Research

Working Papers

1. Unveiling the Role of Director-Specific Quality in Creating Firm Value, with Dipesh Bhattarai and Tracie Woidtke.

• Do Individual Directors Matter?, November 17, 2022, Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog.

2. Silencing Salary Talk: How Salary History Bans Affect Corporate Investment and Performance, with Wenxuan Sun.

3. When Speaking Freely Pays: Anti-SLAPP Laws and Firms’ Cost of Equity, with Scott Guernsey and Cheng Yan.

• When Free Speech Lowers the Cost of Equity, July 30, 2025, Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog.

Publications

1. Marijuana Legalization and Firms' Cost of Equity, 2025, with Scott Guernsey and Cheng Yan, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Forthcoming.

• The Impact of Marijuana Legalization on Firms' Cost of Equity, July 11, 2025, Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog.

2. Thirty Years of Change: The Evolution of Classified Boards, 2024, with Scott Guernsey, Feng Guo, and Tingting Liu, Journal of Finance, Forthcoming.

• How Classified Boards Have Evolved Over the Last Thirty Years, December 5, 2024, Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog.

• Data: Staggered Board Classification. This dataset contains the staggered board status for over 15,000 firms (over 149,000 firm-year observations) from 1991 to 2023. 

3. Regional Clusters and Product Market Outcomes During Turbulent Times, 2024, with Sandy Klasa and Hernan Ortiz-Molina, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Forthcoming.

4. The Effect of Labor Mobility on Corporate Investment and Performance over the Business Cycle, 2024, with John (Jianqiu) Bai and Ashleigh Eldemire, Journal of Banking and Finance 166, 107258. 

• • Data: State-Level Covenants-not-to-Compete Enforcement Index. This dataset extends the state-level CNC enforcement index from Garmaise (JLEO, 2011) and Ertimur, Rawson, Rogers, and Warren (JAR, 2018) through 2018.

5. Financial Disclosure Transparency and Employee Wages, 2022, with John (Jianqiu) Bai and Sarah Shaikh, The Financial Review 57, 751-773.

6. Geographic Peer Effects in Management Earnings Forecasts, 2022, with Dawn Matsumoto and Sarah Shaikh, Contemporary Accounting Research 39, 2023-2057.

7. Blood in the Water: The Value of Antitakeover Provisions During Market Shocks, 2022, with Scott Guernsey and Simone M. Sepe, Journal of Financial Economics 143, 1070-1096.  

• Replication Data and Code

• Data: Staggered Board Classification: Contains staggered board status for over 120,000 firm-year observations beginning in 1994. 

• Blood in the Water: The Value of Antitakeover Provisions During Market Shocks, January 18, 2022, Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance.

8. Management Practices and Mergers and Acquisitions, 2022, with John (Jianqiu) Bai and Wang Jin, Management Science 68, 2141-2165.

1. • • Research: How Management Practices Impact M&A Outcomes, November 2, 2021, Harvard Business Review.

     • Managing to Perfection, 2019, Amy Carroll, Private Equity Findings 15, 16-23. 

     • How M&A Can Lead to Better Management, July 17, 2018, Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog. 

9. Economic Downturns and the Informativeness of Management Earnings Forecasts,  2021, with David Maslar and Sarah Shaikh, Journal of Accounting Research 59, 1481-1520.  

• Replication Data and Code

• Economic Downturns and the Informativeness of Management Earnings Forecasts, October 15, 2021, Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog.

10. Asset Redeployability and the Choice between Bank Debt and Public Debt, 2020, with Haosi Chen and David Maslar, Journal of Corporate Finance 64, 101678.

11. Employment Protection, Investment, and Firm Growth, 2020, with John (Jianqiu) Bai and Douglas Fairhurst, Review of Financial Studies 33, 644-688.

• Data: Historical Headquarters: Contains hand-collected historical headquarters data going back to 1969 for the near universe of CRSP-Compustat firms (over 100,000 firm-year observations).

1. • Research: How Employee Protections Affect Investment and Growth, September 16, 2019, Harvard Business Review.

12. Protection of Trade Secrets and Capital Structure Decisions, 2018, with Sandy Klasa, Hernán Ortiz-Molina, and Shweta Srinivasan, Journal of Financial Economics 128, 266-286. 

13. CEO Turnovers and Disruptions in Customer-Supplier Relationships, 2017, with Vincent Intintoli and Sarah Shaikh, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 56, 2565-2610. 

14. Firing Costs and Capital Structure Decisions, 2016, Journal of Finance 71, 2239-2286. 

15. Property Crime, Earnings Variability, and the Cost of Capital, 2016, with James Brushwood, Dan Dhaliwal, and Douglas Fairhurst, Journal of Corporate Finance 40, 142-173. 

16. Customer Concentration Risk and the Cost of Equity Capital, 2016, with Dan Dhaliwal, J. Scott Judd, and Sarah Shaikh, Journal of Accounting and Economics 61, 23-48. 

17. CEO Age and the Riskiness of Corporate Policies, 2014, Journal of Corporate Finance 25, 251-273. 

• Best paper award in corporate finance, 2013 Midwest Finance Association Annual Meeting