Knowledge that Transforms

Using a sample of 3083 firms from 62 countries over 18 years, we analyze how the structure and identity of firms' material owners influence their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance. We find that firms with founding families or other individual investors as owners underperform, unless family members serve as CEOs, when they outperform all others. Non-family management and government entities also perform significantly better in most analyses. These results are robust to multiple data and methodological stress tests. Our findings show that ownership matters for ESG performance and give us an indication of the preferences of different types of owners regarding ESG.

Using hand-collected data on the CEOs of Chinese companies, we find that managers who grow up without siblings are associated with riskier firms and worse performance. Our analysis exploits regional and time variation in China's compulsory one-child policy as a shock to fertility rates. Consistent with explanations that only-children have not experienced competition among siblings, we show that firms led by only-child CEOs underperform when industry competition is stronger. Our findings suggest that fertility policies affect the supply of managerial capital and, consequently, corporate policies and performance.

We consider the determinants of pay in US banks since 1986 using a new structural model in which banking firms are matched in rank order with management teams of varying talent. We calibrate the model to data from US bank holding companies focussing on labor’s share of bank value-added, the level of bankers’ pay and its sensitivity to bank performance. We find that three changes in banking regulation have shaped bankers’ pay in the last three decades: (1) removal of obstacles to interstate banking set off a process of banking consolidation in the 1990s, (2) deregulation at the end of the 1990’s allowing banks to pursue non-interest income has driven a trend toward higher pay and higher incentive pay, (3) tougher regulations following the financial crisis imposing an implicit tax on size and complexity has moderated pay in large banks but in so-doing has allowed smaller banks to take on business outside of standard credit intermediation resulting higher pay in those banks. Taking these structural changes into account we find a tendency over three decades for a decline in labor’s share, in line with superstar effects implied by our structural model.

This study investigates the imbalance of ESG investing across its environmental (E), social (S), and governance (G) pillars. We find that E plays a more significant role in influencing the imbalance level, and mutual funds prioritize mitigating E risks over S and G risks, which is more pronounced in funds with higher sustainability ratings. Moreover, our findings indicate that investors respond to ESG imbalance, with the level of imbalance showing a negative impact on fund flows, especially for funds with higher sustainability ratings. However, this negative relationship is mitigated as climate change concerns increase. Furthermore, we find that political ideology plays a role in the ESG imbalance, with the imbalance of funds in blue states being more driven by lower environmental considerations compared to those in red states. Additionally, we observe that the ESG imbalance is positively associated with various fund risks. Our study offers implications for policymakers and stakeholders in the asset management industry regarding ESG investing practices.

This study investigates the association between quantitative disclosure and information risk, hypothesizing that a greater proportion of numerical information in earnings conference calls decreases information risk and thus increases firm value. We find that, even after controlling for earnings information, more extensive numerical disclosure correlates positively with earnings announcement returns. This effect concentrates in firms with poorer information environments and during periods of heightened performance uncertainty. Finally, we show that a greater proportion of numerical disclosure reduces implied volatility, bid-ask spread, and implied cost of capital. Our findings highlight numerical disclosure's role in reducing information risk and emphasize its importance in financial disclosures.

We examine the differences in the options implied left-tail risk and volatility of government-owned and private banks in India. We show that left-tail risk and the cost of insurance for protection against it are high for private banks as compared to government-owned banks, despite their superior asset quality. The COVID-19 crisis, an exogenous shock to systematic risk, increased the left-tail risk more for private banks. Furthermore, the effect of government ownership on left-tail risk is more significant for smaller banks compared to larger banks. Contrary to our left-tail risk result, we find that government-owned banks have higher near-the-money options implied volatility than private banks. Our findings suggest that while government ownership mitigates expected downside risk, it also leads to higher expected volatility due to riskier lending policies and uncertainties about capital infusions.

Corporate taxation can have redistributive effects on income and wealth. We hypothesize and empirically establish such an effect working via bank credit. We use a unique sample of small majority-owned firms that apply for credit, where only some firms (treated) experience a corporate tax cut. We show that after the decrease in corporate tax rates, the treated poorer business owners get easier access to credit. However, this policy also considerably increases loan amounts and decreases loan spreads for the treated richer. Ultimately, reducing the corporate tax rate predominantly increases the future income and wealth of richer business owners.

In this paper, we study the determinants of Bitcoin volatility. We estimate and decompose Bitcoin's realized volatility into jump volatility and continuous volatility components. We find that innovations in Robinhood retail trading are positively related to the continuous component of Bitcoin's volatility. Specifically, the innovations in Robinhood retail trading predict an increase in future ten-day continuous volatility. The innovations in the (anonymous) trading volume of Monero are also positively related to the jump component in Bitcoin's volatility. Specifically, the innovations in Monero trading volume predict an increase in average jump volatility over the next five days. Our results suggest that retail trading positively influences the continuous component of Bitcoin volatility, while the preference for transaction anonymity positively affects the jump component of Bitcoin volatility.

Using detailed hand-collected data on firm ownership and board cultural diversity from Sweden, we find that foreign ownership is positively associated with board cultural diversity. This relationship is not an artifact of foreign owners joining the board, and it is not driven by firms with substantial foreign focus. The presence of foreign owners on nomination committees seems to be the channel through which foreign owners implement cultural diversity. The positive relationship between foreign ownership and board cultural diversity is also more pronounced in firms where owners may have more say (family firms, dual-class share firms, and firms with concentrated ownership). However, we do not find evidence that cultural diversity increases firm value or that it is correlated with other types of diversity. Our preferred interpretation is quasi-homophily.

While there is no apparent reason for loan spreads to cluster at certain numbers, we find that approximately 70 % of bank loans have round-yard spreads (i.e., multiples of 25 basis points). We hypothesize that dominant banks implicitly collude using round yards as focal pricing points when negotiating with borrowers. Tacit collusion leads to higher spreads and total costs of round yard priced loans than of non-round yard priced loans. Consistent with our tacit collusion hypothesis, dominant banks round up loans to multiple yards rather than rounding them down. Moreover, round-yard pricing is more prevalent among lower-quality and nonrepeat borrowers.