Open market share repurchase announcements are commonly associated with equity undervaluation, but their signal about firm value can often be misleading. We conjecture that executives who buy shares of their firm before an announcement add credibility to the undervaluation signal. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that announcement returns are positively related to past insider purchases, especially for firms that are priced less efficiently. Firms whose insiders bought more shares are also more likely to complete their repurchase plans. Finally, we find that insider purchases predict post-announcement stock returns.

The adequacy of the capital asset pricing models (CAPM) of Sharpe [27], Lintner [17], and Black [4] as empirical representations of capital market equilibrium is now seriously challenged (for example, see Ball [1], Banz [2], Basu [3], Cheng and Graver [8], Gibbons [15], Marsh [18], Reinganum [22], and Thompson [20]). Yet, the influence of earlier empirical studies (such as Black, Jensen, and Scholes [5] and Fama and MacBeth [11]) still remains; the current consensus seems to be that a security's beta is still an important economic determinant of equilibrium pricing even though it may not be the sole determinant. In light of the recent empirical evidence, however, the claim that a security's beta is an important determinant of equilibrium pricing should be reexamined.

This paper examines the cross-sectional distribution of bid-ask spreads in the S&P 100 index options market. Cross-sectional differences in bid-ask spreads are found to be directly related to differences in market-making costs and trading activity across options. We also examine the relation of an option's bid-ask spread and trading activity to the spread and trading activity in other options. Call option trading activity is inversely related to the call option bid-ask spread but positively related to the spread of the put option having the same strike price and maturity, and vice versa. These findings suggest that traders view call and put options as substitutes.

This article examines whether investors receive compensation for holding crash-sensitive stocks. We capture the crash sensitivity of stocks by their lower-tail dependence (LTD) with the market based on copulas. We find that stocks with strong LTD have higher average future returns than stocks with weak LTD. This effect cannot be explained by traditional risk factors and is different from the impact of beta, downside beta, coskewness, cokurtosis, and Kelly and Jiang’s (2014) tail risk beta. Hence, our findings are consistent with the notion that investors are crash-averse.

The value of corporate cash holdings has increased significantly in recent decades. On average, $1 of cash is valued at $0.61 in the 1980s, $1.04 in the 1990s, and $1.12 in the 2000s. This increase is predominantly driven by the investment opportunity set and cash-flow volatility, as well as secular trends in product market competition, credit market risk, and within-firm diversification. We document a secular decrease in the speed of adjustment (SOA) in cash holdings, particularly for financially constrained firms with cash deficits, suggesting that capital market frictions can account for the trend in the value of cash holdings.

This paper provides the solution to an intertemporal investment problem. The investor has power utility and can invest in stocks and bonds in a complete market setting where the Vasicek term structure model applies. The paper demonstrates that the zero-coupon bond with maturity at the investment horizon is the appropriate instrument for hedging changes in the opportunity set. Implementation issues are discussed and it is shown how the intertemporal investment problem can be recast as a series of mean-variance problems in terms of drift and volatility of the wealth forward price. An application based on a quasi-dynamic programming approach is considered.

This paper demonstrates that when log price changes are not IID, their conditional density may be more accurate than their unconditional density for describing short-term behavior. Using the BDS test of independence and identical distribution, daily log price changes in four currency futures contracts are found to be not IID. While there appear to be no predictable conditional mean changes, conditional variances are predictable, and can be described by an autoregressive volatility model that seems to capture all the departures from independence and identical distribution. Based on this model, daily log price changes are decomposed into a predictable part, which is described parametrically by the autoregressive volatility model, and an unpredictable part, which can be modeled by an empirical density, either parametrically or nonparametrically. This two-step seminonparametric method yields a conditional density for daily log price changes, which has a number of uses in financial risk management.

We develop a new methodology to estimate abnormal performance and risk exposure of nontraded assets from cash flows. Our methodology extends the standard internal rate of return approach to a dynamic setting. The small-sample properties are validated using a simulation study. We apply the method to a sample of 958 private equity funds. For venture capital funds, we find a high market beta and underperformance before and after fees. For buyout funds, we find a relatively low market beta and no evidence for outperformance. We find that self-reported net asset values significantly overstate fund values for mature and inactive funds.

Using a sample of completed U.S. acquisition deals over the period 1984–2014, we find that acquirer organization capital as measured by capitalized selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) expenses is associated with superior deal performance. We show that high organization-capital acquirers achieve significantly higher abnormal announcement period returns, and better post-merger operating and stock performance, than low organization-capital acquirers. Additional tests suggest a causal relation between acquirer organization capital and deal performance. We further show that post-merger, high organization-capital acquirers cut more on the cost of goods sold, invest more in SG&A expenses, and achieve greater asset turnover and innovative efficiency.

This paper examines optimal capital structure choice using a dynamic capital structure model that is calibrated to reflect actual firm characteristics. The model uses contingent claim methods to value interest tax shields, allows for reorganization in bankruptcy, and maintains a long-run target debt to total capital ratio by refinancing maturing debt. Using this model, we calculate optimal capital structures in a realistic representation of the traditional trade-off model. In contrast to previous research, the calculated optimal capital structures do not imply that firms tend to use too little leverage in practice. We also estimate the costs borne by a firm whose capital structure deviates from its optimal target debt to total capital ratio. The costs of moderate deviations are relatively small, suggesting that a policy of adjusting leverage infrequently is likely to be reasonable for many firms.

This paper has two purposes. First, we model a key decision for international banks using data on the foreign direct investment (FDI) behavior of foreign banks in Japan and California. Second, we examine the utility of linear discriminant analysis and maximum likelihood logit analysis as statistical techniques for relating a qualitative dependent variable to a vector of independent variables.

We document that suppliers to purely financially distressed companies that are highly likely to reorganize in bankruptcy incur little or no spillover costs. In contrast, suppliers to economically distressed firms experience large losses in market value that are linked to proxies for the cost of replacing the bankrupt customers. Suppliers experience increased selling, general, and administrative (SG&A) expenses and lower margins in the year following the bankruptcy of their trading partners, which we link to proxies for partner replacement costs. Suppliers continue to extend trade credit to firms that are healthier and in situations where the cost of replacing the partner is higher.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a link between the various multivariate tests of asset pricing and a performance measure for asset sets. The paper includes a unified summary of various F tests for mean-variance efficiency, intersection, and spanning for sets and subsets of financial assets. Both the risk-free asset and no risk-free asset environments are discussed. These tests are then related to the concept of potential performance for asset sets. The potential performance measure can be viewed as an extension of the Sharpe performance measure for single portfolios. The economic intuition behind the tests is that the multivariate tests of portfolio efficiency, intersection, and spanning are tests of zero potential performance at particular margins between the asset or portfolio subset and the full asset set.

Black and Scholes [1] derived the pricing equation for a European put when the stock price follows geometric Brownian motion. For this same case, Merton [5] derived the pricing equation for an American put with infinite time to maturity. Brennan and Schwartz [2], Rubinstein and Cox [7], and Parkinson [6] have developed numerical solutions for the price of an American put. Numerical solutions are expensive and do not provide much intuition. Naturally, an analytic solution would be much preferred; unfortunately, pricing the American put requires solving a formidable and presumably intractable boundary value problem.

In this paper, we examine the relation between stock returns and analysts' heterogeneous expectations. We find that stock returns are positively associated with divergence of opinion. Our evidence provides no support for Miller's (1977) overvaluation hypothesis, which predicts lower (higher) future returns for high (low) divergence of opinion stocks in the presence of short-selling constraints. Our findings are based on the use of the diversity measure, which is free from the confounding effects of uncertainty in analysts' forecasts and is therefore a more accurate measure of divergence of opinion than dispersion. Our results refute the view that dispersion in analysts' forecasts reflects divergence of opinion. Our evidence is robust to the use of alternative measures of short-selling constraints, time intervals, optimism in analysts' forecasts, and herding in analysts' behavior.

Using a unique insurance dataset for a sample of Chinese publicly listed companies for the period 1997 through 2003, this study tests the simultaneous linkages between debt capacity, cost of debt, and corporate property insurance. Our results suggest that, on the one hand, a higher cost of debt appears to motivate the use of more property insurance, but high leverage alone does not lead to the purchase of more property insurance. The latter finding might reflect the unique institutional setting of China, for example, where there is a low chanceof legally enforced company liquidation. Also, there is evidence that leverage can interact with tangible assets intensity and exert a positive conjoint effect on the corporate purchase ofproperty insurance. On the other hand, we find evidence that supports that property insurance helps expand insuring firms' debt capacity and helps lower their borrowing costs. However, themoderate evidence on the cost reduction effect suggests that lowering the borrowing cost is likely to be a concern secondary to facilitating corporate borrowing and thereby expanding debt capacity in corporate property insurance decisions in China. Overall, we conclude that debt capacity, cost of debt, and corporate insurance appear to be simultaneously related.

This paper proposes a two-factor hazard rate model, in closd form, to price risky debt. The likelihood of default is captured by the firm's non-interest sensitive assets and default-free interest rates. The distinguishing features of the model are threefold. First, the impact of capital structure changes on credit spreads can be analyzed. Second, the model allows stochastic interest rates to impact current asset values as well as their evolution. Finally, the proposed model is in closed fom, enabling us to undertake comparative statics analysis, compute parameter deltas of the model, calibrate empirical credit spreads, and determine hedge positions. Credit spreads generated by our model are consistent with empirical observations.

In textbook models of exchange rate determination, the news contained in public information announcements is directly impounded into prices with there being no role for trading in this process of information assimilation. This paper directly tests this theoretical result using transaction level exchange rate return and trading data and a sample of scheduled macroeconomic announcements. The main result of the paper is that even information that is publicly and simultaneously released to all market participants is partially impounded into prices via the key micro level price determinant—order flow. We quantify the role that order flow plays and find that approximately one third of price-relevant information is incorporated via the trading process.

In light of recent improvements in the transparency of the corporate bond market, we examine the relation between high frequency returns on individual stocks and bonds. In contrast to the authors of previous literature, we employ comprehensive transactions data for both classes of securities. We find that hourly stock returns lead bond returns for nonconvertible junk- and BBB-rated bonds, and that stock returns lead bond returns for convertible bonds in all rating classes. Most of the predictable nonconvertible bonds are issued by companies in financial distress, while the predictable convertible bonds are those with conversion options more deeply in-the-money. These results indicate that the corporate bond market is less informationally efficient than the stock market, notwithstanding the recent improvements in bond market transparency and associated reductions in corporate bond transaction costs.

We examine shareholder litigation and the price and nonprice terms of bank loan contracts. After filing a lawsuit, defendant firms pay higher loan spreads and up-front charges, experience more financial covenants, and are more likely to have a collateral requirement. These findings are consistent with reputational losses associated with shareholder litigation. The magnitude of a firm’s lost market value when the lawsuit is filed is positively related to the increase in the firm’s future borrowing costs. We investigate whether the lawsuit allegations and its merit affect future bank loan terms. Our results do not appear to be affected by self-selection.