We examine the role of algorithmic traders (ATs) in liquidity supply and demand in the 30 Deutscher Aktien Index stocks on the Deutsche Boerse in Jan. 2008. ATs represent 52% of market order volume and 64% of nonmarketable limit order volume. ATs more actively monitor market liquidity than human traders. ATs consume liquidity when it is cheap (i.e., when the bid-ask quotes are narrow) and supply liquidity when it is expensive. When spreads are narrow ATs are less likely to submit new orders, less likely to cancel their orders, and more likely to initiate trades. ATs react more quickly to events and even more so when spreads are wide.

I study the effects of overvalued equity on acquisition activity and shareholder wealth, using managers’ insider trades to measure overvaluation. I find that overvalued equity drives managers to make stock acquisitions, and such acquisitions destroy value for acquirer shareholders. Overvalued stock acquirers earn negative and lower returns in the short run and substantially underperform similarly overvalued nonacquirer firms in the long run. My results do not support the idea that managers can benefit shareholders by converting overvalued equity into real assets through stock acquisitions.

This paper develops a unified approach to comprehensively analyze individual hedge fund return predictability, both in and out of sample. In sample, we find that variation in hedge fund performance across changing market conditions is widespread and economically significant. The predictability pattern is consistent with economic rationale, and largely reflects differences in key hedge fund characteristics, such as leverage or capacity constraints. Out of sample, we show that a simple strategy that combines the funds’ return forecasts obtained from individual predictors delivers superior performance. We exploit this simplicity to highlight the drivers of this performance, and find that in- and out-of-sample predictability are closely related.

This paper documents that riskier firms with higher idiosyncratic volatility grant more stock options to nonexecutive employees. Standard models in the literature cannot easily explain this pattern; a model in which a risk-neutral firm and an employee with prospect theory preferences bargain over the employee's pay package can. The key feature which makes stock options attractive is probability weighting. The model fits the data on option grants well when calibrated using standard parameters from the experimental literature. The results are the first evidence that risky firms can profitably use stock options to cater to an employee demand for long-shot bets.

We use UK data to show that firms that sponsor a defined-benefit pension plan are less likely to be targeted in an acquisition and, conditional on an attempted takeover, they are less likely to be acquired. Our explanation is that the uncertainty in the value of pension liabilities is a source of risk for acquirers of the firm's shares, which works as a takeover deterrent. In support of this explanation we find that these same firms are more likely to use cash when acquiring other firms, and that the announcement of a cash acquisition is associated with positive announcement effects.

We investigate the pricing of risk-neutral skewness in the stock options market by creating skewness assets comprised of two option positions (one long and one short) and a position in the underlying stock. The assets are created such that exposure to changes in the underlying stock price (delta), and exposure to changes in implied volatility (vega) are removed, isolating the effect of skewness. We find a strong negative relation between risk-neutral skewness and the skewness asset returns, consistent with a positive skewness preference. The returns are not explained by well-known market, size, book-to-market, momentum, short-term reversal, volatility, or option market factors.

Little evidence exists on whether boards help managers make better decisions. We provide evidence that strong and independent boards help overconfident chief executive officers (CEOs) avoid honest mistakes when they seek to acquire other companies. In addition, we find that once-overconfident CEOs make better acquisition decisions after they experience personal stock trading losses, providing evidence that a manager’s recent personal experience, and not just educational and early career experience, influences firm investment policy. Finally, we develop and validate a new CEO overconfidence measure that is easily constructed from machine-readable insider trading data, unlike previously used measures.

We classify a unique and comprehensive data set of corporate press releases into topics and study the market reaction to various types of news. While confirming prior findings regarding strong stock price responses to financial news, we also document significant reactions to news about corporate strategy, customers and partners, products and services, management changes, and legal developments. Consistent with regulators' expectations, the level of informational asymmetry in the market declines following most types of press releases. At the same time, return volatility frequently increases in the post-announcement period, which we show can be attributed to higher levels of valuation uncertainty.

We compile a comprehensive international dividend and capital gains tax data set to study tax-based explanations of corporate payout for a panel of 6,035 firms from 25 countries for the period 1990–2008. We find robust evidence that the tax penalty on dividends versus capital gains corresponds closely with firms’ propensity to pay dividends and repurchase shares, and with the amount of dividends and shares repurchased. Our coefficient estimates suggest a smaller tax effect than reported in recent single-country, single-event studies. Instead, our results correspond more closely with historic long-term estimates of the elasticity of dividends.

An experimental approach is used to compare bidding behavior and auction performance in uniform-price and discriminatory auctions when there is incomplete information concerning the common value of the auctioned good. In a symmetric information environment, the different auction formats provide the same average revenue. However, when information is asymmetric the discriminatory auction results in higher average revenue than the uniform-price auction. The volatility of revenue is higher in the uniform-price auctions in all treatments. The results, therefore, provide support for the use of the discriminatory format. Subject characteristics and measures of experience in recent auctions are found to be useful in explaining bidding behavior.

Any firm choosing a chief executive officer (CEO) faces a double problem: candidate selection and choice of a compensation scheme. We derive sufficient conditions where the unique optimal compensation scheme is a capped-bonus contract in a pure moral-hazard environment, while equity is used when the firm also faces adverse selection. Then, we provide a rationale for the simultaneous increases in CEO pay, use of equity in compensation, and external hiring of CEOs. Our results are consistent with empirical evidence that shows externally hired CEOs earn more than those internally hired and that externally hired CEOs get a higher fraction of their compensation equity based.