Disclosure Tone and Shareholder Litigation

Shareholder Litigation and Corporate Innovation

We examine whether and to what extent shareholder litigation shapes corporate innovation. We use the staggered adoption of the universal demand (UD) laws in 23 states from 1989 to 2005. These laws impose obstacles against shareholders filing derivative lawsuits thereby significantly reducing a firm’s litigation risk. Following the passage of the UD laws, firms have invested more in R&D, produce...

Executive pay, earnings manipulation and shareholder litigation

The paper examines the role of executive compensation in inducing management behavior that triggers private securities litigation. Incentive pay in the form of options is found to increase the probability of securities class action lawsuits, holding constant a wide range of other firm characteristics. In contrast, base pay levels and share ownership do not have a significant impact on lawsuit i...

“ Does Shareholder Litigation Deter Insider Trading ? ” on

This paper examines the possible deterrent effect of actual shareholder litigation on insider trading behavior for both defendant firms and their industry peers. We construct a composite index to capture the strength of a lawsuit as reflected in its merits and the rigorousness of the litigation process. Using a large litigation sample from 1996 to 2009, we find a significant decrease in the int...

Information Disclosure, Real Investment, and Shareholder Welfare

This paper investigates the preferences of a firm’s current and future shareholders for the quality of mandated public disclosures. In contrast to earlier studies, our analysis takes into account the effect of the quality of public information on the firm’s internal investment decisions. We show that while the firm’s investment is monotonically increasing in the quality of public information, t...

Computer-Based Disclosure and Discovery in Civil Litigation