We analyze changes in investment policy following 106 spinoffs between 1981 and 1996. Pre-spinoff, the sample firms are valued at a discount and invest less in their high q segments than do their single-segment peers. Post-spinoff, there is a significant increase in measures of investment efficiency and the diversification discount is eliminated. Furthermore, changes in excess value around the spinoff are positively related to changes in measures of investment efficiency. These findings support the view that (i) diversified firms allocate investment funds inefficiently, and (ii) by breaking up the conglomerate, spinoffs create value by improving investment efficiency.

Our paper re-examines the profitability of relative strength or momentum trading strategies (buying past strong performers and selling past weak performers). We find that standard relative strength strategies require frequent trading in disproportionately high cost securities such that trading costs prevent profitable strategy execution. In the cross-section, we find that those stocks that generate large momentum returns are precisely those stocks with high trading costs. We conclude that the magnitude of the abnormal returns associated with these trading strategies creates an illusion of profit opportunity when, in fact, none exists.

The consistency of positive past returns and tax-loss selling significantly affects the relation between past returns and the cross-section of expected returns. Analysis of these additional effects across stock characteristics, seasons, and tax regimes provides clues about the sources of temporal relations in stock returns, pointing to potential explanations for this relation. A parsimonious trading rule generates surprisingly large economic returns despite controls for confounding sources of return premia, microstructure effects, and data snooping biases.

Using a windstorm simulation model developed by Applied Insurance Research, we analyze the effectiveness of catastrophic-loss index options in hedging hurricane losses for Florida insurers. The results suggest that insurers in the two largest size quartiles can hedge losses almost as effectively using contracts based on four intrastate indices as they can using contracts that settle on their own losses. Many insurers in the third largest size quartile also can hedge effectively using the intrastate indices, but most insurers in the smallest quartile would encounter significant basis risk. Hedging using a statewide loss index is effective only for the largest insurers.

We develop a new rationale for corporate spin-offs, and for the performance and value improvements following them, based on corporate control considerations. We consider a firm with multiple divisions, with incumbent management having different abilities for managing these divisions. If the incumbent loses control to a more able rival, it benefits all shareholders (including the incumbent) by increasing equity value, but involves the incumbent losing his private benefits of control. We show that a spin-off increases the incumbent's chance of losing control to such a rival. This, in turn, motivates the incumbent either to work harder at managing the firm (in order to avoid any loss of control), or to relinquish control of one of the firms resulting from the spin-off (either immediately following the spin-off, or subsequently in a control contest). We show that spin-offs will be associated with positive announcement effects and increases in long-term operating performance. Further, certain categories of spin-offs will exhibit long-term positive abnormal stock returns.

Aggregate real dividends paid by industrial firms increased over the past two decades even though, as Fama and French (J. Financial Econ. 60, 3) (2001a) document, the number of dividend payers decreased by over 50%. The reason is that (i) the reduction in payers occurs almost entirely among firms that paid very small dividends, and (ii) increased real dividends from the top payers swamp the modest dividend reduction from the loss of many small payers. These trends reflect high and increasing concentration in the supply of dividends which, in turn, reflects high and increasing earnings concentration. For example, the 25 firms that paid the largest dividends in 2000 account for a majority of the aggregate dividends and earnings of industrial firms. Industrial firms exhibit a two-tier structure in which a small number of firms with very high earnings collectively generates the majority of earnings and dominates the dividend supply, while the vast majority of firms has at best a modest collective impact on aggregate earnings and dividends.

We assess the market microstructure properties of U.S. banking firms’ equity, to determine whether they exhibit more or less evidence of asset opaqueness than similar-sized nonbanking firms. The evidence indicates that large bank holding companies (BHC), traded on the NYSE, have very similar trading properties to their matched nonfinancial firms. In contrast, smaller BHCs, traded on NASDAQ, trade much less frequently despite having very similar spreads. Analysis of IBES earnings forecasts indicates that banking assets are not unusually opaque; they are simply boring. The implications for regulatory policy and future market microstructure research are discussed.