In a new paper, The Leverage Effect of Bank Disclosures, we challenge the widespread view that disclosure requirements prompt banks to reduce their risk and leverage.  That view has prevailed since at least 2004, when the Basel Committee introduced Pillar …

Despite the benefits of greater transparency, public disclosures may reveal proprietary information that ultimately harms the disclosing firm by allowing competitors to view and imitate its strategies, an activity known as “copycatting.” An SEC proposal in July 2020 to increase …

Firm managers spend substantial time meeting privately with analysts and investors (e.g., Thomson Reuters 2009; Soltes 2014; Brown, Call, Clement, and Sharp 2015; Bushee, Gerakos, and Lee 2018). As evidenced by a wealth of anecdotes and surveys, such private communications …

Commission-free trading apps like Robinhood and coordinated action by retail investors on Twitter, WallStreetBets, and other social media have created an unprecedented force on Wall Street that specifically targets short sellers. One result has been a massive run-up in the …

Pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Act, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted the conflict minerals disclosure (CMD) rule, which requires issuers to perform due diligence on “conflict minerals” – natural resources known to fuel conflicts in underdeveloped nations – that …

In 2021, 359 SPACs have raised $95 billion, surpassing the $74 billion raised by 254 SPACs in 2020. The growth in this market might mean that sophisticated investors are using a regulatory loophole to avoid IPO disclosure regulations in taking …

Each year, U.S. public companies spend millions of people-hours producing the securities disclosures that undergird public capital markets. But relatively little is known about how firms produce such consequential information, including whether they are spending too much, too little, or …

On July 10, 2020, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a proposal to increase the reporting threshold for Form 13F from $100 million to $3.5 billion. Form 13F was adopted in 1975 and required managers with more than $100 …

Climate change disclosure ranks among the priorities of Gary Gensler, the new chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. With the rapid reallocation of capital to green investments – characterized as a “tectonic shift” by BlackRock[1] and a “frenzy” …

Delegated asset management, and mutual funds in particular, have become the investment vehicle of choice for retail investors in capital markets worldwide. At the end of 2020, open-end mutual funds had a total of $63 trillion in assets under management …