We identify the unique role of the government bond lending market in collateral transformation during periods of market stress. Using a novel database, we provide evidence that safe assets in the lending market have higher demand, higher borrowing cost, and higher usage of noncash collateral relative to nonsafe assets during stressed market conditions. Moreover, we find that market participants are able to obtain safe assets using relatively low-quality noncash collateral, allowing for collateral transformation. We show that policy interventions by central banks can help reduce safe-asset shortages by returning sought-after safe assets to the market.

The debt overhang problem is shown to arise in the context of an entrepreneurial project that requires a sequence of investments financed by an outside lender. The entrepreneur, not internalizing losses accruing to the lender which financed the initial investments, may inefficiently cancel the project and instead pursue an outside opportunity. It is shown that loan commitments (contracts that allow the entrepreneur to borrow a variable amount at a set interest rate in return for a fixed fee) are the optimal financial contracts in this setting, strictly dominating standard debt. The existence of the fixed fee allows loan commitments to set a relatively low interest rate, improving the entrepreneur's incentives to continue the project. The paper specifies the optimal contract fully, derives robust comparative statics properties (using an extension of Milgrom and Roberts (1994)), and extends the results to more realistic settings (e.g., allowing the market risk-free rate to be stochastic).

Consider an economy consisting of individuals and firms with the following characteristics: all individuals are rational in the von Neumann- Morgenstern sense and non-neutral toward risk; the dividend streams of some firms are certain, while the dividend streams of the other firms are uncertain; and the economy is equipped with perfect financial markets. In this economy, as we show in the present paper, the value of each firm with a certain dividend stream depends only on the dividend stream itself and the set of future interest rates—i.e., the market value of such firms is independent of the attitudes toward risk and the level of wealth of any individual. However, the value of each firm with an uncertain dividend is, with one exception, not independent of anything: it depends not only on the firm's own dividend stream, the set of future interest rates, and (all) individuals' risk attitudes, but also on the wealth levels of these individuals and on the dividend streams of all other firms with uncertain dividends even when these streams are stochastically independent. The exception occurs when the individuals have exponential utility functions of money. In this case, the market value of each firm with uncertain dividends is independent of other dividend streams and of individual wealth levels if these variables are statistically independent of the firm's dividends. Exponential utility functions of money, of course, are not considered empirically plausible.

A market can be imperfectly competitive for a variety of reasons; in the context of an auction or a contract awarding, imperfections may stem from the limited number of bidders involved. Bidders, recognizing that their behavior (or that of others) can affect the market outcome, may adopt strategies that are unlikely to lead to a Pareto efficient allocation. Such inefficiencies can occur in the absence of any collusive behavior on the part of bidders. If barriers to bid entry are removed, and bidders are sufficiently homogeneous, the likelihood increases that bids will reflect full (private) valuations of the auctioned goods. Under these conditions Pareto efficient allocations would be guided by a set of minimum prices: a “sale to the highest bidder” would be transacted at a price approximate to the valuation of the second highest bidder, and contracts would be awarded at the competitive supply price. Even when the number of bidders is restricted, auction procedures can be adopted which will insure efficiency to a degree. This efficiency is achieved by changing the motivations of the available bidders, and by providing incentives for bidders to reveal their full valuations of the objects being auctioned. This paper describes a set of auction procedures which achieve these ends.

The highly quantitative bond issue size decision is generally made in a somewhat qualitative manner. The subjective opinions of brokers and intuitive rules of thumb of financial officers are rarely, if ever, compared to the optimum issue size resulting from calculations incorporating the costs of issuing bonds, and the costs of carrying extra cash. Unfortunately performance measurement in this area is very difficult, thus both good and bad decision processes tend to go unnoticed. It is possible to look at a financial decision which has been made, and, with the aid of hindsight, conclude it was a bad decision, but this proves very little. Some financial officers have done very well administering the Financial affairs of their corporations, but this does not indicate that the decision process cannot be improved. In a previous article the author of this paper investigated the question of the optimum size of bond issue.

The mean-variance portfolio model of Markowitz and Tobin has been the most substantive contribution to the theory of individual asset demand under uncertainty, in terms of comparative static results and testable implications. Although subject to a number of criticisms at the axiomatic level, it still stands as the classic portfolio model. The general equilibrium extension of the Tobin-Markowitz model due to Sharpe [14], Lintner [9], and Mossin [11] has led to important propositions about the nature of risk in general equilibrium and its effect on the pricing of assets, and the model has subsequently been subjected to extensive empirical testing. It has been used for a variety of purposes in areas ranging from corporate-finance theory to the debate on the social discount rate.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate empirically the effect of the deferred call provisions on corporate bond yields using the conceptual framework of callable and call-free yields developed by Jen and Wert [3]. After reviewing briefly the above-mentioned study in Section I, Section II presents patterns of callable and call-free yields of deferred issues from January 1956 to June 1961 by grades, months of offering, and coupon rates and contrasts them with those of the freely callable issues. Section III further contrasts yields of deferred issues with those of freely-callable ones on a pair comparison basis, while Section IV discusses the implication of the study for both the issuers and the investors.

Using comprehensive account-level data, we separate Chinese retail investors into 5 groups and document strong heterogeneity in trading dynamics and performances. Retail investors with smaller account sizes cannot predict future returns correctly, display daily momentum patterns, fail to process public news, and show overconfidence and gambling preferences, while retail investors with larger account balances predict future returns correctly, display contrarian patterns, and incorporate public news in trading. Using performance measures established in previous literature, we find that smaller retail investors suffer from poor stock selection abilities and trading costs, while large retail investors’ stock selection abilities are offset by trading costs.

A short squeeze occurs if borrowed shares are recalled and the short seller is unable to find another source of shares. This forces the short seller to terminate a position early. For most stocks, the probability of a short squeeze is very low. Short squeezes, however, are not unusual for the hardest to borrow stocks. For these stocks, trading costs from squeezes are high and have a significant impact on the returns to short selling. For hard-to-borrow stocks, short sellers also miss out on significant abnormal returns because squeezes force them to close positions.

We synthetically create option contracts on a corporate bond index using CDX swaptions, overcoming the limitations that stem from the lack of traded corporate bond options. Our approach allows us to estimate forward-looking moments concerning the corporate bond market in a model-free manner. By constructing an aggregate volatility measure and the associated variance risk premium, we examine the role of volatility risk in the corporate bond market. We highlight that the ex ante conditional second and higher moments we estimate from synthetic corporate bond options carry important implications for credit risk models, providing an extra basis for testing their validity.

The interdependence of loan cost and tangible bank activity is an aspect of the cost of bank debt that has not been treated in the literature. Understanding this interdependence is important for banks in pricing their services, especially as banks adopt more flexible pricing policies. This understanding is crucial for a firm in establishing the true cost of bank borrowing, in comparing bank borrowing with other sources of funds, and in evaluating the firm's banks. It is also important for understanding the firm-bank relationship in general and the cost of capital in particular.

In a recent paper, the author [8] has derived the equilibrium bond pricing equation in a world of uncertain future interest rates assuming that capital gains and losses will be taxed at maturity at capital gains tax rates. In the case of premium bonds (i.e., bonds selling above par), the U.S. tax law allows bondholders to elect to amortize the premium on a straight line basis as a deduction from regular taxable income. For those paying positive tax rates, the amortization option will generally be advantageous compared to taking a capital loss at maturity.

Many firms are short of capital. Investment opportunities offering positive net present values often exceed the amount of available internal financing. Management may either impose a capital budget constraint equal to the amount of internally generated funds or finance externally. Assuming that management chooses the latter, it must choose debt, preferred stock, common stock, or various forms or combinations of these securities. Controversy has surrounded the relative costs of debt and equity financing, but, recognizing the tax advantage of debt financing, most theorists agree that a firm will have some debt in its capital structure. This paper will not attempt to examine the important question of the optimal debt/equity ratio in the firm's capital structure but will assume that management has decided it is prudent to issue additional long-term debt. We will delineate the more modest question of the optimal size and timing of the long-term debt issues.

In [2]Sethi and Thompson illustrated the applications of the maximum principle to solve simple dynamic cash balance problems. In Section IV of that paper, we introduced the idea of penalty function to solve the cash balance problem with bounded state variables arising out of disallowing overdrafts and short selling. This resulted in the adjoint equations containing terms in the state variables x(t) and y(t). We then stated the need for solving a two-point boundary value problem.

It is likely that warrants will be used increasingly in the future by corporations both as means of sweetening other securities such as preferred stocks and bonds, and as securities in their own right. Many authors have analyzed the characteristics of warrants from the point of view of investors but attempts to develop a procedure for determining the cost to a corporation of issuing warrants have been lacking. We will find it convenient to measure the yield to a corporation of issuing warrants instead of common stock, rather than determining the percentage cost of warrants analogous to the cost of common stock equity, preferred stock, and interest-bearing debt.

Firms with high levels of organization capital (OK), a firm-specific production factor provided by key employees, are known to be risky and earn high stock returns. We argue that fragility of OK (i.e., its sensitivity to potential disruptions) is an independently important dimension of this risk. We proxy for fragility by the size of the top management team and show that firms with small teams outperform firms with big teams by 5% annually. The return spread increases in the level of OK and correlates with the outside options of top executives. Further supporting our interpretation, shocks to team composition from unexpected deaths of chief executive officers cause larger value losses in smaller teams.

The interdependence of the optimal investment program and capital prices, when capital and other markets are imperfect, has been one of the least tractable problems in capital budgeting. The nature of the problem is described in Amey [1]. Suggested solutions to the problem may be found in Baumol and Quandt [2], Carleton [3], Hirshleifer [4], Lusztig and Schwab [7], and Weingartner [9]. The purpose of this note is to extend the mathematical results reported by Lusztig and Schwab (L & S) and draw implications that will shed light on the controversy.

This paper examines the multiperiod capital allocation problem of a corporate division that is subject to ex post financial scrutiny by the parent corporation based upon meeting a specified target rate of return on investment. Using a zero-order decision rule, a deterministic equivalent linear programming model is developed to solve for the division's optimal mix of productive assets and the maturity structure of its debt.

Stocks differ in the variability of their prices; thus, as the level of stock market prices swings periodically, one observes a change in structure as the prices of more volatile issues change relative to those of a more stable character. Here we attempt to empirically establish some of the differentiating characteristics of these volatile issues. In doing so we add to the empirical and analytical work of Fritzemeier [4], Clendenin [2], Latané [7], Malkiel [8], and Heins and Allison [6]. Only the last of these efforts used regression techniques.

In response to how they are compensated, mutual fund managers who are underperforming by mid-year are likely to increase the risk of their portfolios toward the year-end. We argue that an increase in the liquidity of the stocks that managers use to shift risk can lead to an increase in the size of their risky bets. This in turn hurts fund investors by increasing the costs of misaligned incentives associated with delegated portfolio management. We provide both theoretical and empirical results that are consistent with this argument. We use decimalization as an exogenous shock to liquidity to identify causal effects.