Knowledge that Transforms

We propose a framework that advances our understanding of Chief Executive Officer (CEO) retention decisions in misreporting firms. Consistent with economic intuition, outside directors are more likely to fire (retain) CEOs when retention (replacement) costs are high relative to replacement (retention) costs. When the decision is ambiguous because neither cost dominates, outside directors are more likely to retain the CEO when they both benefit from selling stock in the misreporting period. We show that joint abnormal selling captures director–CEO alignment incrementally to biographical overlap. This new proxy operationalizes information sharing and trust, making it useful for studying economic decision-making embedded in social relationships.

Static adverse selection models of security issuance show that informed issuers can perfectly reveal their private information by maintaining a costly stake in the securities they issue. This paper shows that allowing an issuer to both signal current security quality via retention and build a reputation for honesty leads that issuer to misreport quality even when owning a positive stake, that is, the equilibrium is neither separating nor pooling. An issuer retains less as reputation improves and prices are more sensitive to retention when the issuer has a worse reputation.

A key question is why many multinational firms forgo foreign exchange derivative (FX) hedging and instead use operational hedging. We propose an explanation based on illiquidity and the unique advantages of operational hedges. We use 10-K filings to construct dynamically updated text-based measures of the offshore sale of output, purchase of input, and ownership of assets. We find that firms use FX derivatives when they are liquid and generally available. Otherwise, they often favor purchasing input from the same nations they sell output to, an operational hedge. Quasi-natural experiments based on new derivative product launches suggest a likely causal relation.

This paper revisits the association between firm value (as proxied by Tobin’s Q) and whether the firm has a staggered board. As is well known, in the cross-section firms with a staggered board tend to have a lower value. Using a comprehensive sample for 1978 – 2011, we show an opposite result in the time series: firms that adopt a staggered board increase in firm value, while de-staggering is associated with a decrease in firm value. We further show that the decision to adopt a staggered board seems endogenous, and related to an ex ante lower firm value, which helps reconciling the existing cross-sectional results to our novel time series results. To explain our new results, we explore potential incentive problems in the shareholder-manager relationship. Short-term oriented shareholders may generate myopic incentives for the firm to underinvest in risky long-term projects. In this case, a staggered board may helpfully insulate the board from opportunistic shareholder pressure. Consistent with this, we find that the adoption of a staggered board has a stronger positive association with firm value for firms where such incentive problems are likely more severe: firms with more R&D, more intangible assets, more innovative and larger and thus likely more complex firms.

This paper investigates empirically whether uncertainty about equity market volatility can explain hedge fund performance both in the cross section and over time. We measure uncertainty via volatility of aggregate volatility (VOV) and construct an investable version through returns on lookback straddles on the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) volatility index, VIX. We find that VOV exposure is a significant determinant of hedge fund returns. After controlling for fund characteristics, we find a robust and significant negative risk premium for VOV exposure in the cross section of hedge fund returns. We corroborate our results using statistical and parameterized proxies of VOV over a longer sample period.

We explore how asymmetric information in financial markets affects outcomes in product markets. Difference-in-difference tests around brokerage house merger/closure events (which increase asymmetric information through reductions in analyst coverage) indicate worse industry-adjusted sales growth for shocked firms than for their peers. Our results are consistent with Bolton and Scharfstein's (1990) tradeoff between investor agency concerns and predation risk. Further support is found in stronger treatment effects among firms with ex ante greater agency concerns, financing constraints, asymmetric information, and those operating in ex ante more competitive (fluid) product market spaces. Our results are concentrated in industries where we can clearly identify either net firm entry or exit.

We develop a structural industry equilibrium model to show how competitive chief executive officer (CEO)-firm matching and product markets jointly determine firm value and CEO pay. We analytically derive testable implications for the effects of product market characteristics on firm size, CEO pay, and CEO impact on firm value. CEO talent matters more in more competitive markets with greater product substitutabilities. Our CEO impact estimates are much higher than those obtained by previous structural approaches that abstract away from CEO market segmentation. The estimates differ across industries primarily due to variation in product market competition, rather than variation in the CEO talent distribution.

We propose a joint theory of time-series momentum and reversal based on a rational-expectations model. We show that a necessary condition for momentum to arise in this framework is that information flows at an increasing rate. We focus on word-of-mouth communication as a mechanism that enforces this condition and generates short-term momentum and long-term reversal. Investors with heterogeneous trading strategies—contrarian and momentum traders—coexist in the marketplace. Although a significant proportion of investors are momentum traders, momentum is not completely eliminated. Word-of-mouth communication spreads rumors and generates price run-ups and reversals. Our theoretical predictions are in line with empirical findings.

We examine the impact of corporate board reforms on firm value in 41 countries. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that board reforms increase firm value. Reforms involving board and audit committee independence, but not reforms involving separation of chairman and chief executive officer positions, drive the valuation increases. In addition, while comply-or-explain reforms result in a greater increase in firm value than rule-based reforms, the effects of reforms are similar across civil law and common law countries. Further investigation shows that the subsequent change in board independence plays an important role in explaining the effectiveness of the reforms.

We quantify the impact of merger activity on productive efficiency. We develop and calibrate a dynamic industry-equilibrium model that features mergers, entry, and exit by heterogeneous firms. Mergers affect productivity directly through realized synergies, and indirectly through firms’ incentives to enter or exit the industry. Merger activity increases average firm productivity by 4.8%, of which 4.1% reflects the accumulation of synergies, and 0.7% the interaction between merger options and firms’ entry and exit decisions. We show that ignoring the implications of merger activity for public policies that promote entry can reverse the expected impact of these policies on productivity.