Using labor skill demand disclosed in job postings as a proxy for firms' growth strategies, we find that similar growth strategies increase the likelihood of two firms merging. In particular, a firm is more likely to become a target as its labor skill demand becomes more similar to that of its potential acquirer. Similar growth strategies ameliorate post-merger integration challenges in facilitating merger deals. Following the merger, the combined firm continues hiring the same skills, consistent with the growth strategy persisting. These types of mergers experience more synergies and superior operating performance.

Classification outperforms regression across matched machine learning models in portfolio construction. A stacking ensemble of gradient boosted trees, random forest, and neural network yields a value-weighted annualized Sharpe ratio of 2.08 for classification and 1.39 for regression. This outperformance strengthens with class granularity and persists across subsamples and after transaction costs. Spanning tests show that classification retains economically large alphas after we control for regression, whereas regression alphas shrink substantially once we control for classification. These results indicate that classification extracts more return information than matched regression. Our diagnostics trace classification's advantage to more precise separation of return deciles.

Should households buy their homes? Contrary to popular personal-finance and academic expert advice, our block-bootstrap life-cycle simulation suggests they should. Using 150 years of data across 16 countries, we find that homeownership raises wealth and consumption-equivalent welfare relative to saving-rate-matched benchmark strategies investing solely in financial assets. The gains come from lower portfolio risk, rent-risk hedging, access to home equity late in life for enhanced retirement consumption, and higher bequests. The gains vary with income, house-price conditions at purchase, and mortgage rates. Mortgages enable early homeownership access at the cost of lower liquidity and consumption-equivalent welfare.

Using FOIA-obtained investigation records, we find that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) relies on short sellers when opening nonpublic investigations. This dependence grows stronger when the SEC faces internal capacity constraints or when firms operate in opaque information environments. Using hand-collected public short selling reports, we find that the SEC selectively responds to short sellers' information about potential misconduct rather than mispricing-driven short selling. The SEC's reliance on short sellers also extends to comment letter issuance, demonstrating the broader influence of short sellers on regulatory actions, but it does not affect the enforcement outcome.

We study formal SEC investigation initiation and document that female board representation is associated with lower investigation risk. A one-standard-deviation increase in Female Board Ratio reduces investigation probability by 0.23 percentage points, a 5.37 percent decline relative to the 4.3 percent sample investigation rate. Results are robust to an IV strategy using the 2017 Big Three campaigns. The effect concentrates in high-uncertainty periods, consistent with monitoring demand for female directors' oversight expertise. It extends to confirmed violations and formal enforcement, consistent with genuine conduct improvements. The association further strengthens when SEC leadership emphasizes gender diversity. Firms increase female representation following investigations.

Using hand-collected data on founder CEOs and SEC investigations obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, we find that firms led by founder-CEO are 29% more likely to face SEC investigations, though these investigations rarely lead to accounting and auditing enforcement release actions. CEO attributes—power, risk-taking, and visibility—drive this heightened attention, consistent with the SEC's broad strategy that seeks to hold individuals accountable. Investors of founder-led firms appear compensated for the increased investigation risk through superior stock performance. Overall, our findings on the regulatory consequences of founder CEOs provide direct evidence of SEC's strategic emphasis on individual accountability.

Campbell and Shiller (1988b, a) show that $d_t - p_t \approx \text{const.} + \mathbb{E}\left[\sum_{j=1}^{\infty}\rho_{j-1}(r_{t+j}-\Delta d_{t+j})\right]$. Therefore, if payout growth is not predictable, the payout-price ratio decides returns and the returns must be predictable. Using 150-year data from 16 developed countries across bond, equity, and housing markets, I study this implication using the payout-price ratios, i.e., coupon price, dividend price, and rent price. None of the 48 country-asset combinations shows consistent in-sample and out-of-sample performance with positive utility gain for the mean-variance investor. However, 14 (5) countries have predictable payout growth in the equity (housing) markets. Cochrane (2008, 2011, 2020) argues that the dividend predictability and the return predictability form a joint hypothesis, and the denial of time series predictability does not hold if we reject the hypothesis that the dividend growth is predictable. Contrary to Cochrane's finding, the VAR simulation using data from all the countries in the past 150 years does not reject the null that the dividend growth is predictable and thus the joint hypothesis test provides weak support to return predictability.

We construct firm-level social network using partnership relations. Systematically important firms, i.e., firms that are highly connected and of greater centrality, face more SEC scrutiny across different enforcement actions, including AAER actions and SEC investigations. Our findings remain robust when applying stacked difference-in-differences (DiD) analyses that leverage exogenous firm-level reductions in network sizes within the corresponding Louvain communities, driven by mergers and acquisitions. They also hold under stacked DiD specifications using the introduction of combined tax reporting as an exogenous shock to the number of firm partnerships (Bodnaruk, 2013).