Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) Form 8‐K filings provide a venue where managers release information to the market as a whole that they designate as being material . Using this setting, we study trading patterns immediately prior to the public disclosure of material information. We offer three main results. First, using both intraday and daily trading data, we find abnormal trading volume of 21 percent (13 percent) in the hour (day) prior to the public disclosure, respectively. Second, we find that this pre‐disclosure abnormal trading volume is concentrated in firms that are smaller, have more growth opportunities, issue fewer voluntary disclosures, and have weaker external monitoring. Finally, we find that this pre‐disclosure volume is concentrated in subsamples in which the information relates to a firm's material contracts, a firm holds investor/analyst conferences, and there is insider trading activity in a firm's shares. Our results do not concentrate in a small number of firms or industries, and do not appear to be explained by the form through which managers first release the material information (e.g., Form 8‐K, press release, website posting, or social media). Our results are also robust to controlling for the firm's other filings and peer filings that occur around the disclosure. Overall, the trading patterns we document may show that, inconsistent with the spirit of Reg FD, a subset of investors trade on information managers deem material prior to its broad, public release.

Over the past three decades, academic research has sought to understand how cash shortfalls impact a firm's ability to take all available value‐increasing investment projects. We investigate whether firms facing greater financing constraints turn to tax strategies that generate lower cash effective tax rates (ETRs) to mitigate the adverse effect of these financing constraints. We use the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA 2006) as an exogenous shock to financing constraints for pension firms, but not for other firms. Using a difference‐in‐differences research design, we predict and find that pension firms experience a decrease in their cash ETRs by 1.8%–2.4% after the PPA 2006, relative to other firms. These cash tax savings mitigate the investment shortfall brought about by financing constraints by 19%. We also predict and find that the decline in cash ETRs is greater among firms more adversely affected by the PPA 2006. Our paper sheds light on the direction, causality, and economic magnitude of the association between financing constraints and tax planning activities. We also provide insight into the role of tax planning activities within firms' broader corporate business strategies in responding to financing constraints.

Cash flow hedge derivatives are an example of an economic transaction that is not fully portrayed in the financial statements in two key ways. First, while changes in the fair value of the derivative are recorded at each reporting date, changes in the value of the underlying purchase or sale commitment are not recorded or disclosed until that transaction occurs. Therefore, until the purchase or sale occurs, the financial statements only portray half of the economic transaction. Second, the gains/losses associated with these derivatives provide an inverse signal about the persistence of firm profitability. We document a method by which financial statement users can partially adjust for these distortions and find evidence that debt investors incorporate information conveyed by cash flow hedge gains/losses into their pricing of new debt issuances. We also find evidence that credit analysts incorporate these adjustments into their firm‐level credit ratings but are unable to find consistent evidence of similar adjustments to credit ratings on new debt issuances. Overall, our results suggest that a subset of sophisticated investors (i.e., those in public debt markets) appear to incorporate information from cash flow hedge accounting into their assessments of firm risk, and that users may benefit from enhanced disclosure about the amount and timing of a firm's future transactions that are exposed to foreign currency, interest rate, or commodity price risk as well as the amount and timing of derivatives that protect the firm from those risks.

Prior research finds that unrealized gains/losses on cash flow hedges are negatively associated with future earnings, and that investors and analysts fail to anticipate this association. These studies speculate that this mispricing is due to either poor derivatives disclosures or the accounting model for cash flow hedges. We examine whether enhanced mandatory derivatives disclosures set forth in FAS 161 improve users' understanding of firms' hedging activities and offer three main findings. First, we find that this mispricing does not persist after FAS 161. Second, we find that the correction of mispricing is greatest when disclosure might help investors most. Finally, we find that analyst forecast accuracy improves after FAS 161. Overall, our results suggest that the enhanced mandatory derivative disclosures required by FAS 161 improved users' understanding of the effects of derivative and hedging activities on future firm performance and firm value—and consequently mitigated investor mispricing.