Research, in Plain Language
Insights
Short, accessible summaries of my research, written for a general reader. Each insight links to a brief summary article and to the published paper.
Featured Insight
Markets & InvestorsDo Fund Managers Let Their Politics Pick Their Stocks?
Fund managers allocate more to companies led by executives who share their political affiliation. The tilt brings no performance benefit and adds idiosyncratic risk, a pattern that looks like in-group favoritism.
Do Boards Really "Cause" Better Performance?
Governance and performance evolve together over time. Once that feedback is taken into account, many apparent effects of board structure on firm value no longer hold, a caution that reshaped how the field studies governance.
How Information Travels Through Boardroom Networks
Short sellers, option traders, and institutions trade with a sharper information edge in stocks whose boards are highly connected, evidence that private information moves along director networks.
The Quiet Channels of Insider Trading
Trades that insiders route through family, trust, and foundation accounts they control are more profitable than trades in their own name, and they carry more information about what comes next.
When the Marketing Chief's Pay Package Misses the Mark
CMOs at advertising- and R&D-intensive firms command more pay, with more of it tied to the stock. And when a CMO's pay strays from what the role predicts, operating performance, earnings, and stock returns all suffer.
What Online Searches Reveal About Home Prices
Cities where people search unusually hard for real estate outperform low-search cities by as much as 8.5 percent over two years, an early demonstration of forecasting a market from digital footprints.
Why Innovative Firms Sit on So Much Cash
Research-intensive firms hold larger cash reserves to weather the uncertainty and uneven timing of innovation spending, and that behavior explains a meaningful share of the corporate cash buildup since 1980.
What a Director's Tax-Haven Ties Do to Corporate Taxes
Companies that add directors connected to island tax havens go on to greater tax avoidance, with effective tax rates one to three percentage points lower after an island director arrives.
Does Legal Know-How Change How Executives Trade?
Executives with legal training earn lower abnormal returns on their own-firm purchases than other insiders, and pull back further when SEC enforcement is intense. Legal know-how restrains rather than sharpens insider trading.
What Deflates an Overconfident CEO?
Seeing a connected CEO fired unexpectedly deflates a chief executive's own overconfidence. In the year that follows, they make fewer acquisitions, and better ones, evidence that hubris is not a fixed trait but one that events can reset.
How Skilled Immigration Moves Home Prices
Exploiting the randomness of the H-1B visa lottery, greater inflows of highly skilled immigrants predict higher local home price appreciation, strongest where land supply is tight, while rents stay largely unmoved.
How Small Data Choices Reshape M&A Findings
Keep every deal rather than just the large public ones, and textbook facts change: merger waves fade, and acquirers gain in most takeovers even as average acquirer returns declined over two decades.
When a "Friendly" Board Is a Feature, Not a Flaw
After Sarbanes-Oxley forced boards to add outsiders, many firms picked independent directors with ties to the CEO, especially where monitoring is costliest. Performance didn't suffer, suggesting friendly directors were an efficient way to absorb the cost of the new rules.
Importing Oversight from Abroad
In a large sample of non-U.S. firms, foreign directors are most valuable where legal institutions are weak, especially when the director comes from a country with stronger institutions than the firm's own.
Who Really Gains When Noncompetes Weaken?
When states make noncompetes harder to enforce, knowledge-intensive firms become more profitable and productive. The biggest gains go to the strongest firms, which attract the best talent once workers are free to move, widening the gap between leaders and laggards.
How Independent Boards Attract Foreign Capital
Foreign investors show a strong preference for firms with more independent boards, and the pull is greatest in countries with weak legal institutions, where firm-level governance substitutes for missing investor protections.
Reading the Rhythm of Insider Trades
Opportunistic insiders stretch their trading out when their edge is durable and strike quickly when it is fleeting. Accounting for that rhythm, both purchases and sales predict returns, and after-hours disclosures mark the most profitable trades.