Browsing HBS Scholarly Articles by Author "Wang, Charles"

Now showing items 1-20 of 20

    • Accounting Data, Market Values, and the Cross Section of Expected Returns Worldwide 

      Chattopadhyay, Akash; Lyle, Matthew R.; Wang, Changyi Chang-Yi (2015-06-08)
      Under fairly general assumptions, expected stock returns are a linear combination of two accounting fundamentals―book to market and ROE. Empirical estimates based on this relation predict the cross section of out-of-sample ...

    • Boardroom Centrality and Firm Performance 

      Larcker, David F.; So, Eric C.; Wang, Changyi Chang-Yi (2013)
      Firms with central or well-connected boards of directors earn superior risk-adjusted stock returns. Initiating a long position in the most central firms and a short position in the least central firms earns an average ...

    • Can Staggered Boards Improve Value? Causal Evidence from Massachusetts 

      Daines, Robert; Li, Shelley Xin; Wang, Charles (Wiley, 2021-09-14)
      We study the effect of staggered boards (SBs) using a quasi-experiment: a 1990 law that imposed an SB on all Massachusetts-incorporated firms. The law led to an increase in Tobin's Q, investment in CAPEX and R&D, patents, ...

    • Core Earnings: New Data and Evidence 

      Rouen, Ethan; So, Eric C.; Wang, Charles (Elsevier BV, 2021-12)
      Using a novel dataset, we show that components of firms' GAAP earnings stemming from ancillary business activities or transitory shocks are significant in frequency and magnitude. These components have grown over time and ...

    • The Cross Section of Expected Holding Period Returns and Their Dynamics: A Present Value Approach 

      Lyle, Matthew R.; Wang, Changyi Chang-Yi (Elsevier, 2015)
      We provide a tractable model of firm-level expected holding period returns using two firm fundamentals—book-to-market ratio and ROE—and study the cross-sectional properties of the model-implied expected returns. We find ...

    • Economic Uncertainty and Earnings Management 

      Stein, Luke C.D.; Wang, Changyi Chang-Yi (2016-03-30)
      In the presence of managerial short-termism and asymmetric information about skill and effort provision, firms may opportunistically shift earnings from uncertain to more certain times. We document that firms report more ...

    • Evaluating Firm-Level Expected-Return Proxies 

      Lee, Charles M. C.; So, Eric C.; Wang, Changyi Chang-Yi (2014-11-06)
      We develop and implement a rigorous analytical framework for empirically evaluating the relative performance of firm-level expected-return proxies (ERPs). We show that superior proxies should closely track true expected ...

    • Expected Stock Returns Worldwide: A Log-Linear Present-Value Approach 

      Chattopadhyay, Akash; Lyle, Matthew R.; Wang, Charles (American Accounting Association, 2021-04-08)
      This study provides the first large-scale study of the performance of expected-return proxies (ERPs) internationally. Analyst-forecast-based ICCs are sparsely populated and not robustly associated with future returns. ...

    • Golden Parachutes and the Wealth of Shareholders 

      Bebchuk, Lucian Arye; Cohen, Alma; Wang, Changyi Chang-Yi (2014)
      Golden parachutes (GPs) have attracted substantial attention from investors and public officials for more than two decades. We find that GPs are associated with higher expected acquisition premiums and that this association ...

    • Governance through Shame and Aspiration: Index Creation and Corporate Behavior in Japan 

      Chattopadhyay, Akash; Shaffer, Matthew D.; Wang, Changyi Chang-Yi (2017-09-08)
      We study how a stock index can affect corporate behavior by serving as a source of prestige. After decades of low corporate profitability in Japan, the JPX-Nikkei400 index was introduced in 2014. The index selected 400 ...

    • How Do Staggered Boards Affect Shareholder Value? Evidence from a Natural Experiment 

      Cohen, Alma; Wang, Changyi Chang-Yi (Elsevier, 2013)
      The well-established negative correlation between staggered boards (SBs) and firm value could be due to SBs leading to lower value or a reflection of low-value firms' greater propensity to maintain SBs. We analyze the ...

    • How Much Should We Trust Staggered Difference-in-Differences Estimates? 

      Baker, Andrew C.; Larcker, David F.; Wang, Charles (Elsevier BV, 2022-05)
      We explain when and how staggered difference-in-differences regression estimators, commonly applied to assess the impact of policy changes, are biased. These biases are likely to be relevant for a large portion of research ...

    • Measurement Errors of Expected Returns Proxies and the Implied Cost of Capital 

      Wang, Charles Chang-Yi (2013-05-22)
      This paper presents a methodology to study implied cost of capital's (ICC) measurement errors, which are relatively unstudied empirically despite ICCs' popularity as proxies of expected returns. By applying it to the popular ...

    • Reexamining staggered boards and shareholder value 

      Cohen, Alma; Wang, Changyi Chang-Yi (Elsevier BV, 2017)
      Cohen and Wang (2013) (CW2013) provide evidence consistent with market participants perceiving staggered boards to be value reducing. Amihud and Stoyanov (2016) (AS2016) contests these findings, reporting some specifications ...

    • Relative Performance Benchmarks: Do Boards Follow the Informativeness Principle? 

      Ma, Paul; Shin, Jee Eun; Wang, Changyi Chang-Yi (2017-03-23)
      Relative TSR (rTSR) is increasingly used by market participants to judge and incentivize managerial performance. We evaluate the efficacy, reasons, and implications of firms' benchmarks in rTSR-based contracts. Although ...

    • The Search for Benchmarks: When Do Crowds Provide Wisdom? 

      Lee, Charles M.C.; Ma, Paul; Wang, Changyi Chang-Yi (2014-11-06)
      We compare the performance of a comprehensive set of alternative peer identification schemes used in economic benchmarking. Our results show the peer firms identified from aggregation of informed agents' revealed choices ...

    • Search-Based Peer Firms: Aggregating Investor Perceptions Through Internet Co-Searches 

      Lee., Charles M.C.; Ma, Paul; Wang, Changyi Chang-Yi (Elsevier, 2015)
      Applying a "co-search" algorithm to Internet traffic at the SEC's EDGAR website, we develop a novel method for identifying economically-related peer firms and for measuring their relative importance. Our results show that ...

    • Short-Termism and Capital Flows 

      Fried, Jesse M.; Wang, Changyi Chang-Yi (2017-01-18)
      During 2007–2016, S&P 500 firms distributed to shareholders $7 trillion via buybacks and dividends, over 96% of their aggregate net income, prompting claims that "short-termism" is impairing firms' ability to invest and ...

    • Staggered Boards and Shareholder Value: A Reply to Amihud and Stoyanov 

      Cohen, Alma; Wang, Changyi Chang-Yi (2016-03-03)
      In a paper published in the JFE in 2013, we provided evidence that market participants perceive staggered boards to be on average value-reducing. In a recent response paper, Amihud and Stoyanov (2015) “contest” our results. ...

    • The Sustainable Corporate Governance Initiative in Europe 

      Roe, Mark; Spamann, Holger; Fried, Jesse; Wang, Charles (2021)
      In July 2020, the European Commission published the “Study on directors’ duties and sustainable corporate governance” by EY. The Report purports to find evidence of debilitating short-termism in EU corporate governance and ...