The Mendoza faculty continues to publish research that is highly relevant to our workplaces, financial markets, corporate policies, data management and a wide range of other important topics. Here are a few of our recently published studies:

Robert Battalio, Finance Professor and the William and Cassie Daley Department Chair
Option Investor Rationality Revisited: The Role of Exercise Boundary Violations
Financial Analysts Journal

Our empirical results overturn the well-known textbook theory that American options should not be exercised early except in very limited conditions. In the real world, the best bid available in the market is frequently below the option’s intrinsic value, which we call an “exercise boundary violation” (EBV). In an EBV, early exercise can be the right strategy and the “American” option characteristic has economic value. Our results suggest that actual exercise behavior is much less irrational than earlier studies concluded.

Mike Crant, Mary Jo and Richard M. Kovacevich Professor of Excellence in Leadership Instruction, Management & Organization
Proactive yet reflective? Materializing proactive personality into creativity through job reflective learning and activated positive affective state
Personnel Psychology

Proactive leaders are creative, identifying opportunities and coming up with ideas for a better future. Research has considered this to largely originate from “ah hah!” moments, but our research suggests that proactive ideas are also a function of how deeply people reflect on their successes and failures at work. We refer to this process as job reflective learning, and across two studies we found that the more people think about—and take responsibility for—their successes and failures, the more likely they are to turn their experiences into fresh ideas.
 
Xinxue (Shawn) Qu, Assistant Professor of IT, Analytics, and Operations
A Time-Based Dynamic Synchronization Policy for Consolidated Database Systems 
MIS Quarterly

In the age of analytics, data is becoming an increasingly important asset for organizations, which calls for efficient maintenance policies to keep the data up-to-date. This study proposes a maintenance policy for consolidated databases, which evaluates the data staleness level at predetermined checkpoints and run synchronizations only if given staleness thresholds are crossed. The proposed method consistently outperforms existing policies, leading to substantial cost savings.
 
Hal White, Vincent and Rose Lizzadro Endowed Professor of Accountancy
Information Overload and Disclosure Smoothing
Review of Accounting Studies

Companies often release large amounts of information over short periods of time, which can make it difficult for investors to adequately process; i.e., they become overloaded with information. Our research evidence suggests that companies can improve investors’ processing ability by spreading out their disclosures, so they have more time to digest each piece of information. This results in greater stock market benefits, including enhanced liquidity, reduced stock price volatility and more accurate analyst forecasts of the companies’ performance. This evidence helps inform regulators who are looking to combat the negative stock market effects of information overload.
 
Congratulations to these faculty members on their publications!

In Notre Dame,

Martijn