Knowledge that Transforms

We use arbitrage activity in equity, fixed income, and foreign exchange markets to characterize the frictions and constraints facing intermediaries. The average pairwise correlation between the 32 arbitrage spreads that we study is 22%. These low correlations are inconsistent with canonical intermediary asset pricing models. We show that at least two types of segmentation drive arbitrage dynamics. First, funding is segmented—certain trades rely on specific funding sources, making their arbitrage spreads sensitive to localized funding shocks. Second, balance sheets are segmented—intermediaries specialize in certain trades, so arbitrage spreads are sensitive to idiosyncratic balance‐sheet shocks.

This paper uses new data to provide a comprehensive view of repo activity during the 2007 global financial crisis. We show that activity declined much more in the bilateral segment of the market than in the tri‐party segment. Surprisingly, a large share of the decline in activity is driven by repos backed by Treasury securities. Further, a disproportionate share of the decline in repo activity is connected to securities dealer's market‐making activity. In particular, the evidence suggests that at least part of the decline is not driven by clients pulling away from securities dealers because of counterparty credit concerns.

Using a novel data set of realized syndicated loan cash flows and a risk‐adjustment methodology adapted from the private equity literature, I provide a measure of risk‐adjusted returns for bank loan cash flows. Banks, on average, generate 180 basis points in gross risk‐adjusted returns and add $75 million of value annually to their loan portfolios. Banks earn higher returns when they lend to financially constrained borrowers, and the risk‐adjusted performance of bank loan portfolios exhibits persistence. However, banks require higher risk‐adjusted returns when facing their own financing frictions, and shareholders earn nearly zero net risk‐adjusted returns once bank staff are compensated for their lending effort. Overall, these findings suggest that banks provide valuable services to mitigate borrowers' financing frictions, and the present value of loan cash flows pays for the costs of providing these services.

The paper examines the decision‐making, compensation, and turnover of female CEOs in U.S. hospitals. Contrary to the literature on lower‐ranked executives and directors in public firms, there is no evidence that gender differences in preferences for risk or altruism affect decision‐making of hospital CEOs: corporate policies do not shift when women take (or leave) office, and male and female CEOs respond similarly to a major financial shock. However, female CEOs earn lower salaries, face flatter pay‐for‐performance incentives, and exhibit greater turnover after poor performance. Hospital boards behave as though they perceive female CEOs as less productive.

We study the impact of the U.S. money market fund reform implemented in October 2016 on global banks' funding supply and business activities. We show that the reform induced a large negative wholesale funding shock for global banks. In contrast to the conventional bank lending channel, the primary response of global banks to the reform was a cutback in arbitrage positions that relied on unsecured funding, rather than a reduction in loan provision. We discuss the role of postcrisis liquidity regulations and unconventional monetary policy in explaining our findings, and implications for banks' business models and deposit competition.

We empirically analyze firm‐level uncertainty generated from extreme weather events, guided by a theoretical framework. Stock options of firms with establishments in a hurricane's (forecast) landfall region exhibit large implied volatility increases, reflecting significant uncertainty (before) after impact. Volatility risk premium dynamics reveal that investors underestimate such uncertainty. This underreaction diminishes for hurricanes after Sandy, a salient event that struck the U.S. financial center. Despite constituting idiosyncratic shocks, hurricanes affect hit firms' expected stock returns. Textual analysis of calls between firm management, analysts, and investors reveals that discussions about hurricane impacts remain elevated throughout the long‐lasting high‐uncertainty period after landfall.

We propose a theory of banking in which banks cannot perfectly control deposit flows. Facing uninsurable loan and deposit shocks, banks dynamically manage lending, wholesale funding, deposits, and equity. Deposits create value by lowering funding costs. However, when the bank is undercapitalized and at risk of breaching leverage requirements, the marginal value of deposits can turn negative as deposit inflows, by raising leverage, increase the likelihood of costly equity issuance. Banks' inability to fully control leverage distinguishes them from nondepository intermediaries. Our model suggests a reevaluation of leverage regulations and offers new perspectives on banking in a low‐interest‐rate environment.

This paper develops an empirical methodology for extracting pricing factors from investor portfolio data. We apply this approach to the stockholdings of Norwegian individual investors from 1997 to 2017. A two‐factor model, featuring the market portfolio and a long‐short portfolio constructed from the holdings of investors sorted by age or wealth, explains both the common variation in portfolio holdings and the cross section of stock returns. Portfolio tilts toward the long‐short investor factor correlate with indebtedness, macroeconomic exposure, gender, and investment experience. Our paper illustrates the benefits of using holdings data for explaining the risk premia of financial assets.

We examine executive compensation in a general equilibrium model with dynamic moral hazard, where executives' outside options are endogenously determined by equilibrium market compensation. Firms provide incentives through compensation packages featuring deferred payments as “carrots” and termination as “sticks.” Crucially, the effectiveness of termination as an incentive device is undermined by the outside options available to executives. As individual firms fail to internalize the effect of their compensation design on these endogenous outside options, the equilibrium is generally inefficient. Compared to shareholder‐value‐maximizing compensation packages, executives are paid too much, too soon, and keep their jobs for too long.

Using international data, we quantify the magnitude of survivorship bias in U.S. equity market performance, finding that it explains about one‐third of the equity risk premium in the past century. We model the subjective crash belief of an investor who infers the crash risk in the United States by cross‐learning from other countries. The U.S. crash probability shows a persistent and widening divergence from the implied global average. We attribute the upward bias in the measured equity premium to crashes that did not occur in‐sample and to shocks to valuations resulting from learning about the probability.