We consider a model in which shareholders provide a risk-averse CEO with risk-taking incentives in addition to effort incentives. We show that the optimal contract protects the CEO from losses for bad outcomes and is convex for medium outcomes and concave for good outcomes. We calibrate the model to data on 1,707 CEOs and show that it explains observed contracts much better than the standard model without risk-taking incentives. When we apply the model to contracts that consist of base salary, stock, and options, the results suggest that options should be issued in the money. Our model also helps us rationalize the universal use of at-the-money options when the tax code is taken into account. Moreover, we propose a new way of measuring risk-taking incentives in which the expected value added to the firm is traded off against the additional risk a CEO has to bear.

Sell-side analysts rate on a particular type of behavioral curve: recency. Although they claim to use objective criteria (like expected raw, market-adjusted, or industry-adjusted returns), we find that, even after controlling for these claims, their recommendations on a particular stock are negatively influenced by their assessment of the quality of the few other stocks they have rated that month. This recency bias has price implications. The next day's alpha of a sophisticated trading strategy that incorporates this bias is about 40 % higher compared to the alpha of an unsophisticated strategy that uses rating information only.

Our study reveals that financial analysts issue more pessimistic forecasts for their investment banking clients' competitors than for unrelated firms. Our evidence is consistent with this behavior stemming from analysts' strategic incentives rather than their true beliefs. We find that analysts' pessimism for the client's competitors is more pronounced when the client is more important to analysts' brokerage houses, when high uncertainty prevents competitors from detecting analysts' strategic motives, and when analysts' brokerage houses are less prestigious. Additionally, we explore the economic consequences of the pessimism from the perspectives of the covered firms, brokerage houses, and financial analysts. Finally, we consider the impact of the 2003 Global Analyst Research Settlement. Overall, our results demonstrate that issuing pessimistic forecasts for clients' competitors is an understudied channel through which analysts curry favor with their investment banking clients.

ABSTRACT We examine how digital disruption affects bank competition using the staggered rollout of 3G mobile networks. 3G expansion increased mobile banking adoption among tech‐savvy households, reducing branch networks—especially in younger counties. Banks' strategies diverged: Less branch‐reliant banks closed branches and competed on price, while more branch‐reliant banks maintained branches but raised spreads. A structural model shows that perceived digital service improvements among younger consumers drove these shifts, reducing welfare for older savers. Counterfactuals demonstrate that subsidizing adoption for older savers can cost‐effectively reduce these disparities, facilitating a smoother digital transition.

This article examines whether foreign investor heterogeneity plays a role in stock liquidity in a sample of 27,828 firms from thirty-nine countries worldwide. Foreign direct ownership is negatively associated with stock liquidity, while foreign portfolio ownership is positively associated with stock liquidity. Consistent with theoretical predictions, foreign ownership explains stock liquidity through both trading activity and information channels. The value-enhancing benefits of foreign direct investors’ monitoring efforts outweigh their liquidity costs and high adverse selection premium. However, the positive impact of foreign portfolio ownership on firm performance becomes negative and is not robustly significant after controlling for liquidity.

We examine how firms respond to requests for enhanced disclosure that we make on an online investor platform. Exploiting variation in firms' customer and supplier disclosures, we ask a randomized set of non-disclosing firms to provide information on their customers' and suppliers' identities. We find that the firms' probability of disclosure depends on the basis we give for the demand—requests appealing to disclosure's usefulness to investors lead to more frequent disclosure, while those appealing to regulators' preference for disclosure lead to less frequent disclosure. The requests we make on the platform lead to more frequent customer- and supplier-related inquiries from other platform users. We also find that the treatment firms' disclosure of customer and supplier information improves in the next period's regulatory filings. The findings suggest that investor platforms can enhance corporate transparency by increasing retail investors' ability to demand information.

Counterparty risk is an important determinant of corporate credit spreads. However, there are only a few techniques available to isolate it from other factors. In this paper we describe a model of financial networks that is suitable for the construction of proxies for counterparty risk. Using data on North American supplier–customer network of public companies, we find that, for each supplier, counterparties’ leverage and option implied volatilities are significant determinants of corporate credit spreads in the period after the 2008–2009 U.S. recession. Our findings are robust after controlling for several idiosyncratic, industry, and market factors.

We use a unique quasi-experiment–spillovers from the imposition of purchase restrictions on local housing to nearby unregulated cities–to study the effects of out-of-town housing demand on house prices and consumer spending. While these restrictions effectively stymied the surge in local house prices, they induced capital flight and sharp abnormal increases in house prices in nearby unregulated cities. The effect of the house price increases on consumer spending is positive in the aggregate, but echoing Favilukis and Van Nieuwerburgh (2021), is redistributive, that is, negative for renters and positive for homeowners. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online

We find that Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) with greater career concerns are more diligent and conservative in preparing financial statements during an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Additional tests exploiting exogenous variation in managerial career concerns suggest that our documented relations are not sensitive to unobservable omitted factors. Furthermore, we document that CFOs who are relatively more concerned about their future job prospects are more sensitive when there is greater scrutiny or higher litigation risk and are less likely to succumb to undue pressures from influential shareholders to exaggerate the firm's prospects. Finally, we show that CFOs with longer decision horizons prefer more transparency during the IPO process, which in turn, translates to superior post-IPO performance and better labor market outcomes than their counterparts. Overall, our findings indicate that career concerns play a disciplining role during IPOs and that CFOs exploit these high-visibility events to accelerate their career trajectory.