Knowledge that Transforms

The standard class of affine models produces poor forecasts of future Treasury yields. Better forecasts are generated by assuming that yields follow random walks. The failure of these models is driven by one of their key features: Compensation for risk is a multiple of the variance of the risk. Thus risk compensation cannot vary independently of interest rate volatility. I also describe a broader class of models. These aessentially affine‐ models retain the tractability of standard models, but allow compensation for interest rate risk to vary independently of interest rate volatility. This additional flexibility proves useful in forecasting future yields.

We study shareholder returns for firms that acquired five or more public, private, and/or subsidiary targets within a short time period. Since the same bidder chooses different types of targets and methods of payment, any variation in returns must be due to the characteristics of the target and the bid. Results indicate bidder shareholders gain when buying a private firm or subsidiary but lose when purchasing a public firm. Further, the return is greater the larger the target and if the bidder offers stock. These results are consistent with a liquidity discount, and tax and control effects in this market.

We investigate the role of information‐based trading in affecting asset returns. We show in a rational expectation example how private information affects equilibrium asset returns. Using a market microstructure model, we derive a measure of the probability of information‐based trading, and we estimate this measure using data for individual NYSE‐listed stocks for 1983 to 1998. We then incorporate our estimates into a Fama and French (1992) asset‐pricing framework. Our main result is that information does affect asset prices. A difference of 10 percentage points in the probability of information‐based trading between two stocks leads to a difference in their expected returns of 2.5 percent per year.

The distance between small firms and their lenders is increasing, and they are communicating in more impersonal ways. After documenting these systematic changes, we demonstrate they do not arise from small firms locating differently, consolidation in the banking industry, or biases in the sample. Instead, improvements in lender productivity appear to explain our findings. We also find distant firms no longer have to be the highest quality credits, indicating they have greater access to credit. The evidence indicates there has been substantial development of the financial sector, even in areas such as small business lending.

We provide evidence that stocks with higher dispersion in analysts' earnings forecasts earn lower future returns than otherwise similar stocks. This effect is most pronounced in small stocks and stocks that have performed poorly over the past year. Interpreting dispersion in analysts forecasts as a proxy for differences in opinion about a stock, we show that this evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that prices will reflect the optimistic view whenever investors with the lowest valuations do not trade. By contrast, our evidence is inconsistent with a view that dispersion in analysts' forecasts proxies for risk.

We review the theory and evidence on IPO activity: why firms go public, why they reward first‐day investors with considerable underpricing, and how IPOs perform in the long run. Our perspective is threefold: First, we believe that many IPO phenomena are not stationary. Second, we believe research into share allocation issues is the most promising area of research in IPOs at the moment. Third, we argue that asymmetric information is not the primary driver of many IPO phenomena. Instead, we believe future progress in the literature will come from nonrational and agency conflict explanations. We describe some promising such alternatives.

This paper asks how well different organizational structures perform in terms of generating information about investment projects and allocating capital to these projects. A decentralized approach‐with small, single‐manager firms‐is most likely to be attractive when information about projects is “soft” and cannot be credibly transmitted. In contrast, large hierarchies perform better when information can be costlessly “hardened” and passed along inside the firm. The model can be used to think about the consequences of consolidation in the banking industry, particularly the documented tendency for mergers to lead to declines in small‐business lending.

We assemble data on government ownership of banks around the world. The data show that such ownership is large and pervasive, and higher in countries with low levels of per capita income, backward financial systems, interventionist and inefficient governments, and poor protection of property rights. Higher government ownership of banks in 1970 is associated with slower subsequent financial development and lower growth of per capita income and productivity. This evidence supports “political” theories of the effects of government ownership of firms.

It is well known that firms are more likely to issue equity when their market values are high, relative to book and past market values, and to repurchase equity when their market values are low. We document that the resulting effects on capital structure are very persistent. As a consequence, current capital structure is strongly related to historical market values. The results suggest the theory that capital structure is the cumulative outcome of past attempts to time the equity market.

This article disentangles the incentive and entrenchment effects of large ownership. Using data for 1,301 publicly traded corporations in eight East Asian economies, we find that firm value increases with the cash‐flow ownership of the largest shareholder, consistent with a positive incentive effect. But firm value falls when the control rights of the largest shareholder exceed its cash‐flow ownership, consistent with an entrenchment effect. Given that concentrated corporate ownership is predominant in most countries, these findings have relevance for corporate governance across the world.