Essays in Empirical Corporate Finance.

Summary This thesis is composed of three separate chapters. The first chapter shows that managers overreact to risks that come to their attention. After a hurricane, the shock to perceived liquidity risk produced by the disaster leads firms in the vicinity of the disaster area to temporarily increase their cash holdings while the actual risk has not changed. The second chapter shows that managers strategically influence investors' attention to earnings announcements by warning them of the date of the event at a later or later time. This strategy allows them to smooth the impact of bad results on their stock price over time. The third chapter studies the effect of league tables in M&A activities. League tables rank investment banks. A bank's league table ranking predicts its ability to generate new business in the future, which gives banks an incentive to manipulate their rankings.