U.S. equity exchanges have experienced a dramatic increase in competition from new entrants, resulting in the fragmentation of trading across venues. While market quality has generally improved over this period, we show most of the improvements have accrued to the largest stocks. We then show this bifurcation in market quality is related to the fragmentation of trading. Theoretically, more exchange competition should reduce trading costs, yet it may also increase adverse selection for liquidity providers, leading to higher spreads. We document evidence of both effects (fragmentation improves market quality for large stocks while small stocks experience relatively worse quality).

We empirically evaluate 20 prominent contributions across a broad range of areas in the empirical corporate finance literature. We assemble the necessary data and apply a single, simple econometric method, the connected-groups approach of Abowd et al. to appraise the extent to which prevailing empirical specifications explain variation of the dependent variable, differ in composition of fit arising from various classes of independent variables, and exhibit resistance to omitted variable bias and other endogeneity problems. We assess empirical performance across a wide spectrum of areas in corporate finance and indicate varying research opportunities for empiricists and theorists.

We construct a new numerical measure of earnings announcement surprises, standardized unexpected earnings call text (SUE.txt), that does not explicitly incorporate the reported earnings value. SUE.txt generates a text-based post-earnings-announcement drift (PEAD.txt) larger than the classic PEAD. The magnitude of PEAD.txt is considerable even in recent years when the classic PEAD is close to 0. We explore our text-based empirical model to show that the calls’ news content is about details behind the earnings number and the fundamentals of the firm.

Using debt crowdfunding data, we investigate whether borrowers’ writing style is associated with an online lender and borrower behaviors, whether the information contained in linguistic style can mitigate information asymmetry in peer-to-peer markets, and whether online investors correctly interpret the economic value of written texts. Peer-to-peer lenders bid more aggressively, are more likely to fund, and charge lower rates to online borrowers whose writing is more readable, more positive, and contains fewer deception cues. Moreover, such borrowers are less likely to default. Online investors, however, fail to fully account for the information contained in borrowers’ writing.

We study how the market return depends on the time of the day using E-mini S&P 500 futures actively traded around the clock. Strikingly, 4 hours around European open account for the entire average market return. This period’s returns have a 1.6 Sharpe ratio and remain high after transaction costs. Average returns are a noisy zero during the remaining 20 hours. High returns are consistent with European investors processing information accumulated overnight and thus resolving uncertainty. Indeed, uncertainty reflected by VIX futures prices rises overnight and falls around European open. The results are stronger during the 2020 COVID crisis.

We document that heightened public attention to gender equality is associated with an increase in board gender diversity. Improvements in diversity are more pronounced in firms with a corporate culture that is already sympathetic to gender equality. When public attention to gender equality increases, firms reach out to a larger pool of women, such as women without industry experience or outside their network, but female director appointments do not appear to be dilutive of the board’s skills. Instead, we observe less reliance on connections for director appointments and a decrease in the propensity to appoint connected men.

We document a new empirical phenomenon in which the aggregate positions of money managers, who are sophisticated speculators in the commodity futures market, as disclosed by the Disaggregated Commitments of Traders reports, can predict the cross section of commodity producers’ stock returns in the subsequent week. We employ a number of cross-sectional methods, including calendar-time regression analysis, single-sort, double-sort, and Fama–MacBeth regressions, to confirm the predictability results. The results are more pronounced in firms with higher information asymmetry. We thus add more empirical evidence to the literature on costly information processing, which leads to gradual information diffusion across asset markets.

Socially responsible (SR) institutions tend to focus more on the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and less on quantitative signals of value. Consistent with this difference in focus, we find that SR institutions react less to quantitative mispricing signals. Our evidence suggests that the increased focus on ESG may have influenced stock return patterns. Specifically, abnormal returns associated with these mispricing signals are greater for stocks held more by SR institutions. The link between SR ownership and the efficacy of mispricing signals only emerges in recent years with the rise of ESG investing, and is significant only when there are arbitrage-related funding constraints.

This research examines the relation between shareholder litigation and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Exploiting exogenous changes in shareholder litigation rights following the staggered adoption of universal demand laws by U.S. states and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling on securities class action lawsuits, we show that weaker shareholder litigation rights lead to lower CSR scores. Moreover, the relation is stronger for firms facing higher litigation risk, and a decreased CSR score enhances firm value. Our evidence suggests that firms engage in CSR activities partly to reduce shareholder litigation risk ex ante and mitigate its consequences ex post.

We show that political contributions are associated with reduced civil and criminal sanctions for fraudulent executives. These managers benefit more from contributions if their firm also gained from the fraud, if they occupy top positions in firms with weak boards, or if they contribute to powerful politicians. Political contributions reduce budgetary resources for government enforcers and lengthen the Securities and Exchange Commission’s case time-to-resolution. They also facilitate penalty transfer from fraudulent managers to the firm, resulting in their entrenchment and long-term destruction of shareholder value. Our findings highlight an agency cost of political contributions and a mechanism undermining the disciplining effect of regulations.

Insiders must disclose indirect trades made through accounts they control, including family, trust, retirement, and foundation accounts. Indirect trades through these accounts are more profitable than direct trades in the insider’s own account. They are also more likely to be made by “opportunistic” insiders who make nonroutine trades, or who trade profitably before earnings announcements, or who have a short investment horizon. These trades contain more predictive information about earnings surprises and large price changes, and they tend to be made by insiders at firms with high information asymmetry. Insiders also make fewer indirect trades following periods of intense regulatory scrutiny.

We zero in on the expected returns of long-short portfolios based on 204 stock market anomalies by accounting for i) effective bid–ask spreads, ii) post-publication effects, and iii) the modern era of trading technology that began in the early 2000s. Net of these effects, the average anomaly’s expected return is a measly 4 bps per month. The strongest anomalies net, at best, 10 bps after controlling for data mining. Several methods for combining anomalies net around 20 bps. Expected returns are negligible despite cost mitigations that produce impressive net returns in-sample and the omission of additional trading costs, like price impact.

This is the first comprehensive study of the distribution of voting rights to shareholders. Only individuals owning stock on a record date may vote. Firms, however, reveal record dates after the fact 91% of the time. With controversial votes, firms are more likely to do the opposite, and this tendency is associated with a lower passage rate for shareholder-initiated proposals. The New York Stock Exchange sells nonpublic record-date information to select investors. When stocks go ex vote, prices decline and trading volume surges, suggesting that activist investors are buying marginal votes. These trends are most pronounced with controversial votes.

We examine whether natural disaster experiences affect households’ portfolio choice decisions. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, we find that adversely affected households are less likely to participate in risky asset markets. After a disaster shock, households become more risk-averse and lower their expectations on future stock market returns. Such conservative portfolio choices persist even after households relocate to less disaster-prone areas, consistent with risk preferences being altered by disaster experiences. Overall, our evidence suggests that transient but salient experiences can be an important factor in explaining the limited participation puzzle.

Managers’ incentives to round up reported earnings per share (EPS) cause an underrepresentation of the number 4 in the first post-decimal digit of EPS, or “quadrophobia.” We develop a novel measure of aggressive financial reporting practices based on a firm’s history of quadrophobia. Quadrophobia is pervasive, persistent, and successfully predicts future restatements, Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement actions, and class action litigation. It is more pronounced when executive compensation is more closely tied to the stock price and when the firm anticipates violating debt covenants. Quadrophobia is especially strong when rounding-up EPS allows firms to meet analyst expectations, and investors seem not to see through this behavior.

Practitioners allocate substantial resources to technical analysis whereas academic theories of market efficiency rule out technical trading profitability. We study this long-standing puzzle by applying a diverse set of machine learning algorithms. The results show that an investor can find profitable technical trading rules using past prices, and that this out-of-sample profitability decreases through time, showing that markets have become more efficient over time. In addition, we find that the evolutionary genetic algorithm’s attitude in not shying away from erroneous predictions gives it an edge in building profitable strategies compared to the strict loss-minimization-focused machine learning algorithms.

We document distinctly different clientele effects on investor attention and return responses to information. Macro news crowds out retail investor attention to firms’ earnings news by 49%. For stocks with high retail ownership, macro news dampens earnings announcement returns by 17% and substantially increases post-announcement drift, especially during high VIX periods. In contrast, macro news increases institutional investor attention to scheduled earnings announcements but not their attention to unscheduled analysts’ forecast revisions. The findings confirm the implications of rational inattention models and highlight the importance of considering clientele effects in understanding the effect of news on attention and asset prices.

I examine the impact of the opioid epidemic on subprime auto lending. Using a difference-in-differences framework, I find that county-level increases in opioid abuse cause an increase in loan defaults. Moreover, I find that traditional credit scoring attributes (e.g., FICO score) fail to predict loan performance deterioration associated with opioid addiction. The weak predictive performance of traditional credit measures and the resulting higher default rates generate a negative externality for borrowers in opioid-afflicted areas, as evidenced by 5.7% higher loan costs for subprime borrowers.

While corporate social responsibility by firms aims at improving welfare for different social groups, whether it achieves this is often difficult to measure. After Apr. 2018 protests, Starbucks enacted policies that anybody could sit in their stores and use the bathroom without making a purchase. Using anonymized cellphone location data, we estimate this led to a 7.0% decline in attendance relative to other nearby coffee shops. The effect is 84% larger near homeless shelters and larger for Starbucks’ wealthier customers. The average time spent per visit declined by 4.1%. Public urination citations decreased near Starbucks locations, but other minor crimes were unchanged.

Some U.S. firms have women directors and executives, while many do not. We seek to explain this heterogeneity. Using U.S. Census data from 1900, we find that U.S. counties with populations originating from countries with stronger gender-egalitarian beliefs have more women in the labor market and in STEM occupations, and lower gender-pay gaps. Firms headquartered in such counties have more women executives and directors. When firms move to more gender-egalitarian counties, the representation of women on board increases. Our findings are consistent with the idea that inherited beliefs about gender roles impact the labor market and corporate leadership.