We examine the impact of securities class action lawsuits on firms' investment and financing choices. Firms which overinvest are more likely to be sued. After a lawsuit, firms on average decrease overinvestment activity, and they decrease payouts while increasing leverage, cash holdings, and firm-specific risk. Additionally, we find some evidence that firms decrease diversification post-suit. Overall, these changes are consistent with a post-suit decrease in agency problems which lead to significant changes in real investment policies. The evidence is consistent with the notion that security class action lawsuits draw attention to agency problems which are then at least partly resolved.

We propose a parsimonious, comprehensive proxy for innovations in limited arbitrage: innovations in ETFs’ premium. Consistent with a common component, we confirm limited arbitrage factors, LAFs, constructed from ETFs’ premium innovations spanning four asset classes are correlated. Further, we find that equity LAFs are negatively priced in the cross-section of stock returns. Our pricing tests also confirm that LAFs provide pricing information beyond well-known limits of arbitrage: illiquidity and idiosyncratic volatility. Overall, our findings suggest that limited arbitrage risk is priced and LAF is a relevant risk-factor.

We examine the effects of executive compensation and investor protection on payout policy in Europe. We find a negative (positive) relationship between both option and restricted stock compensation and dividends (repurchases). However, when the incentive compensation is dividend protected, dividend payouts increase. Firms in weak investor protection countries pay higher dividends consistent with maintaining a reputation for distributing excess free cash flows. However, growth firms in weak investor protection countries reduce dividends (increase repurchases) in relation to increases in equity-incentive compensation. Our results are consistent with growth firms in weak investor protection countries using equity incentives as a substitute for dividends to reduce agency costs.

We examine the impact of influenza on stock markets. For the United States, a higher incidence of flu is associated with decreased trading, decreased volatility, decreased returns, and higher bid-ask spreads. Consistent with the flu affecting institutional investors and market makers, the decrease in trading activity and volatility is primarily driven by the incidence of influenza in the greater New York City area. However, the effect of the flu on bid-ask spreads and returns is related to the incidence of flu nationally. International data confirm our findings of a decrease in trading activity and returns when flu incidence is high.