Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractSince the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) began announcing its policy decisions in 1994, U.S. stock returns have on average been more than thirty times larger on announcement days than on other days. Surprisingly, these abnormal returns are accrued before the policy announcement. The excess returns earned during the twentyfour hours prior to scheduled FOMC announcements account for more than 80 percent of the equity premium over the past seventeen years. Similar results are found for major global equity indexes, but not for other asset classes or other economic news announcements. We explore a few risk-based explanations of these findings, none of which can account for the return anomaly.

We find that regulators can implement identical rules inconsistently due to differences in their institutional design and incentives, and this behavior may adversely impact the effectiveness with which regulation is implemented. We study supervisory decisions of U.S. banking regulators and exploit a legally determined rotation policy that assigns federal and state supervisors to the same bank at exogenously set time intervals. Comparing federal and state regulator supervisory ratings within the same bank, we find that federal regulators are systematically tougher, downgrading supervisory ratings almost twice as frequently as do state supervisors. State regulators counteract these downgrades to some degree by upgrading more frequently. Under federal regulators, banks report worse asset quality, higher regulatory capital ratios, and lower return on assets. Leniency of state regulators relative to their federal counterparts is related to costly outcomes, such as higher failure rates and lower repayment rates of government assistance funds. The discrepancy in regulator behavior is related to different weights given by regulators to local economic conditions and, to some extent, differences in regulatory resources. We find no support for regulator self-interest, which includes ''revolving doors'' as a reason for leniency of state regulators. JEL Codes: G21, G28.

for their comments and suggestions, as well as participants at various seminars and Ken Kuttner, our discussant at the meeting of the NBER Monetary Economics Program. Isaac Laughlin provided outstanding research assistance. Hal Varian and the Google University Research Program provided generous access to the Google Search technology. The views and analysis set forth are solely those of the authors and do not indicate concurrence by other members of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Francesco Trebbi gratefully acknowledges support by the Initiative on Global Markets and the Mutch Family Faculty Research Fund at the Booth School of Business, the University of Chicago. The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractSince the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) began announcing its policy decisions in 1994, U.S. stock returns have on average been more than thirty times larger on announcement days than on other days. Surprisingly, these abnormal returns are accrued before the policy announcement. The excess returns earned during the twentyfour hours prior to scheduled FOMC announcements account for more than 80 percent of the equity premium over the past seventeen years. Similar results are found for major global equity indexes, but not for other asset classes or other economic news announcements. We explore a few risk-based explanations of these findings, none of which can account for the return anomaly.

We find that regulators can implement identical rules inconsistently due to differences in their institutional design and incentives, and this behavior may adversely impact the effectiveness with which regulation is implemented. We study supervisory decisions of U.S. banking regulators and exploit a legally determined rotation policy that assigns federal and state supervisors to the same bank at exogenously set time intervals. Comparing federal and state regulator supervisory ratings within the same bank, we find that federal regulators are systematically tougher, downgrading supervisory ratings almost twice as frequently as do state supervisors. State regulators counteract these downgrades to some degree by upgrading more frequently. Under federal regulators, banks report worse asset quality, higher regulatory capital ratios, and lower return on assets. Leniency of state regulators relative to their federal counterparts is related to costly outcomes, such as higher failure rates and lower repayment rates of government assistance funds. The discrepancy in regulator behavior is related to different weights given by regulators to local economic conditions and, to some extent, differences in regulatory resources. We find no support for regulator self-interest, which includes ''revolving doors'' as a reason for leniency of state regulators. JEL Codes: G21, G28.