Knowledge that Transforms

Studies suggest that underwriting syndicates provide marketing services and certify the fairness of offer prices. The authors argue that syndicate lead banks also monitor manager effort, increasing the value of capital-raising companies. A given level of monitoring is associated with a given level of intrinsic value, so there is a "schedule" of certifiable offer prices, depending on the level of monitoring. Monitoring, marketing, and certification are, therefore, all legitimate syndicate functions. New evidence supporting the conclusion that syndicates provide corporate monitoring is presented.

Standard models of informed speculation suggest that traders try to learn information that others do not have. This result implicitly relies on the assumption that speculators have long horizons, i.e., can hold the asset forever. By contrast, the authors show that if speculators have short horizons, they may herd on the same information, trying to learn what other informed traders also know. There can be multiple herding equilibria, and herding speculators may even choose to study information that is completely unrelated to fundamentals.

M. Grinblatt and S. Titman (1985) reformulate a result of G. Chamberlain and M. Rothschild (1983) to show that the approximate factor structure of Chamberlain and Rothschild is asymptotically equivalent to the strict factor structure of S. A. Ross (1976) as long as investors can always repackage securities into an equal number of arbitrary portfolios. This paper uses a Procrustes rotation methodology that is compatible with the repackaging interpretation of Grinblatt and Titman to show that the empirical structure of stock prices is consistent with the convergency hypothesis.

The ex ante optimal contract between investors and employees is derived endogenously and is interpreted in terms of debt, equity, and employees' compensation. Although public equity financing is feasible in this model through verified accounting income, debt is needed to force value-enhancing restructuring before the income realizes. The optimal debt level, however, is lower than that which maximizes the value of the firm when there is nonmonetary restructuring-related cost to employees. The paper explains how stock prices react to exchange offers, how earnings can be diluted by a decrease in leverage, and why employees' claims are generally senior to those of investors. New testable implications about leverage and compensation levels are derived.

Most of the evidence on consumption-based asset pricing is based on seasonally adjusted consumption data. The consumption-based models have not worked well for explaining asset returns, but with seasonally adjusted data there are reasons to expect spurious rejections of the models. This paper examines asset pricing models using not seasonally adjusted aggregate consumption data. The authors find evidence against models with time-separable preferences, even when the models incorporate seasonality and allow seasonal heteroskedasticity. A model that uses not seasonally adjusted consumption data and nonseparable preferences with seasonal effects works better according to several criteria. The parameter estimates imply a form of seasonal habit persistence in aggregate consumption expenditures.

The conventional view of going-private transactions is that they are designed to enhance the efficiency of the firm. A starkly different view is that these and other control transactions are motivated to effect transfers from other stakeholders in the firm to equity holders. This study exploits data describing pension terminations as a way to test these theories. The authors conclude that the efficiency theory can plausibly explain a substantial number of leveraged-buyout-related terminations, but not enough to undermine the transfer theory. More specific predictions from the efficiency theory are needed to structure more exacting tests.

This paper examines daily excess bond returns associated with announcements of additions to Standard and Poor's Credit Watch List, and to rating changes by Moody's and Standard and Poor's. Reliably nonzero average excess bond returns are observed for additions to Standard and Poor's Credit Watch List when an expectations model is used to classify additions as either expected or unexpected. Bond price effects are also observed for actual downgrade and upgrade announcements by rating agencies. Excluding announcements with concurrent disclosures weakens the results for downgrades, but not upgrades. The stock price effects of rating agency announcements are also examined and contrasted with the bond price effects.

This paper documents that firms face upward-sloping supply curves when they repurchase shares in a Dutch auction, and it analyzes the market reaction to these offers. The announcement price increase is highly correlated with the ultimate repurchase premium. Prices decline at expiration only for pro-rated offers. The cumulative return is positive and highly correlated with the repurchase premium, excepting pro-rated offers. Much of this price increase is consistent with movement along an upward-sloping supply curve. Trading volume around the Dutch auction parallels fixed-price repurchases. Supply elasticity is larger for firms with large trading volume, firms included in the S&P 500 Index, and takeover targets.

The arbitrage pricing theory implies that if asset returns have a factor structure, then an approximate multibeta representation holds with respect to the factors as reference variables. This paper assumes that asset returns satisfy a factor structure and derives a condition under which the approximate multibeta representation holds with respect to a set of reference variables that may not be the factors. This condition is that the regression matrix of the reference variables on the factors is nonsingular. Implications for the testability of the arbitrage pricing theory are also discussed.