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A fundamental question for theology is the question how we are to understand the claims that we make about God. The only language we can understand is the language we use to talk about human beings and their environment. How can we use that language to talk about God while respecting the infinite difference between God and humanity? The traditional answer has been to appeal to the concept of analogy. However, that appeal has been interpreted in widely different ways. This book aims to clarify the question and this answer by an analysis of the concept. It begins with an exploration of the way the concept was evolved by Aristotle out of Greek mathematics as a technique for comparing \"things that were remote\"; followed by a critical examination of three very different classical accounts of the way religious language works: those of Thomas Aquinas, Immanuel Kant and Karl Barth. The book finally investigates the way in which analogy could be applied to answer the question initially posed-how is it possible to use human language to talk about God. This is a question of fundamental significance for the whole of religion and theology, concerning as it does our whole understanding of what we mean when we talk about God.

I examine the ability of the U.S. investor protection regime to limit insider trading returns, absent Section 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the short-swing rule). I find that in this setting, U.S. insiders execute short-swing trades that i) beat the market by approximately 15 basis points per day and ii) systematically divest ahead of disappointing earnings announcements. These results indicate that the bright-line rule restricting short-horizon round-trip insider trading plays a substantial role in protecting outside investors from privately informed insiders in the United States.

We examine the relation between worker substance abuse and workplace fraud in a sample of medical doctors. Relative to their peers, we observe that doctors engaging in substance abuse are between 50 and 100 times more likely to commit fraud in a given year. This result is consistent with research suggesting that substance abuse both creates financial pressures and impairs the functioning of cognitive self-regulatory mechanisms. Our results are robust in within-subject tests and between-subject tests, as well as in tests using instrumental variables that exploit exogenous variation in the state-level availability of opioids, a commonly abused substance.

Political corruption imposes substantial costs on shareholders in the U.S. Yet, we understand little about the basic factors that exacerbate or mitigate the value consequences of political corruption. Using federal corruption convictions data, we find that firm-level economic rents and monitoring mechanisms moderate the negative relation between corruption and firm value. The value consequences of political corruption are exacerbated for firms operating in low-rent product markets and mitigated for firms subject to external monitoring by state governments or monitoring induced by disclosure transparency. Our results should inform managers and policymakers of the tradeoffs imposed on firms operating in politically corrupt districts.

We examine the influence of mobile communication on local information flow and local investor activity using the enforcement of statewide distracted driving restrictions, which are exogenous events that constrain mobile communication while driving. By restricting mobile communication across a potentially sizable set of local individuals, these restrictions could inhibit local information flow and, in turn, the market activity of stocks headquartered in enforcement states. We first document a decline in Google search activity for local stocks when restrictions take effect, suggesting that constraints on mobile communication significantly affect individuals' information search activity. We further find significant declines in local trading volume when restrictions are enforced. This drop in liquidity is (1) attenuated when laws provide substitutive means of mobile communication and (2) magnified when locals have long car commutes and when their daily commutes overlap with regular exchange hours. Moreover, trading volume suffers the most for local stocks with lower institutional ownership, less analyst coverage, and more intangible information. Additional analyses show lower intraday volume during local commute times when mobile connectivity is constrained. Together, our results suggest that local information and local investors matter in stock markets and that mobile communication is an important mechanism through which these elements operate to affect liquidity and price discovery.

We examine the market reaction to charitable pledges by individual blockholders of public firms. As this philanthropy may signal a weakening preference for wealth maximization and may be indicative of distraction or relaxed monitoring, these agency costs may overwhelm any reputation benefits. We find decreased firm value and lower pay-for-performance sensitivity, the effects of which are most severe where monitoring needs are high, the blockholder is a director, or when the firm has ex ante high corporate social responsibility ratings. Our results are robust to controlling for prior charitable foundation involvement, busy director-blockholders, dual-class share structures, blockholder exit, and pre-pledge firm sentiment.

We examine the profitability of stock trades executed by Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) employees. Subject to the considerable constraints of the data (no portfolio information, occupational details, or individual identifiers and an inability to determine profitability of trades), we find that a hedge portfolio mimicking such trades earns a positive abnormal return of about 8.5 percent per year in US stocks, driven primarily by negative abnormal future returns on sell transactions. The SEC claims that this result stems in part from employees being forced to sell stocks in a firm when they are assigned to secret investigations. We question whether this policy is reasonable.

We examine whether political corruption impedes innovation. Using a comprehensive sample of U.S. firms, we find that corruption has a substantial, negative relation with the quantity and quality of innovation. These results are robust to using various fixed effects, proxies for corruption and innovation, and subsamples. To establish causality, we employ 2 instruments for corruption: local ethnic diversity and the corruption of the state a firm’s founder grew up in. Corruption appears to reduce innovation output both on average and for the most innovative firms. Overall, this evidence is consistent with the notion that corruption reduces social welfare by impeding innovation.

Purpose This study aims to examine the effect of individual auditor quality (below the partner level) on overall audit quality. Design/methodology/approach We aggregate audit employee-level individual performance evaluations to create a measure of auditor quality at the office level. Findings We find that high-quality audit offices are associated with a lower likelihood of client restatement, fewer client abnormal accruals and a higher likelihood of a client receiving a going concern opinion. We partition employees into low, medium and high level, based on job title, to investigate which employee levels drive these results. We find that the restatement results are driven by high quality high-level employees (Senior Managers/Directors), whereas the going concern results are driven by high quality low-level employees (Seniors). Furthermore, we find evidence that high-quality audit teams are associated with all aspects of audit quality and the magnitude of these team effects are much larger than those of the effects for any individual employee type. Originality/value Our findings are consistent with higher-level auditors preventing the most serious financial statement deficiencies, low-level employees contributing to audit firm independence and overall team quality creating synergy which has the strongest effect on all aspects of audit quality. These insights based on individual auditor evaluations are new to the literature. Overall, our empirical results suggest that individual auditor quality is associated with higher quality audits and that employees at all levels affect audit outcomes.

I examine the ability of the U.S. investor protection regime to limit insider trading returns in a setting absent Section 16(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (the short swing rule). I find that U.S. insiders in this setting execute short swing trades that (1) beat the market by about 15 basis points per day and (2) occur with remarkably high frequency around earnings surprises. These results indicate that the bright-line rule restricting short horizon roundtrip insider trading plays a substantial role in protecting outside investors from privately informed insiders in the United States.