We examine whether the market demand curve for equities is dawnward sloping. Unlike previous studies that examine individual stocks' demand curves, we look at the aggregate demand curve. As a proxy for aggregate demand, we employ equity mutual fund flows. Unlike previous studies that focus on events that are unlikely to convey new information to the market, we devise an empirical framework that disentangles the price-pressure effect and the information effect. We do not find evidence for the price-pressure effect that equity fund flows directly affect stock market prices in the presence of fundamentals of firms. Instead, we find that equity fund flows seem to be influenced by the performance of the stock market and that investors try to forecast fundamentals of firms and change their demand for stocks accordingly. Overall, these findings are with a horizontal market demand curve for equities.

The paper uses a signalling equilibrium to explain the market's reaction to the announcement of a firm's financing decision. In our model, a firm can issue one of the following securities: convertible debt with a different conversion ratio, straight debt, and stock. We identify conditions under which the conversion ratio of a convertible debt issue serves as a credible signal of a firm's private information, given the continuous distribution of attributes (information) across firms. In this signalling equilibrium, we find that the lower the expected future earnings, the higher the conversion ratio of a convertible debt issue. At the limit, firms that expect the highest earnings will use straight debt financing, and firms that expect the lowest earnings will use equity financing. Based on the signalling equilibrium, we predict that at announcement of a convertible debt issue, negative abnormal common stock return increases in absolute value with the conversion ratio.

Studies which deal with portfolio efficiency analysis can be divided into two main categories: (a) those concerned with the development of normative decision rules; and (b) those that discuss the application of the normative rules to empirical data. Most of the research on portfolio efficiency analysis uses some set of empirical data, without considering the possible errors which may arise when a sample rather than the entire population is examined. The prevailing neglect of the sampling errors is a clear reflection of the complexity of the issue.

Using an extensive cross section of U.S. corporate credit default swaps (CDSs), this paper offers an economic understanding of implied loss given default (LGD) and jumps in default risk. We formulate and underpin empirical stylized facts about CDS spreads, which are then reproduced in our affine intensity-based jump-diffusion model. Implied LGD is well identified, with obligors possessing substantial tangible assets expected to recover more. Sudden increases in the default risk of investment-grade obligors are higher relative to speculative grade. The probability of structural migration to default is low for investment-grade and heavily regulated obligors because investors fear distress rather through rare but devastating events.

There is broad consensus that three types of risk confront the potential bond purchaser: the risk of default (possible interest and/or principal loss), the risk of interest rate changes (possible principal loss or gain if the bonds are sold before maturity), and price level risk (loss of purchasing power). The analysis in this paper is directed toward the first of these risks, the risk of default. By assuming that investors require interest rate adjustments on debt subject to default sufficient to give them an expected present value equal to the present value associated with the investment of their funds in default-free securities, we examine the process that determines the risk-adjusted equilibrium interest rate and the factors affecting that rate. We also examine the implications of the model for the cost of debt and a firm's debt capacity.

We show that prior social connections can mitigate hold-up in bilateral relationships and encourage relation-specific investment and cooperation when contracts are incomplete. We examine vertical relationships and show that relation-specific innovative activities by suppliers increase with the existence and strength of prior social connections between the suppliers’ managers and board members and those of their customers. To establish causality, we exploit connection breaches due to manager/director retirements or deaths and find that innovation drops for affected suppliers after the departure of socially connected individuals relative to unaffected suppliers. Our work sheds light on how social connections can shape firm boundaries.

I develop a new predictive approach using Bayesian model averaging to account for incomplete knowledge of the true model behind corporate default and bankruptcy filing. I find that uncertainty over the correct model is empirically large, with far fewer variables being significant predictors of default compared with conventional approaches. Only the ratio of total liabilities to total assets and the volatility of market returns are robust default predictors in the overall sample and individual industry groups. Model-averaged forecasts that aggregate information across models or allow for industry-specific effects substantially outperform individual models.

Much effort has been recently devoted to investigating and expounding the properties of the measure called “duration.” Two properties claimed for duration are (1) that it is a good indicator of the average life of a payments stream and (2) that it measures the elasticity of the present value of such a stream with respect to the discount rate. Unfortunately the theoretical justifications of the second, more important, property have been based upon the analysis of either a change in a discount rate constant for all future time periods, or, more generally, a parallel shift in the term structure of interest rates.

How does social capital affect trust? Evidence from a Chinese peer-to-peer lending platform shows that regional social capital affects the trustee’s trustworthiness and the trustor’s trust propensity. Ceteris paribus, borrowers from regions with higher social capital receive larger bids from individual lenders and have higher funding success, larger loan sizes, and lower default rates, especially for low-quality borrowers. Lenders from regions with higher social capital take higher risks and have higher default rates, especially for inexperienced lenders. Cross-regional transactions are most (least) likely to be realized between parties from regions with high (low) social capital.

This article shows that, for major equity markets, the proportion of index values attributable to the first 5 years of dividends dropped substantially in the first quarter of 2020 and that this drop was not reversed by the end of the year. In the cross section, this breakdown of dividend smoothing due to COVID-19 was less severe for firms with higher operating cash flows and more positively coskewed stock returns, and it was more pronounced for those with higher leverage and in the financial sector. Heavy dividend cutters also experienced a substantial increase in exposure to systematic risk.

This study provides further evidence of earnings management around security offerings. We find positive and significant discretionary current accruals coincident with offerings of reverse LBOs. Issuers in the most aggressive quartile of earnings management have a one-year aftermarket return that is between 15% and 25% less than the most conservative quartile. We also find a negative and significant relation between abnormal accruals and post-issue abnormal returns within the first year after the offering. The relation remains after controlling for book-to-market ratio, firm size, offering size, and involvement of buyout specialists or management. Although earnings management has been used to explain post-issue long-term underperformance of IPOs and SEOs, our study shows that earnings management can explain post-offering returns of reverse LBOs, even in the absence of post-offering underperformance.

This paper examines the valuation impacts of specially designated dividends (SDDs) by analyzing the behavior of stock and bond prices on dates surrounding their announcements. The evidence presented here suggests that SDDs are considered positive signals by the market, with (most of) the gains associated with their announcements accruing to stockholders. In addition, we present some evidence that the gain to stockholders is negatively related to the frequency of SDD announcements.

This study empirically investigates how new information is incorporated into intra-daily DM-$US quotes, and finds evidence that certain dealers consistently incorporate new information into their quotes before others and that their behavior is influenced by market conditions. In general, Chemical Bank's quotes are the first to contain new information. However, in the periods of uncertainty around central bank interventions, evidence suggests Deutsche Bank is the price leader and its quotes are influenced by information and inventory considerations.

We explore the determinants of equity price risk of nonfinancial corporations. Operating and asset characteristics are by far the most important determinants of risk. For the median firm, financial risk accounts for only 15% of observed stock price volatility. Furthermore, financial risk has declined over the last 3 decades, indicating that any upward trend in equity volatility was driven entirely by economic risk factors. This explains why financial distress (as opposed to economic distress) was surprisingly uncommon in the nonfinancial sector during the 2007–2009 crisis even as measures of equity volatility reached unprecedented highs.

This paper offers a rational explanation for the puzzling empirical fact that stock returns decrease with an increase in the volatility of liquidity. We model liquidity as a stochastic price impact process and define the liquidity premium as the additional return necessary to compensate a multiperiod investor for the adverse price impact of trading. The model demonstrates that a fully rational, utility maximizing, risk-averse investor can take advantage of time-varying liquidity by adapting his trades to the state of liquidity. We provide new empirical evidence supportive of the model.

This paper examines multiperiod corporate financial policy in a world where the only market imperfection is taxation. The optimal financial policy determines the firm's capital structure and debt maturity structure. Two implications of this policy are: (1) there can be a set of debt-asset ratios that is consistent with firm value maximization, and (2) debt maturity structure is irrelevant to firm value.

This paper investigates the impact of managerial hedging on shareholder wealth when managers are able to choose the level of effort they expend in managing firms' investments. We demonstrate that shareholders will prefer managers to hedge observable unsystematic risks because they expect that this will induce managers to be more productive. We begin with the case where the risk being hedged is independent of managerial effort. In this case, we show that if shareholders are able to adjust incentive contracts either in anticipation of hedging or after observing hedging, but before managers expend effort, then they will benefit from that hedging. When the insurable risk is also dependent on managerial effort, then we have what we term an “embedded moral hazard” problem. In this case, the optimal contract may entail either over or under insurance by the manager, relative to that preferred by shareholders.

We examine the 2007 stock market bubble in China. Using multiple measures of bubble intensity for each stock, we find significantly smaller bubbles in stocks for which there is greater analyst coverage. We further show that the abating effect of analyst coverage on bubble intensity is weaker when there is greater disagreement among analysts. This suggests that, in line with resale option theories of bubbles, one channel through which analyst coverage may mitigate bubbles is by coordinating investors’ beliefs and thus reducing its dispersion. Stock turnover provides further evidence consistent with this particular information mechanism.

This article studies whether knowledge protection affects shareholder value and firms’ investment in knowledge assets using the staggered adoptions and rejections of the inevitable disclosure doctrine (IDD) by U.S. state courts as exogenous changes in the level of knowledge protection. We find positive (negative) abnormal stock returns around the IDD adoption (rejection) day for firms headquartered in the state, and we uncover a positive IDD treatment effect on firms’ investment in knowledge assets. Moreover, the effects on stock returns and knowledge assets investment are stronger in more knowledge-oriented industries and firms. Finally, enhancing knowledge protection does not discourage local entrepreneurial activity.

With the recent significant growth in the single-name credit default swap (CDS) market has come the need for accurate and computationally efficient models to value these instruments. While the model developed by Duffie, Pan, and Singleton (2000) can be used, the solution is numerical (solving a series of ordinary differential equations) rather than explicit. In this paper, we provide an explicit solution to the valuation of a credit default swap when the interest rate and the hazard rate are correlated by using the “change of measure” approach and solving a bivariate Riccati equation. CDS transaction data for the period 2/15/2000 through 4/8/2003 for 60 firms are used to test both the goodness of fit of the model and provide estimates of the influence of economic variables in the market for credit-risky bonds.