Publications

In this overview article, we summarize recent research in progress that examines the potential and limitations of non-violent civil disobedience through the lens of the evolution of an iconic success: India’s struggle for democratic self-…

On March 5, biotechnology company Chimerix refused to provide a potentially life-saving drug to 7-year old Josh Hardy who was battling cancer. The drug had not yet received FDA approval, and the company had discontinued its “…

The relationship between organizational culture and financial performance remains elusive even though researchers have studied it for some time. Early research suggested that a strong culture that aligns members’ behavior with organizational…

The popularity of the social networking site Facebook (FB) has grown unprecedented during the past five years. The research question investigated is whether posts on FB would also be applicable for the prediction of users’ psychological traits…

Net income adjustments resulting from mandatory 2005 IFRS adoption in Europe are value relevant for financial and non-financial firms. Differences in relevance of the aggregate adjustment and adjustments related to several IFRS standards, for…

I study public liquidity provision in a liquidity-constrained economy in which government policy is decided by politicians subject to rent-seeking and electoral constraints. Public interventions are modeled as a choice between direct fiscal…

We evaluate the performance of private equity (PE) funds, using a variance decomposition model to separate skill from luck. We find a large amount of long-term persistence, and skilled PE firms outperform by 7% to 8% annually. But this…

Debt maturity influences debt overhang, the reduced incentive for highly levered borrowers to make real investments because some value accrues to debt. Reducing maturity can increase or decrease overhang even when shorter term debt’s value…

Previous research suggests that people draw inferences about their attitudes and preferences based on their own thoughtfulness. The current research explores how observing other individuals make decisions more or less thoughtfully can shape…

Folk wisdom suggests playing hard to get is an effective strategy in romantic attraction. However, prior research has yielded little support for this belief. This article seeks to reconcile these contrasting views by investigating how 2…

This article discusses the role of GAAP accounting from an investor’s perspective.  For all its flaws, a historical-based system of accounting is vital to the investment community, and I believe moves toward fair value accounting should…

We examine the financial health and performance of reverse mergers (RMs) that became active on U.S. stock markets between 2001 and 2010, particularly those from China (around 85% of all foreign RMs). As a group, RMs are small, early-stage…

Over the last few decades, researchers have taken a thorough and critical look at corporate governance from various perspectives. For the most part, they have found that structural features of corporate governance have little or no relation to…

We find that regulators can implement identical rules inconsistently due to differences in their institutional design and incentives, and this behavior may adversely impact the effectiveness with which regulation is implemented. We study…

A study by Stanford, the Institute of Executive Development, and The Conference Board reveals a critical stumbling block in the…

Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger is well known as the partner of CEO Warren Buffett and also for his advocacy of “multi-disciplinary thinking” — the application of fundamental concepts from across various academic disciplines to…

We describe a novel currency investment strategy, the ‘dollar carry trade,’ which delivers large excess returns, uncorrelated with the returns on well-known carry trade strategies. Using a no-arbitrage model of exchange rates we show that these…

We empirically investigate the effect of uncertainty on corporate hiring. Using novel data from the labor market for MBA graduates, we show that uncertainty regarding how well job candidates fit with a firm’s industry hinders hiring, and that…