As no rational agent would be willing to take part in the last round in a finite economy, it is difficult to design Ponzi schemes that are certain to explode. This paper argues that if agents correctly believe in the possibility of a partial bailout when a gigantic Ponzi scheme collapses, and they recognize that a bailout is tantamount to a redistribution of wealth from non-participants to participants, it may be rational for agents to participate, even if they know that it is the last round. We model a political economy where an unscrupulous profit-maximizing promoter can design gigantic Ponzi schemes to cynically exploit this “too big to fail” doctrine. We point to the fact that some of the spectacular Ponzi schemes in history occurred at times where and when such political economies existed—France (1719), Britain (1720), Russia (1994), and Albania (1997).

This paper analyzes how the strategies of domestic firms borrowing abroad complicate the interaction between central banks and foreign exchange short sellers. If we define financial liberalization as the degree of freedom given to domestic firms to borrow abroad, we find that, in the early stages of financial liberalization, foreign borrowing does not affect the stability of the currency peg, but, in the advanced stages of financial liberalization, foreign borrowing destabilizes currency pegs. When this happens, we show that policies to curb currency short sellers have no effect. The paper thus formalizes the critical juncture where financial liberalization and currency pegs become incompatible policy goals.

This article synthesizes some recent progress in the theories of corporate control and political lobbying to model the proxy campaign as a political campaign. The model yields a number of testable implications, only some of which have been examined in the literature. For example, if the loss from voting for a "bad" dissident exceeds the gain from voting for a "good" dissident, the model predicts that as communication costs fall, the number of proxy fights increases, announcement day returns decrease, and the fraction of dissident wins first increases and then decreases. Article published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Financial Studies in its journal, The Review of Financial Studies.

This paper argues, both theoretically and empirically, that sometimes no securities law may be better than a good securities law that is not enforced. The first part of the paper formalizes the sufficient conditions under which this happens for any law. The second part of the paper shows that a specific securities law – the law prohibiting insider trading – may satisfy these conditions. The third part of the paper takes this prediction to the data. We find that the cost of equity actually rises when some countries enact an insider trading law, but do not enforce it.

On August 12–13, 2005, the department of finance at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, collaborated with the Review of Financial Studies to host a conference titled “The Causes and Consequences of Recent Financial Market Bubbles.” This article begins with our overview of the themes and findings of the conference, and it ends with the questions that the literature has yet to answer.

Using a sample of all top management who were indicted for illegal insider trading in the United States for trades during the period 1989–2002, we explore the economic rationality of this white-collar crime. If this crime is an economically rational activity in the sense of Becker (1968), where a crime is committed if its expected benefits exceed its expected costs, “poorer” top management should be doing the most illegal insider trading. This is because the “poor” have less to lose (present value of foregone future compensation if caught is lower for them). We find in the data, however, that indictments are concentrated in the “richer” strata after we control for firm size, industry, firm growth opportunities, executive age, the opportunity to commit illegal insider trading, and the possibility that regulators target the “richer” strata. We thus rule out the economic motive for this white-collar crime, and leave open the possibility of other motives.

The existence and the enforcement of insider trading laws in stock markets is a phenomenon of the 1990s. A study of the 103 countries that have stock markets reveals that insider trading laws exist in 87 of them, but enforcement—as evidenced by prosecutions—has taken place in only 38 of them. Before 1990, the respective numbers were 34 and 9. We find that the cost of equity in a country, after controlling for a number of other variables, does not change after the introduction of insider trading laws, but decreases significantly after the first prosecution.

We first develop a theory-based metric to judge the popularity of value weighting in a stock market. We then use our metric to document that although value weighting is less popular in emerging markets than in developed markets, its popularity is increasing almost everywhere. Finally, as we have better data for the United States, we explore why value weighting is becoming more popular in the United States.