Knowledge that Transforms

ABSTRACT Investments in international fixed‐income securities are exposed to significant currency risks. We collect novel data on currency derivatives used by U.S. international fixed‐income funds. We document that while 90% of funds use currency forwards, they hedge, on average, only 18% of their currency exposure. Funds' currency forward positions differ substantially based on risk management demands related to portfolio currency exposure, return‐enhancement motives such as currency momentum and carry trade, and strategic considerations related to past performance and fund clientele. Funds that hedge their currency risk exhibit lower return variability, but do not generate inferior abnormal returns.

ABSTRACT Domestically listed Chinese (A‐share) firms have lower stock returns than externally listed Chinese, developed, and emerging country firms during 2000 to 2018. They also have lower net cash flows than matched unlisted Chinese firms. The underperformance of both stock and accounting returns is more pronounced for large A‐share firms, while small firms show no underperformance along either dimension. Investor sentiment explains low stock returns in the cross‐country and within‐A‐share samples. Institutional deficiencies in listing and delisting processes and weak corporate governance in terms of shareholder value creation are consistent with the underperformance in stock returns and net cash flows.

ABSTRACT Economic interactions often involve sequential actions, observational learning, and contingent project implementation. We incorporate all‐or‐nothing thresholds in a canonical model of information cascades. Early supporters effectively delegate their decisions to a “gatekeeper,” resulting in unidirectional cascades without herding on rejections. Project proposers can consequently charge higher prices. Proposal feasibility, project selection, and information aggregation all improve, even when agents can wait. Equilibrium outcomes depend on crowd size, and project implementation and information aggregation achieve efficiency in the large‐crowd limit. Our key insights hold under thresholds in dollar amounts and alternative equilibrium selection, among other model extensions.

ABSTRACT We develop a model of bailout stigma in which accepting a bailout signals a firm's balance‐sheet weakness and reduces its funding prospects. To avoid stigma, high‐quality firms withdraw from subsequent financing after receiving bailouts or refuse bailouts altogether to send a favorable signal. The former leads to a short‐lived stimulation followed by a market freeze even worse than if there were no bailout. The latter revives the funding market, albeit with delay, to the level achievable without any stigma and implements a constrained optimal outcome. A menu of multiple bailout programs compounds bailout stigma and exacerbates the market freeze.

ABSTRACT We investigate the economic value of cash management. In the legal marijuana industry, where only half of businesses have access to cash management services from a financial institution, we examine dispensary profitability using administrative and survey data. Our results show that businesses with cash management charge higher retail prices (8.3%), pay lower wholesale prices (7.3%), and have higher sales volume (19%). Together, these advantages create a 40% increase in profitability. These results support our model in which reputational capital and administrative costs drive profitability regardless of whether national banks, credit unions, or fintech provide the cash management functions.

ABSTRACT We analyze optimal monetary policy and its implications for asset prices when aggregate demand has inertia. If there is a negative output gap, the central bank optimally overshoots aggregate asset prices (above their steady‐state levels consistent with current potential output). Overshooting leads to a temporary disconnect between the performance of financial markets and the real economy, but accelerates the recovery. When there is a lower bound constraint on the discount rate, good macroeconomic news is better news for asset prices when the output gap is more negative. Finally, we document that during the COVID‐19 recovery, the policy‐induced overshooting was large.

ABSTRACT I model positive sorting of entrepreneurs across the high and low value‐added segments of the venture capital market. Aiming to attract high‐quality entrepreneurs, inefficiently many venture capitalists (VCs) commit to provide high value‐added by forming small portfolios. This draws the marginal entrepreneur away from the low value‐added segment, reducing match quality in the high value‐added segment too. There is underinvestment. Multiple equilibria may emerge, and they differ in aggregate investment. The model rationalizes evidence on VC returns and value‐added along fundraising “waves” and when the cost of entrepreneurship falls, and generates untested predictions on the size and value‐added of venture capital.

ABSTRACT Using high‐frequency spending data, we show that household consumption displays excess sensitivity to salient macroeconomic news, even when the news is not real. When the announced local unemployment rate reaches a 12‐month maximum, local news coverage of unemployment increases and local consumers reduce their discretionary spending by 1.5% relative to consumers in areas with the same macroeconomic conditions. Low‐income households display greater excess sensitivity to salience. The decrease in spending is not later reversed. Households in treated areas act as if they are more financially constrained than those in untreated areas with the same fundamentals.

ABSTRACT We use a large cross section of equity returns to estimate a rich affine model of equity prices, dividends, returns, and their dynamics. Our model prices dividend strips of the market and equity portfolios without using strips data in the estimation. Yet model‐implied equity yields closely match yields on traded strips. Our model extends equity term‐structure data over time (to the 1970s) and across maturities, and generates term structures for various equity portfolios. The novel cross section of term structures from our model covers 45 years and includes several recessions, providing a novel set of empirical moments to discipline asset pricing models.

ABSTRACT We arranged for trained undercover men and women to pose as potential clients and visit all 65 local financial advisory firms in Hong Kong. At financial planning firms, but not at securities firms, women were more likely than men to receive advice to buy only individual or only local securities. Female clients who signaled high confidence, high risk tolerance, or a domestic outlook were especially likely to receive this suboptimal advice. Our theoretical model explains these patterns as a result of statistical discrimination interacting with advisors’ incentives. Taste‐based discrimination is unlikely to explain the results.