Previous studies ignore the fact that employee stock options are warrants because these options have been an insignificant component of firms’ capital structures. I show that this assumption is no longer correct. For example, for more than 36% of my sample firms, employee stock options represent a more significant claim on firm value than the firm’s debt and preferred stock combined. Moreover, in contrast to the suggestions of previous research, I show that employee stock options are a significant claim on firms throughout the economy, including larger firms, older firms, and firms in “Old Economy” industries. Finally, I show that the presumption in prior studies that employee stock options are not warrants causes a potential misunderstanding of the risk-shifting interests of securityholders and biases the analysis of capital structure issues.

I investigate the relationship between the amount of information provided by a firm's comparables (i.e., firms in the same line of business as the firm being valued) and the precision of the firm's equity valuation. When investors have more information, previous studies argue that investors can make a more precise estimate of a firm's true equity value and this implies a lower (excess) stock return volatility around corporate events such as earnings announcements. I develop a simple model that shows a negative relationship between the amount of information provided by a firm's comparables and the firm's stock return volatility. Using alternative measures of information provided by comparables and different definitions of comparables, I consistently find a negative and significant relationship between these information measures and stock return volatility, ceteris paribus.

The well-documented phenomena of departures from the absolute priority rule (APR) have provoked an important public policy debate over their consequences. Some scholars argue that APR violations increase economic efficiency because they play an important role in the avoidance of inefficient liquidations and also mitigate inefficient risk incentives. Another group argues that APR violations should be abolished because they add greater uncertainty to the security valuation process; that is, they increase noise in security prices. To date, however, no evidence has been presented on the issue of how much noise APR violations add. We develop a theoretical model that allows an empirical test of the effect of APR violations on noise; our results suggest that APR violations importantly increase noise. Indeed, at least 30 percent, and as much as 85 percent of the noise in security prices may be attributable to APR violations. This does not suggest that the beneficial effects of APR violations are nonexistent or unimportant, but it does imply that failing to account for the effect of APR violations on noise in any modelling of optimal bankruptcy rules may lead to a suboptimal design. We also find that the amount of noise in this market appears to have declined over time as more institutional/informed investors have entered the market for bankrupt firms' securities and the effect of change in the bankruptcy law has become clearer, both consistent with the noisy rational expectations hypothesis.