Knowledge that Transforms

Using a comprehensive US hedge fund activism dataset from 2003 to 2018, we find that activist hedge funds are about 52% more likely to target firms with female CEOs compared to firms with male CEOs. We find that firm fundamentals, the existence of a “glass cliff,” gender discrimination bias, and hedge fund activists’ inherent characteristics do not explain the observed gender effect. We also find that the transformational leadership style of female CEOs is a plausible explanation for this gender effect: instead of being self-defensive, female CEOs are more likely to communicate and cooperate with hedge fund activists to achieve intervention goals. Finally, we find that female-led targets experience greater increases in market and operational performance subsequent to hedge fund targeting.

This paper provides evidence of local innovation spillovers (i.e., innovation by one firm fostering innovation by neighboring firms). First, I document that exogenous shocks to innovation by listed firms affect innovation by private firms in the same geographical area and that such local innovation spillovers decline rapidly with distance. Second, these local innovation spillovers stem from knowledge diffusing locally through two channels: learning across local firms and inventors moving from their employer to both existing firms and newly started spin-outs. Finally, I study the two-way relations between innovation spillovers and the availability of capital. I find that local innovation spillovers cause venture capital funds from outside the area to invest more in the local area, and that capital availability amplifies local innovation spillovers.

Despite their importance, the discussion of spillover effects in empirical research often misses the rigor dedicated to endogeneity concerns. We analyze a broad set of workhorse models of firm interactions and show that spillovers naturally arise in many corporate finance settings. This has important implications for the estimation of treatment effects: (i) even with random treatment, spillovers lead to a complicated bias; (ii) fixed effects can exacerbate the spillover-induced bias. We propose simple diagnostic tools for empirical researchers and illustrate our guidance in an application.

We propose a novel high-frequency decomposition of daily stock returns into news- and non-news-driven components, and uncover evidence of pervasive stock market underreaction to firm news. Prices tend to drift in the same direction as the initial market response for several days after the news arrival without reversals. A trading strategy exploiting the return drift generates high abnormal returns and remains profitable after transaction costs. To understand the economic mechanism, we find that the return drift is stronger when investors are distracted. Analysts’ slow adjustments of market expectations following firm news also contribute to the market underreaction.

Using a structural model, we estimate the liquidity multiplier of an interbank network and banks’ contributions to systemic risk. To provide payment services, banks hold reserves. Their equilibrium holdings can be strategic complements or substitutes. The former arises when payment velocity and multiplier are high. The latter prevails when the opportunity cost of liquidity is large, incentivising banks to borrow neighbors’ reserves instead of holding their own. Consequently, the network can amplify or dampen shocks to individual banks. Empirically, network topology explains cross-sectional heterogeneity in banks’ systemic-risk contributions while changes in the equilibrium type drive time-series variation.

Prior research suggests that nonfundamental exchange-traded fund (ETF) price shocks are transmitted to their portfolios through an arbitrage mechanism. We test this proposition by examining minute-by-minute returns and order imbalances but find little evidence that ETF trading impacts underlying returns. Specifically, panel vector autoregression shows that ETF returns do not lead portfolio prices. Instead, arbitrage opportunities arise from order imbalances and price movements in the underlying securities and are subsequently eliminated by ETF quote adjustments, rather than arbitrage trading. We extend our analysis to a daily frequency but still find little relation between ETF trading and constituent security prices.

We provide time-series and cross-sectional evidence on the significance of a risk-return tradeoff in the bond and equity markets. We find a significantly positive intertemporal relation between expected return and risk in the bond market. We also propose novel measures of systematic and idiosyncratic risk for individual corporate bonds and find a significantly positive cross-sectional relation between systematic risk and expected bond returns, whereas there is no significant link between idiosyncratic risk and future bond returns. We provide an explanation for the significance of systematic (idiosyncratic) risk based on different investor preferences and informational frictions in the bond (equity) market.

While popular with policymakers, most evidence on consumer financial disclosure’s effectiveness studies borrowing decisions (where optimality is unclear) or lab experiments (where attention is not scarce). We provide field evidence from randomized controlled trials with 124,000 savings account holders at five UK depositories. Treated consumers were disclosed varying degrees of salient information about alternative products, including one with their current provider strictly dominating their current product. Despite switching taking roughly 15 minutes and the moderate average potential gains ($190/year), switching is rare across disclosure designs and depositors. We find pessimistic beliefs drive disclosure inattention and limit disclosure’s effectiveness, helping explain deposit stickiness.

Using point-in-time accounting data, we estimate monthly fair values of 25,000+ stocks from 36 countries. A trading strategy based on deviations from fair value earns significant risk-adjusted returns (“alpha”) in most regions, especially Asia-Pacific, that are unrelated to known anomalies. The strategy's 40–70 basis point per month alpha difference between emerging and developed markets contrast with prior research findings. A country's pre-transaction cost alpha is positively related to its trading costs, but exceeds country-specific institutional trading costs. Thus, global equity markets are inefficient, particularly in countries with quantifiable market frictions, like trading costs, that deter arbitrageurs.

Private equity performance, both for buyouts and venture capital, has been highly cyclical: periods of high fundraising have been followed by periods of low performance. Despite this seemingly predictable variation, we find modest gains, at best, to pursuing realistic, investable strategies that time capital commitments to private equity. This occurs, in part, because investors can only time their commitments to funds; they cannot time when commitments are called or when investments are exited. There is a high degree of time-series correlation in net cash flows even across commitment strategies that allocate capital in a very different manner over time.