We ask what determines the profitability of candlestick trading strategies. Is it the definition of trend and/or the holding strategy that one uses in candlestick charting analysis? To answer this, we systematically consider three definitions of trend and four holding strategies. Applying candlestick trading strategies to the DJIA component data, we find that regardless of which definition of trend is used, eight three-day reversal patterns with a Caginalp–Laurent holding strategy are profitable when we set the transaction cost at 0.5% and after we account for data-snooping bias, while the patterns with a Marshall–Young–Rose holding strategy are not profitable. For sensitivity analysis, we also find that our results are not qualitatively changed on a lower transaction cost of 0.1%, or when we conduct the subsample analyses based on three equal periods and three distinct market conditions. When considering a more volatile market, evidence in favor of candlestick trading strategies is strengthened.

This study proposes chief executive officer (CEO) overconfidence to be an alternative explanation to corporate cash holdings. We find positive effects of CEO overconfidence on the level of cash holdings and the value of cash, which are mainly due to the investment environments faced by firms. The positive effects of CEO overconfidence on cash holdings level and cash value are barely affected by the traditional motives of cash holdings based on trade-off and agency theories. The analysis of cash sources further explains why firms with overconfident CEOs can aggressively pursue risky investments and maintain large cash holdings at the same time. Although the prior literature indicates that overconfident CEOs tend to avoid equity issues for their capital investments, the contribution to cash savings from equity is higher than that from debt. Additional robustness tests also support our empirical findings.

This paper reexamines the explanatory power of Taylor rule fundamentals for real exchange rate determination. We assume the agents know the time-varying parameters in central bank policy rules. The empirical results suggest that a monetary policy rule with regime switching is better able to explain the real Deutschemark/dollar exchange rate from 1976 to 1998 compared with a fixed-regime monetary policy rule. The findings show the importance of accounting for the expectation formation effect in changing policy rules as emphasized by the Lucas critique. Ignoring these effects can undermine the value of the rational expectations models.

This paper hypothesizes and finds that firms audited by city‐industry specialists have more timely disclosures of contingent losses from litigation when there is no news coverage relating to the legal case prior to management disclosures. A closer examination reveals that this result is explained by the specialist auditors’ prior experience auditing clients in the same office and industry who are involved with litigation. In our setting, disclosures of litigation‐related contingent losses, we identify two kinds of knowledge generated from experience: industry knowledge and litigation knowledge. Industry knowledge helps auditors detect and correct poor implementation of guidance for litigation loss contingency disclosures. Auditors gain litigation knowledge from auditing clients in a given office and industry with previous involvement as defendants. Thus, the two types of knowledge interact in their effects on reporting outcomes.

This study explores the influence of chief executive officer (CEO) overconfidence on acquirer bondholder wealth in mergers from 1994 to 2019. We find that CEO overconfidence benefits acquirer bondholders. Overconfident CEOs are likely to choose targets with lower return correlations rather than targets with lower risk than acquirers. We further show there is a positive wealth effect during announcement periods as well as firm risk reduction and a positive long-run bond market reaction subsequent to merger completion when overconfident acquirers merge with targets that are less correlated. Overall, the coinsurance effect dominates the liquidity effect on overconfident acquirer bondholder wealth during a merger.

We document several facts about corporate debt maturity: (1) debt maturity is pro-cyclical, (2) higher-beta firms tend to have longer maturity, and (3) shorter maturity amplifies the sensitivity of credit spreads to aggregate shocks. We present a dynamic capital structure model that explains these facts. In the model, leverage and maturity choices are interdependent, which reflect the tradeoffs of liquidity discounts of long-term debt, repayment risks of short-term debt, and the benefit of short-term debt as a commitment device for timely leverage adjustments. Additionally, the model helps quantify the effects of maturity dynamics on the term structure of credit spreads.

While firm-initiated compensation recovery (or clawback) provisions are gaining popularity and the recently enacted Dodd-Frank Act seeks to make the clawback of erroneously awarded compensation mandatory for all listed companies, little is known about their effectiveness. We find that the incidence of accounting restatements declines after firms initiate such provisions. In addition, we show that investors and auditors view such provisions as associated with increased accounting quality and lower audit risk. Specifically, we find that firms' earnings response coefficients increase after the adoption of clawback provisions. Further, for firms that adopt clawbacks, auditors are less likely to report material internal control weaknesses, charge lower audit fees, and issue audit reports with a shorter lag.

Firms can effectively stave off outside takeover bids using private investments in public equity (PIPEs) when they face strong takeover pressure. Greater takeover pressure makes PIPE issuers more likely to grant investors large blocks of shares, price discounts, generous dividends, and board seats. Takeover pressure also encourages issuers to place more shares with friendly investors such as managerial investors and strategic alliance investors. The evidence is consistent with the regular methods of the white squire defense. PIPEs can be a preferred method in the choice of a white squire defense when poorly performing and highly overleveraged firms face severe takeover pressure. There is a negative relation between takeover probability and post-issue performance of issuers, which supports the managerial entrenchment hypothesis over the shareholder interest hypothesis. Therefore PIPEs can increase, not mitigate, agency problems.

In this paper, we propose a new spot-futures hedging method that determines the optimal hedge ratio by minimizing the riskiness of hedged portfolio returns, where the riskiness is measured by the index of Aumann and Serrano (2008). Unlike the risk measurements widely used in the literature, the riskiness index employed in our method satisfies monotonicity with respect to stochastic dominance. We also provide an empirical example to demonstrate how to estimate and test this optimal hedge ratio in equity data by the method-of-moments.