of unemployment benefits, exploiting detailed individual‐level data linking employment careers, criminal records, and welfare registries for the universe of male workers in Brazil. The probability of committing crimes increases on average by 23% for workers displaced by mass layoffs, and by slightly less for their cohabiting sons. Using causal forests, we show that the effect is entirely driven by young and low‐tenure workers, while there is no heterogeneity by education and income. Regression discontinuity estimates indicate that unemployment benefit eligibility completely offsets potential crime increases upon job loss, but this effect vanishes completely immediately after benefit expiration. Our findings point to liquidity constraints and psychological stress as the main drivers of criminal behavior upon job loss, while substitution between time on the job and leisure does not seem to play an important role.

This study examines whether the availability of traded credit default swaps (CDS) influences the referenced firms' incentive to smooth their performance. We show that with the introduction of CDS trading on their debt, CDS-referenced firms (CDS firms) lower both their earnings and cash flow volatility. Specifically, earnings volatility declines faster than cash flow volatility, which is consistent with income smoothing behavior. The effect of CDS trading on performance smoothing is qualitatively similar under different market and economic conditions. These results support the notion that CDS firms smooth their performance to avoid renegotiation with CDS-protected creditors. We also find that CDS firms smooth their cash flows via hedging with derivatives and smooth their earnings using discretionary accruals after the inception of CDS trading.