Working Papers

These papers are working drafts of research which often appear in final form in academic journals. The published versions may differ from the working versions provided here.

SSRN Research Paper Series

The Social Science Research Network’s Research Paper Series includes working papers produced by Stanford GSB the Rock Center.

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A Re-examination of the Informational Role of Earnings Announcements

Maureen McNichols, William H. Beaver (1940–2024) , Zach Wang
April2017

No abstract available

Relating Product Prices to Long-Run Marginal Cost: Evidence from Solar Photovoltaic Modules

Stefan J. Reichelstein, Ansu Sahoo
April2017

A basic tenet of microeconomics is that for a competitive industry in equilibrium the market price of a product will be equal to its marginal cost. This paper develops a model framework and a corresponding empirical inference procedure for…

The Economic Consequences Associated with Integrated Report Quality: Capital Market and Real Effects

Mary E. Barth, Steven F. Cahan, Lily Chen, Elmar R. Venter
April2017

The International Integrated Reporting Council’s Framework identifies two goals for integrated reporting: improved information for outside providers of financial capital and better internal decision making. We extend prior research that finds a…

The Jilting Effect: Antecedents, Mechanisms, and Consequences for Preference

Aaron M. Garvey, Meg Meloy, Baba Shiv
March292017

This research explores how the experience of a jilt — the anticipation and subsequent inaccessibility of a highly desirable, aspirant option — influences preference for incumbent and non-incumbent options. We conceptualize jilting as a multi-…

From Boardroom to C-Suite: Why Would a Company Pick a Current Director as CEO?

David F. Larcker, Brian Tayan
March282017

Many observers consider the most important responsibility of the board of directors its responsibility to hire and fire the CEO. To this end, an interesting situation arises when a CEO resigns and the board chooses neither an internal nor…

Mortgage Design in an Equilibrium Model of the Housing Market

Adam M. Guren, Arvind Krishnamurthy, Timothy James McQuade
March202017

How can mortgages be redesigned to reduce housing market volatility, consumption volatility, and default? How does mortgage design interact with monetary policy? We answer these questions using a quantitative equilibrium life cycle model with…

Evolution in Value Relevance of Accounting Information

Mary E. Barth, Ken Li, Charles G. McClure
March142017

We find the value relevance of accounting information has increased between 1962 and 2014. The information we consider comprises twelve accounting amounts plus ten industry indicators. Regarding individual accounting amounts, we find that…

Alignment at Work: Using Language to Distinguish the Internalization and Self-Regulation Components of Cultural Fit in Organizations

Gabriel Doyle, Amir Goldberg, Sameer B. Srivastava, Michael C. Frank
March12017

Cultural fit is widely believed to affect the success of individuals and the groups to which they belong. Yet it remains an elusive, poorly measured construct. Recent research draws on computational linguistics to measure cultural fit but…

Asymmetric Timeliness and the Resolution of Investor Disagreement and Uncertainty at Earnings Announcements

Mary E. Barth, Wayne R. Landsman, Vivek Raval, Sean Wang
March2017

This study finds that greater asymmetric timeliness of earnings is associated with slower resolution of investor disagreement and uncertainty at earnings announcements. These findings indicate that a potential cost of asymmetric timeliness is…

Fintech, Regulatory Arbitrage, and the Rise of Shadow Banks

Greg Buchak, Gregor Matvos, Tomasz Piskorski, Amit Seru
March2017

We study the rise of fintech and non-fintech shadow banks in the residential lending market. The market share of shadow banks in the mortgage market has nearly tripled from 2007-2015. Shadow banks gained a larger market share among less…

Firm Selection and Corporate Cash Holdings

Juliane Begenau, Berardino Palazzo
March2017

Among stock market entrants, more firms over time are R&D–intensive with initially lower profitability but higher growth potential. This sample-selection effect determines the secular trend in U.S. public firms’ cash holdings. A stylized firm…

Multilateral Trade Bargaining: A First Peek at the GATT Bargaining Records

Kyle Bagwell, Robert W. Staiger, Ali Yurukoglu
March2017

This paper empirically examines recently declassified data from the GATT/WTO on tariff bargaining. Focusing on the Torquay Round (1950-51), we document six stylized facts about these interconnected high-stakes international negotiations.…

When Harry Fired Sally: The Double Standard in Punishing Misconduct

Mark L. Egan, Gregor Matvos, Amit Seru
March2017

We examine gender discrimination in the financial advisory industry. We study a less salient mechanism for discrimination, firm discipline following missteps. There are substantial differences in the punishment of misconduct across genders.…

Mutual Funds and Short-Sellers: Why does short-sale volume predict stock returns?

Salman Arif, Azi Ben-Rephael, Charles M. C. Lee
February242017

Daily directional trading by mutual funds (MFs) is highly-persistent and price-destabilizing, leading to return reversals lasting months.  This effect is distinct from the “flow-induced trading” phenomenon in prior studies.  At the same…

Big Data and Marketing Analytics in Gaming: Combining Empirical Models and Field Experimentation

Harikesh S. Nair, Sanjog Misra, William J. Hornbuckle IV, Ranjan Mishra, Anand Acharya
February222017

Efforts on developing, implementing and evaluating a marketing analytics framework at a real-world company are described. The framework uses individual-level transaction data to fit empirical models of consumer response to marketing efforts, and…

Unification versus Separation of Regulatory Institutions

Dana Foarta, Takuo Sugaya
February152017

Why might a country choose to aggregate regulatory information into a single government agency? And what might reverse this choice? We consider an oversight setting in which the institutional structure affects access to information. A regulator…

Group Affiliation and Default Prediction

William H. Beaver (1940–2024), Stefano Cascino, Maria Correia, Maureen McNichols
February2017

Using a large sample of business groups from several countries around the world, we show that group information matters for parent and subsidiary default prediction. Group firms may support each other when in financial distress. Potential group…

Nash-in-Nash Tariff Bargaining with and without MFN

Ali Yurukoglu, Kyle Bagwell, Robert Staiger
February2017

We provide an equilibrium analysis of the efficiency properties of bilateral tariff negotiations in a three-country, two-good general equilibrium model of international trade when transfers are not feasible. We consider “weak-rules” …

The Contribution of Bank Regulation and Fair Value Accounting to Procyclical Leverage

Amir Amel-Zadeh, Mary E. Barth, Wayne R. Landsman
February2017

Our analytical description of how banks’ responses to asset price changes can result in procyclical leverage reveals that for banks with a binding regulatory leverage constraint, absent differences in regulatory risk weights across assets,…

Debt Contracts in the Presence of Performance Manipulation

Ilan Guttman, Iván Marinovic
January202017

Empirical and survey evidence suggest that firms often manipulate reported numbers to avoid debt covenant violations. The theoretical literature, by and large, has ignored the consequences of this phenomenon on debt contracting. Departing from a…