Knowledge that Transforms

In an investigation of possible relationships between shareholder voting turnout, trading volume after the record data, and the intervals between the record and meeting dates, we find that higher trading volume and more trading days between the record date and the receipt of proxy materials both reduce voting turnout. A longer interval between the receipt of proxy materials and the meeting increases turnout, as does greater solicitation expense. Our tests show that management mails proxies further in advance of the meeting when its proposals require a majority of shares outstanding, as opposed to votes cast, for approval.

The greater the managerial stock ownership in closed-end funds, the larger are the discounts to net asset value. The average discount for funds with blockholders is 14%, whereas the average discount for funds without blockholders is only 4%. This relation is robust over time and to various model specifications that control for other factors that affect discounts. We argue that blockholders receive private benefits that do not accrue to other shareholders and that they veto open-ending proposals to preserve these benefits. We support this argument by documenting a range of potential private benefits received by blockholders in closed-end funds.

This paper identifies five common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds. There are three stock-market factors: an overall market factor and factors related to firm size and book-to-market equity. There are two bond-market factors, related to maturity and default risks. Stock returns have shared variation due to the stock-market factors, and they are linked to bond returns through shared variation in the bond-market factors. Except for low-grade corporates, the bond-market factors capture the common variation in bond returns. Most important, the five factors seem to explain average returns on stocks and bonds.

Several recent papers present signaling models in which firms underprice their initial public offerings of equity (IPOs) so that they can subsequently issue seasoned equity at more favorable prices. We test the implications of these models. We find a positive relation between IPO underpricing and the probability and size of subsequent seasoned offerings. Although these results are consistent with the implications of the signaling hypotheses, the economic significance appears weak. We conduct additional tests to evaluate other explanations for these findings and find the alternatives more compelling.

This paper provides a model of how borrowers with private information about their credit prospects choose seniority and maturity of debt. Increased short-term debt leads lenders to liquidate too often. It also increases the sensitivity of financing costs to new information, although better-than-average borrowers desire information sensitivity. The model implies that short-term debt will be senior to long-term debt, and that long-term debt will allow the issue of additional future senior debt. The model also has implications on the structure of leveraged buyouts and on how various types of lenders respond to potential defaults.

This paper reassesses the apparent systematic underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs). Investigation of the distribution of initial returns following IPOs shows that positive mean initial returns may reflect the existence of a partially unobserved left (negative) tail. Moreover, most IPOs with zero one-day returns subsequently fall in price, suggesting that underwriter price support may account for the skewed distribution and hence the phenomenon of positive average initial IPO returns, even if offering prices are set at expected market value. This paper thus challenges the presumption underlying previous research that positive average initial IPO returns result primarily from deliberate underpricing.

We examine analysts' earnings forecasts for a sample of takeover targets and document that the announcement-month forecasts are systematically revised upward, supporting the hypothesis that a takeover announcement conveys favorable information about the target firm. In addition, we find that abnormal forecast revisions of future stand-alone earnings are significantly greater for targets with low Tobin's q-ratios relative to targets with high q-ratios, lending further support to the information hypothesis. Finally, we provide evidence that managerial resistance to the takeover does not destroy value. Our results are in direct contrast to Pound (1988).

This paper studies the effects of transaction taxes on the behavior of Swedish equity returns during the 1980–1987 period. Sweden provides an excellent laboratory-style setting for such a study, as taxes were imposed for political purposes rather than to alter the behavior of the stock market. Volatility did not decline in response to the introduction of taxes although stock price levels and turnover did. Large proportions of trading activity migrated overseas to London when the tax rate was increased to 2% in 1986.

This paper analyzes bidding behavior in Mexican Treasury bill auctions for the period 1986–1991. The Mexican auction rules resemble those used in U.S. Treasury bill auctions closely. Results suggest the presence of collusion among large bidders throughout a large portion of the sampling period and the presence of information asymmetries between small and large bidders. Results also suggest that bidders account for the winner's curse and that participants bid more cautiously when uncertainty is high. Bidders' profits fell dramatically in 1990 when the Treasury substituted uniform for discriminatory pricing to combat collusion and to increase auction revenues.