Both managerial ownership and performance are endogenously determined by exogenous (and only partly observed) changes in the firm's contracting environment. We extend the cross-sectional results of Demsetz and Lehn (1985), (Journal of Political Economy, 93, 1155–1177) and use panel data to show that managerial ownership is explained by key variables in the contracting environment in ways consistent with the predictions of principal-agent models. A large fraction of the cross-sectional variation in managerial ownership is explained by unobserved firm heterogeneity. Moreover, after controlling both for observed firm characteristics and firm fixed effects, we cannot conclude (econometrically) that changes in managerial ownership affect firm performance.

This paper finds noninterest income is positively correlated with the total systemic risk for U.S. banks. Decomposing total systemic risk into three components, we find that noninterest income is positively related to a bank’s tail risk, positively related to a bank’s interconnectedness risk, and an insignificantly related to a bank’s exposure to macroeconomic and finance factors. We also find that noninterest income is more volatile and negatively related to interest income. Finally, we find trading and other noninterest income to be positively correlated with systemic risk. Other noninterest income, compared with trading income, has a slightly larger economic impact. (JEL G01, G18, G20, G21, G32, G38) Received October 31, 2019; editorial decision February 3, 2020 by Editor Andrew Ellul.

This paper examines whether shareholder value-maximizing corporate governance mechanisms assist in reducing the managerial incentive to enter value-destroying bank acquisitions. We find that diversifying bank acquisitions earn significantly negative announcement period abnormal returns (AR) for bidder banks whereas focusing acquisitions earn zero AR. We then find that corporate governance variables (such as CEO share and option ownership and a smaller board size) in the bidding bank are less effective in diversifying acquisitions than in focusing acquisitions. These results are robust to the inclusion of the usual control variables.

This paper examines the effect of commercial bank entry on underwriting spreads for IPOs, SEOs, and debt issues using a long time series that spans 30 years, from 1975 to 2004. We find that, on average, commercial banks charge lower spreads of approximately 72 basis points for IPOs, 43 basis points for SEOs, and 14 basis points for debt over the entire sample period. The economic impact of commercial banks on lowering underwriting spreads is most significant when commercial banks were allowed to enter via Section 20 subsidiaries but persists beyond. Commercial bank entry into underwriting appears to have a procompetitive effect that lasts many years after their initial entry.

The theoretical and empirical literature suggests that CEO might not make risky long-term investments if the CEO believes that the benefit of such investments would not materialize or is not recognized by the market until after the CEO has retired. This paper tests the predictions of the Acharya, Myers, and Rajan (2011) internal governance model to counteract the CEO’s tendency to forego such investments on a sample of voluntary CEO turnovers. We find that the optimal level of sharing of tasks between the CEO and her top-management team, the firm’s internal governance, is dependent on the CEO’s career horizon. Additionally, we find the effect of internal governance only matters for older CEOs. We also find that the closer the internal governance is to the optimal level, the smaller is the underinvestment for an older outgoing CEO. We find that the new incoming CEO divests profitably the assets acquired under good internal governance. Finally, we find that optimal internal governance is found to have positive effects on corporate innovation. Our results are robust to continuous matching by generalized propensity score and controlling for the CEO’s explicit pay-performance sensitivity, succession plan, and pay duration.

Is credit expansion a sign of desirable financial deepening or the prelude to an inevitable bust? We study this question in modern US data using a structural VAR model of 10 monthly frequency variables, identified by heteroskedasticity. Negative reduced-form responses of output to credit growth are caused by endogenous monetary policy response to credit expansion shocks. On average, credit and output growth remain positively associated. “Financial stress” shocks to credit spreads cause declines in output and credit levels. Neither credit aggregates nor spreads provide much advance warning of the 2008–2009 crisis, but spreads improve within-crisis forecasts.

We analyze the impact of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) on corporate bond ratings issued by credit rating agencies (CRAs). We find no evidence that Dodd-Frank disciplines CRAs to provide more accurate and informative credit ratings. Instead, following Dodd-Frank, CRAs issue lower ratings, give more false warnings, and issue downgrades that are less informative. These results are consistent with the reputation model of Morris (2001), and suggest that CRAs become more protective of their reputation following the passage of Dodd-Frank. Consistent with Morris (2001), we find that our results are stronger for industries with low Fitch market share, where Moody׳s and Standard & Poor׳s have stronger incentives to protect their reputation (Becker and Milbourn, 2011). Our results are not driven by business cycle effects or firm characteristics, and strengthen as the uncertainty regarding the passage of Dodd-Frank gets resolved. We conclude that increasing the legal and regulatory costs to CRAs might have an adverse effect on the quality of credit ratings.

We use a movie industry project-by-project dataset to analyze the choice of financing a project internally versus financing it through outside alliances. The results indicate that project risk is positively correlated with alliance formation. Movie studios produce a variety of films and tend to develop their safest projects internally. Our findings are consistent with internal capital market explanations. We find mixed evidence regarding resource pooling, i.e., sharing the cost of large projects. Finally, the evidence shows that projects developed internally perform similarly to projects developed through outside alliances.