This paper examines the pricing of intermediate-term line commitments, often called revolving credit agreements. Their characteristics, covenant, and compensating balance features are discussed. The fixed portion of the line is described as a dual phased option; it behaves as a put or a call depending on whether bank borrowing is undertaken. Two valuation models, based on the use of the borrowing, are derived for infinitely-lived line commitments. The pattern of borrowing by the firm is shown to principally depend on the relative size of the fixed and variable costs of the line.

Macro news can affect currency prices directly and indirectly via order flow. Past research shows that the direct effects of scheduled macro news account for less than 10% of daily price variance. This paper shows that the arrival of macro news can account for more than 30% of daily price variance. Two features of our analysis account for this finding: (1) We consider the broad spectrum of macro news items that market participants observe, not just scheduled announcements. (2) We allow the arrival of news to affect prices indirectly via its impact on the volatility of order flow. Our analysis shows that order flow variations contribute more to currency price dynamics following the arrival of public macro news than at other times. This is not consistent with news effects being common knowledge that is impounded in price directly. Roughly two-thirds of the total effect of macro news on the DM/$ exchange rate is transmitted via order flow.

Modern mutual fund families include more than active mutual funds (AMFs). AMFs in families with greater index mutual fund (IMF) presence generate higher category-adjusted gross returns. Performance is positively related to the levels of passive and active fees, suggesting moral hazard. Intrafamily competition from IMFs in the same Morningstar category incentivizes managers to exert effort. Financial resources do not contribute to the performance effect. Cross-trading with IMFs occurs with some positive effect on performance. ETFs have no impact on performance. IMFs reduce flow-performance sensitivity and flow volatility of AMFs in the family. IMFs and ETFs uniquely contribute to expense pressure.

We document substantial long-run post-issue underperformance by firms making straight and convertible debt offerings from 1975 to 1989. This long-run underperformance is more severe for smaller, younger, and NASDAQ-listed firms, and for firms issuing speculative grade debt. We also find strong evidence that the underperformance of issuers of both straight and convertible debt is limited to those issues that occur in periods with a high volume of issues. In contrast to earlier event studies that found insignificantly negative abnormal returns at the time of debt issue announcements and concluded that debt offerings had no impact on shareholder wealth, our results suggest that debt offerings, like equity offerings, are signals that the firm is overvalued. As with equity offerings and repurchases, the market appears to underreact at the time of the debt offering announcement so that the full impact of the offering is only realized over a longer time horizon.

We document that firms making seasoned equity offerings during 1975–1989 substantially underperformed a sample of matched firms from the same industry and of similar size that did not issue equity. This underperformance persists even after controlling for trading system, offer size, and the issuing firm's age and book-to-market ratio. It is similar to that previously documented for initial public offerings, suggesting that managers take advantage of overvaluation in both the initial and seasoned equity offering markets.

This paper examines possible motives for and consequences of voluntary corporate liquidations. Specifically, the procedural and tax differences between voluntary liquidations and other control-changing transaction devices are analyzed. An empirical investigation of successful liquidations shows that the announcement of liquidation reduces the risk of liquidating shares, that the shareholders receive substantial gains from successful liquidations, and that the average gains to the acquiring shareholders are not significantly different from zero. These findings suggest that the liquidating firms' assets have been underutilized before liquidation and that voluntary liquidations lead to higher-valued reallocations of corporate resources.

Using US Department of Justice data on local political corruption, I find that firms in more corrupt areas hold less cash and have greater leverage than firms in less corrupt areas. The results are robust to including a range of controls and to using an instrumental variable approach, two alternative survey measures of corruption, and propensity score matching. Further, the association between corruption and leverage is largest among firms that operate primarily around their headquarters. Overall, the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that firms manage liquidity downward and debt obligations upward to limit expropriation by corrupt local officials.

Stocks with relatively high short interest subsequently experience negative abnormal returns, but the effect can be transient and of debatable economic significance. In contrast, relatively heavily traded stocks with low short interest experience both statistically and economically significant positive abnormal returns. These positive returns are often larger (in absolute value) than the negative returns observed for heavily shorted stocks. Thus, the positive information associated with low short interest, which is publicly available, is only slowly incorporated into prices, which raises a broader market efficiency issue. Our results also cast doubt on existing theories of the impact of short sale constraints.

Existing studies suggest that systemic crises may arise because banks either hold correlated assets, or are connected by interbank lending. This paper shows that common regulation is also a conduit for interbank contagion. One bank's failure may undermine confidence in the banking regulator's competence, and, hence, in other banks chartered by the same regulator. As a result, depositors withdraw funds from otherwise unconnected banks. The optimal regulatory response to this behavior can be privately to exhibit forbearance to a failing bank. We show that regulatory transparency improves confidence ex ante but impedes regulators' ability to stem panics ex post.