In this study, we investigate the association between information technology (IT) spending and future firm performance. Critics contend that greater expenditures on IT rarely lead to superior financial results, citing studies that compare firm performance to current IT spending. But valuation and stock-return studies have found a positive association between the market value of firms and their ...

We examine the effect of intangible investment on earnings non-commonality, defined as the extent to which a firm’s earnings performance is determined by firm-specific factors versus marketand industry-wide factors. Such insight is important in determining the appropriate weight to place on each of these factors when forecasting a firm's earnings. We measure earnings non-commonality as the unex...

Withinand Cross-Firm Mobility and Earnings Growth While it is well established that both promotions within firms and mobility across firms lead to significant earnings progression, little is known about the interaction between these types of mobility. Exploiting a large Danish panel data set and controlling for unobserved individual heterogeneity, we show that cross-firm moves at the non-execut...

There is a literature that examines the statistical properties of earnings dynamics by testing heterogeneous growth against random walk. This test is of great consequence because rejection of heterogeneous growth has often been interpreted as rejection of a key role for heterogeneity in human capital investment over the life-cycle. This paper shows that optimal life-cycle investment behavior im...

My dissertation examines the stock market’s assessment of corporate mandatory and voluntary disclosure. Specifically, the first part of the dissertation investigates the stock market reaction to the mandatory segment reporting changes and the second part studies how the stock market assesses credibility of voluntary management forecasts. The dissertation is composed of two essays. The first ess...

This paper examines earnings changes surrounding firms' decisions to initiate or omit dividend payments. Firms that initiate (omit) dividend payments have positive (negative) earnings changes both before and after the dividend policy change. The subsequent earnings changes arc positively related to the dividend announcement return. Also, the stock price reactions at the announcement of subseque...

On average, straddles on individual stocks earn significantly negative returns: daily holding period return is -0.19% and weekly holding period return is -2.09%. In sharp contrast, straddle returns are significantly positive around earnings announcements: average at-the-money straddle returns from one day before earnings announcement to the earnings announcement date yields a highly significant...