Knowledge that Transforms

ABSTRACT Using data from all of the leading international investment banks on 220 initial public offerings (IPOs) raising $160 billion between January 2010 and May 2015, we test the determinants of IPO allocations. We compare investors’ IPO allocations with proxies for their information production during bookbuilding and the broking (and other) revenues they generate for bookrunners. We find evidence consistent with information revelation theories. We also find strong support for the existence of a quid pro quo whereby broking revenues are a significant determinant of investors’ IPO allocations and profits. The quid pro quo remains when we control for unobserved investor characteristics and investor‐bank relationships.

ABSTRACT The U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee considered many important banking reforms in 2009 to 2010. We show that, during this period, foreclosure starts on delinquent mortgages were delayed in the districts of committee members although there was no difference in delinquency rates between committee and noncommittee districts. In these areas, banks delayed the foreclosure starts by 0.5 months (relative to the 12‐month average). The estimated cost of delay to lenders is an order of magnitude greater than the campaign contributions by the political action committees of the largest mortgage servicing banks to the committee members in that period.

ABSTRACT We use a stochastic frontier model to obtain a stock‐level estimate of the difference between a firm's installed production capacity and its optimal capacity. We show that this “capacity overhang” estimate relates significantly negatively to the cross section of stock returns, even when controlling for popular pricing factors. The negative relation persists among small and large stocks, stocks with more or less reversible investments, and in good and bad economic states. Capacity overhang helps explain momentum and profitability anomalies, but not value and investment anomalies. Our evidence supports real options models of the firm featuring valuable divestment options.

ABSTRACT In an “activist risk arbitrage,” a shareholder attempts to improve terms of an announced M&A through public campaigns. Activists target deals with low premiums and those susceptible to managerial conflicts of interest, including going‐private deals and deals in which CEOs receive outsized payments. Activist arbitrageurs are associated with a significant decrease in the probability that targets will be sold to the announced bidders, and an increase in the premium paid, both ex post among surviving deals and ex ante among all deals. Activist arbitrage serves as a governance mechanism in M&A and earns higher returns than passive arbitrage.

ABSTRACT We develop a dynamic model of belief dispersion with a continuum of investors differing in beliefs. The model is tractable and qualitatively matches many of the empirical regularities in a stock price and its mean return, volatility, and trading volume. We find that the stock price is convex in cash‐flow news and increases in belief dispersion, while its mean return decreases when the view on the stock is optimistic, and vice versa when pessimistic. Moreover, belief dispersion leads to higher stock volatility and trading volume. We demonstrate that otherwise identical two‐investor heterogeneous‐beliefs economies do not necessarily generate our main results.

ABSTRACT We introduce a methodology to estimate the historical time series of returns to investment in private equity funds. The approach requires only an unbalanced panel of cash contributions and distributions accruing to limited partners and is robust to sparse data. We decompose private equity returns from 1994 to 2015 into a component due to traded factors and a time‐varying private equity premium not spanned by publicly traded factors. We find cyclicality in private equity returns that differs according to fund type and is consistent with the conjecture that capital market segmentation contributes to private equity returns.

ABSTRACT We characterize the optimal default fund in a defined contribution (DC) pension plan. Using detailed data on individuals' holdings inside and outside the pension system, we find substantial heterogeneity within and between passive and active investors in terms of labor income, financial wealth, and stock market participation. We build a life‐cycle consumption‐savings model, with a DC pension account and an opt‐out/default choice, that produces realistic investor heterogeneity. Relative to a common age‐based allocation, implementing the optimal default asset allocation implies a welfare gain of 1.5% during retirement. Much of the gain is attainable with a simple rule of thumb.

ABSTRACT I empirically analyze how changes in access to housing collateral affect homeowner borrowing behavior. To isolate the role of collateral constraints from that of wealth effects, I exploit the fully anticipated expiration of resale price controls on owner‐occupied housing in Montgomery County, Maryland. I estimate a marginal propensity to borrow out of housing collateral that ranges between $0.04 and $0.13 and is correlated with homeowners' initial leverage. Additional analysis of residential investment and ex‐post loan performance indicates that some of the extracted funds generated new expenditures. These results suggest a potentially important role for collateral constraints in driving household expenditures.

ABSTRACT Using a novel data set of U.S. financial advisors that includes individuals' employment histories and misconduct records, we show that coworkers influence an individual's propensity to commit financial misconduct. We identify coworkers' effect on misconduct using changes in coworkers caused by mergers of financial advisory firms. The tests include merger‐firm fixed effects to exploit the variation in changes to coworkers across branches of the same firm. The probability of an advisor committing misconduct increases if his new coworkers, encountered in the merger, have a history of misconduct. This effect is stronger between demographically similar coworkers.

ABSTRACT We develop a model of monetary policy with two key features: the central bank has private information about its long‐run target rate and is averse to bond market volatility. In this setting, the central bank gradually impounds changes in its target into the policy rate. Such gradualism represents an attempt to not spook the bond market. However, this effort is partially undone in equilibrium, as markets rationally react more to a given move when the central bank moves more gradually. This time‐consistency problem means that society would be better off if the central bank cared less about the bond market.