Knowledge that Transforms

I investigate ultimate control and ownership patterns in Russian publicly traded companies. I show that these companies are controlled either by the state or by anonymous private owners. Federal and regional governments’ control is exercised through extensive use of pyramids. Private owners widely exploit legal loopholes that allow them to mask their holdings and identities through nominee and foreign offshore arrangements. The comparison of formal and informal ownership disclosure reveals that the typical anonymous owners are insiders and that in virtually all cases the market participants “know” who the real owners are. Collectively, the evidence suggests that the legal weaknesses in disclosure requirements are important determinants of country-specific ownership and control structures.

This paper explores the time-series relation between expected returns and risk for a large cross section of industry and size/book-to-market portfolios. I use a bivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model to estimate a portfolio's conditional covariance with the market and then test whether the conditional covariance predicts time–variation in the portfolio's expected return. Restricting the slope to be the same across assets, the risk-return coefficient is highly significant with a risk–aversion coefficient (slope) between one and five. The results are robust to different portfolio formations, alternative GARCH specifications, additional state variables, and small sample biases. When conditional covariances are replaced by conditional betas, the risk premium on beta is estimated to be in the range of 3% to 5% per annum and is statistically significant.

We investigate issuers withdrawing an IPO (after security regulation filings) that return later for a successful offering. Venture capital backing and reputation of the lead underwriter are key factors in predicting successful return. The possibility of returning has a significant impact on the decision to withdraw and the pricing of offerings that succeed. Our sample of returning IPOs also provides a unique setting to investigate underwriter switching after a withdrawal but before a successful IPO. We find that switching occurs in response to poor bank performance and when switching firms “graduate” to banks that have high industry market shares.

This paper combines an exogenous shock to the supply of subsidized credit with unique loan-level data from the export sector in Pakistan to identify the impact and allocation of such financial incentives. The removal of subsidized credit causes a significant decline in the exports of privately owned firms, while the exports of large, publicly listed, and group network firms are unaffected. Publicly listed firms make no significant adjustments to their balance sheets, and only their profits are reduced, indicating that they are financially unconstrained. Nearly half of all subsidized loans are assigned to such firms, implying a substantial misallocation of credit and an output loss to privately owned firms of 0.75% of GDP. Productivity differences do not explain the heterogeneous effects across firms.

Structural models of credit risk provide poor predictions of bond prices. We show that, despite this, they provide quite accurate predictions of the sensitivity of corporate bond returns to changes in the value of equity (hedge ratios). This is important since it suggests that the poor performance of structural models may have more to do with the influence of non-credit factors rather than their failure to capture the credit exposure of corporate debt. The main result of this paper is that even the simplest of the structural models [Merton, R., 1974. On the pricing of corporate debt: the risk structure of interest rates. Journal of Finance 29, 449–470] produces hedge ratios that are not rejected in time-series tests. However, we find that the Merton model (with or without stochastic interest rates) does not capture the interest rate sensitivity of corporate debt, which is substantially lower than would be expected from conventional duration measures. The paper also shows that corporate bond prices are related to a number of market-wide factors such as the Fama-French SMB (small minus big) factor in a way that is not predicted by structural models.

This paper presents empirical evidence that cash-flow volatility is negatively valued by investors. The magnitude of the effect is substantial with a 1% increase in cash-flow volatility, resulting in approximately a 0.15% decrease in firm value. We show that this increase, however, is not associated with earnings smoothing resulting from managers’ accrual estimates. Our results are consistent with a preference by the market for less volatile cash flows and suggest that managers’ efforts to produce smooth financial statements add value, but only via the cash component of earnings.

We develop a model of asset price bubbles based on the communication process between advisors and investors. Advisors are well-intentioned and want to maximize the welfare of their advisees (like a parent treats a child). But only some advisors understand the new technology (the tech-savvies); others do not and can only make a downward-biased recommendation (the old-fogies). While smart investors recognize the heterogeneity in advisors, naive ones mistakenly take whatever is said at face value. Tech-savvies inflate their forecasts to signal that they are not old-fogies, since more accurate information about their type improves the welfare of investors in the future. A bubble arises for a wide range of parameters, and its size is maximized when there is a mix of smart and naive investors in the economy. Our model suggests an alternative source for stock over-valuation in addition to investor overreaction to news and sell-side bias.

Why do corporate financing events occur in waves? We challenge recent evidence of the importance of valuation cycles in driving financing waves by documenting that the aggregate pattern of stock repurchases mirrors that of equity issuance and mergers, despite repurchases involving an opposite transaction. We then show that trends in financing decisions result from differing responses to the same economic stimulus: growth in GDP. Specifically, economic expansion reduces the cost of equity relative to the cost of debt, inducing firms to issue equity, and increases cash flow and also causes varying degrees of uncertainty, increasing stock repurchases. We document similar trends and provide similar motivation for merger waves.

Merton [1987. A simple model of capital market equilibrium with incomplete information. Journal of Finance 42, 483–510] shows that stocks about which not all investors are informed should yield a return premium. This premium depends on the shadow cost of incomplete information which in turn depends on the shareholder base, relative market size, and idiosyncratic risk. Utilizing a comprehensive database of Swedish shareholdings, we demonstrate that stock returns are positively related to the shadow cost. We also find that the shareholder base is negatively related to returns when controlling for size and idiosyncratic risk. Zero-cost portfolios based on the shadow cost/shareholder base yield substantial trading profits that are never positively correlated with the market and are only modestly explained by the four-factor model.

Traditional U.S. industries with higher firm-specific stock return and fundamentals performance heterogeneity use information technology (IT) more intensively and post faster productivity growth in the late 20th century. We argue that this mechanically reflects a wave of Schumpeter's creative destruction disrupting a wide swath of industries, with successful IT adopters unpredictably undermining established firms. This validates endogenous growth theory models of creative destruction and suggests intensified creative destruction as explaining findings associating greater firm-specific performance variation with higher per capita GDPs, economy growth rates, accounting standards, financial system development, and property right protection.