The liquidity-coverage ratio (LCR) requires banks to hold enough liquidity to withstand a 30-day run. We study the effects of the LCR on broker-dealers, the financial intermediaries at the epicenter of the 2007–2009 crisis. The LCR brings some financial-stability benefits, including a significant maturity extension of triparty repos backed by lower-quality collateral, as well as the accumulation of larger liquidity pools. However, it also leads to less liquidity transformation by broker-dealers. We also discuss the liquidity risks not addressed by the LCR. Finally, we show that a major source of fire-sale risk was self-corrected before the introduction of postcrisis regulations.

We document and explain the sharp performance deterioration of smart beta indexes after the corresponding exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are launched for investment. While smart beta is purported to deliver excess returns through factor exposures, the market-adjusted return of smart beta indexes drops from about 3% “on paper” before ETF listings to about −0.50% to −1% after ETF listings. This performance decline cannot be explained by variation in factor premia, strategic timing, or diminishing returns to scale. Instead, we find strong evidence of data mining in the construction of smart beta indexes, which helps ETFs attract flows, as investors respond positively to backtests.

We provide evidence on market structure and the cost of raising capital by examining changes in market structure in U.S. equity markets. Only the Order Handling Rules (OHR) of the Nasdaq, the one reform that reduced institutional trading costs, lowered the cost of raising capital. Using a difference-in-differences framework relative to the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) that exploits the OHR’s staggered implementation, we find that the OHR reduced the underpricing of seasoned equity offerings by 1–2 percentage points compared with a pre-OHR average of 3.6%. The effect is the largest in stocks with the largest reduction in institutional trading costs after the OHR.

Firms falling short of earnings expectations are more likely to cite stakeholder-focused objectives in their public communications following earnings announcements. This behavior is consistent with managers preferring to be evaluated by subjective stakeholder-based performance criteria when falling short on objective shareholder-based measures. This increased use of stakeholder language is most evident among firms narrowly missing earnings estimates and appears unrelated to a firm’s actual environmental, social, and governance (ESG)-related activity. Stakeholder language appears to influence the evaluation of CEOs; turnover–performance sensitivity is lower for managers citing stakeholder value. Collectively, our findings are consistent with concerns that stakeholder objectives reduce managerial accountability for poor performance.

We study the implications of predictability on the optimal asset allocation of ambiguity-averse long-term investors and analyze the term structure of the multivariate risk–return trade-off considering parameter uncertainty. We calibrate the model to real returns of U.S. stocks, long-term bonds, cash, real estate, and gold using the term spread and the dividend–price ratio as additional predictive variables, and we show that over long horizons, the optimal asset allocation is significantly influenced by the covariance structure induced by estimation errors. The ambiguity-averse long-term investor optimally tilts his or her portfolio toward a seemingly inefficient portfolio, which shows maximum robustness against estimation errors.

Tying initial public offering (IPO) allocations to after-listing purchases of other IPO shares as a form of price support has generated much theoretical interest and media attention. Price support is price manipulation and can reduce secondary investor return. In the past, obtaining data to investigate price support has proven to be difficult. I document that price support is harming secondary investor return using new data from the Oslo Stock Exchange. I also show that investors who engage in price support are allocated more future oversubscribed allocations, whereas harmed secondary investors significantly reduce their future participation in the secondary market.

This research provides improved techniques for analyzing the after-tax risk exposure of taxable institutions holding amortizing instruments such as commercial, real estate, and consumer loans. We derive after-tax duration for amortizing instruments and analyze it for sensitivity to tax rates, coupon, and maturity. Taxable investors who hedge and ignore the effects of taxes on amortizing instruments will underestimate differences in durations on bonds versus amortizing instruments of equal maturities; bond durations increase much faster as tax rates increase. One unexpected result shows that, unlike bond duration, amortizing instrument duration often increases with coupon rate, and sometimes is independent of coupon rate.

In a paper published in 1978, Levy [5] proposed a general capital asset pricing model (GCAPM), which he obtained by maximizing investors' utility when the number of securities held in each investor's portfolio is constrained. Although Levy's resultant asset pricing model is somewhat different in appearance than the asset pricing model proposed by Mao [8] in 1971, it can be shown that both models are not only quite comparable in content but that both result in some very promising theoretical and empirical implications. Thus, the purpose of this paper is twofold. First, these two important contributions to the literature on asset pricing in imperfect markets will be compared and contrasted. Second, it will be shown that both models can yield a “clinical” form of the traditional CAPM, which appears to be more desirable for empirical testing purposes.

This paper explores the effects of mergers on the investment incentives of the levered firm and on levered firm value. Under a fairly broad set of assumptions, it is shown that most firm combinations “improve” investment incentives, bringing about a reduction in the agency costs of underinvestment associated with risky debt. The effect of the merger on debt and equity claim values is also explored. If not properly anticipated, the merger may create a wealth transfer from equity holders to bondholders. Such a wealth transfer includes, but is not limited to, the “coinsurance effect.”

Most businesses sell on credit. To administer credit, such companies set credit granting, term, and collection policies. This article analyzes one aspect of credit granting policy: the determination of the optimal number of credit applicants that should be accepted by a creditor. The emphasis in the relevant literature traditionally has been on techniques for estimating a credit applicant's probability of default and, to a lesser degree, on the decision to accept an applicant given his estimated probability of default. Cumulatively, these two decisions are crucial to any business selling on credit.

The traditional valuation framework is unsuited to the task of valuing a growth stock when the capitalization rate is specified in terms of market leverage, simply because it is impossible to maintain a constant ratio of book to market leverage over the growth horizon. This severely limits the usefulness of the traditional model in analyzing the valuation problem. We have proposed a more general form of the model which allows us to show the consistency between M-M's Propositions I and II under growth.

We find that consumption risk is lower in states that implement countercyclical fiscal policies. Moreover, firms with an investor base that is concentrated in countercyclical states have lower stock returns, along with firms that relocate their headquarters to a countercyclical state. Therefore, countercyclical fiscal policies lower the consumption risk of investors and, consequently, their required equity return premium. This conclusion is confirmed by smaller declines in market participation during recessions in countercyclical states. Overall, the location of a firm’s investor base enables state-level fiscal policy to influence stock returns.

Population-wide increase in life expectancy is a source of aggregate risk. Longevity-linked securities are a natural instrument to reallocate that risk. This paper extends the standard Campbell–Viceira (2005) strategic asset allocation model by including a longevity-linked investment possibility. Model estimation, based on prices for standardized annuities publicly offered by U.S. insurance companies, shows that aggregate shocks to survival probabilities are predictors for long-term returns of the longevity-linked securities, and reveals an unexpected predictability pattern. Valuation of longevity risk premium confirms that longevity-linked securities offer inexpensive funding opportunities to asset managers.

We document that long-run excess returns following announcements of share buyback authorizations and insider purchases are a U-shaped function of firm centrality in the input–output trade-flow network. These results conform to a model of investors endowed with a large but finite capacity for analyzing firms. Additional links weaken insiders’ informational advantage in peripheral firms (simple firms whose cash flows depend on few economic links), provided investors’ capacity is large enough, but eventually amplify that advantage in central firms (firms with many links) as a result of investors’ limited capacity. These findings shed light on the sources of managerial market-timing ability.

Modern micro-capital theory offers three major alternative choice theoretic approaches from which a set of market equilibrium prices can be derived. These approaches are:

1. Time-state preference theory of Arrow [1] and Debreu [6],

2. The capital asset pricing model (hereafter CAPM) of Sharpe [34], Lintner [23], and Fama [7],

3. The capital growth model of Kelly [16], Breiman [5], and Latané [17]

While the literature in finance is replete with studies on stock betas, bond betas have, to this day, not attracted much attention. This is quite understandable because much of the finance literature addresses stock betas in the context of the single period Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). In the single period model, the risk-free rate (if it exists) is assumed to be constant over the period in question. Since the interest rate is fixed and investors are required to hold these default-free bonds over the entire period, interest rate risk, and, consequently, systematic risk for bonds do not exist. However, if the constant risk-free rate assumption is relaxedand investors are allowed to trade “intra period,” (say continuously), Merton [4] has argued that an Intertemporal Capital Asset Pricing Model can be derived. Using Merton's framework, Jarrow [3] has recently derived a systematic risk measure for bonds. The primary intent of this paper is to investigate the effect of yield changes on the systematic risk of bonds. As we will demonstrate, the impact of yield changes on bond betas depends on several (sometimes complex) relationships between yields, duration, and bond prices. We derive conditions under which bond betas increase/decrease and show that the elasticity of duration with respect to yields and the sign of the initial beta of a bond will determine the manner in which yield changes affect bond betas.

Publicly listed firms respond to capital supply conditions shaped by local investing preferences. Public firms headquartered in areas with higher proportions of senior citizens and women use more debt financing. These demographics are associated with conservative investing, leading to a higher and more stable local supply of debt capital. The demographics–leverage relation is more pronounced for firms that cannot easily tap public bond markets, which is the majority of public firms. Changes in firms’ financing activities around exogenous shocks to credit supplies, including interstate banking deregulation and the 2008–2009 financial crisis, support the local capital supply hypothesis.

We study decisions to sell nonexcludable private information in the presence of a trading opportunity. Sell-side agents heighten competition among agents who buy their signals to combine with their own for proprietary trading purposes and thereby promote financial market efficiency. This result holds even when the sell-side production technology is not unique. But sell-side information is subject to underinvestment if producers do not internalize the benefits. The model suggests that fee-based compensation for corporate advisory services diminishes this problem and that market efficiency is undermined by forces steering investment-banking resources toward proprietary trading.

How does greater public disclosure of arbitrage activity and informed trading affect price efficiency? To answer this, we exploit rule amendments in U.S. securities markets, which impose a higher frequency of public disclosure of short positions. Higher public disclosure can hurt the production of information and deteriorate efficiency, or it can be beneficial by mitigating the limits to arbitrage and diffusing arbitrageurs’ information faster. With more frequent disclosure, information encapsulated within short interest is incorporated into prices faster, improving price efficiency. We find important reductions in short sellers’ horizon risk and increases in short sales with the rule amendments.

The purpose behind this review of recent research on financial decisions in the multinational corporation (MNC) has been, first, to further the discussion as to the appropriate normative framework applicable to financial decisions in the MNC, and second, to suggest directions for further research by pointing to open questions.

The analysis focuses on the major financial decision areas of the firm as well as on important new factors introduced by the international environment. Specific issues disussed are: capital-market segmentation, financing decision, financial structure and cost of capital, investment decision and exchange risk.

The principal conclusion presented as a basis for discussion is that the financial decision framework developed for the one-country firm can essentially be extended to the case of the MNC. This should hold true even if partial restrictions to capital flows exist. The only limiting requirement is that all subsidiaries be wholly owned, i.e., equity securities be issued by the parent firm only. A specific case in which the analogy to, the one-country firm breaks down arises when joint ventures are introduced.

A number of areas for further research are identified. Most prominent, perhaps, are (1) an operational concept of economic exchange risk exposure, i.e., measuring the impact of exchange rate changes on the value of foreign operations; (2) criteria for evaluating foreign investment projects consistent with the firm's cost of capital; and (3) empirical evidence on the extent to which MNCs are affected by capital-market segmentation.