Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract This paper documents significantly negative stock price reactions to shareholder-initiated class action lawsuits. We find that shareholders partially anticipate these lawsuits based on lawsuit filings against other firms in the same industry and capitalize part of these losses prior to a lawsuit filing date. We show that the more likely a firm is to be sued, the larger the partial anticipation effect (shareholder losses capitalized prior to a lawsuit filing date) and the smaller the filing date effect (shareholder losses measured on the lawsuit filing date). Our evidence suggests that previous research that typically focuses on the filing date effect understates the magnitude of shareholder losses, and that such an understatement is greater for firms with a higher likelihood of being sued.

Abstract Recent theoretical models derive return continuation in a setting where investors have heterogeneous beliefs or receive heterogeneous information. This paper tests the link between heterogeneity of beliefs and return continuation in the cross-section of U.S. stock returns. Heterogeneity of beliefs about a firm’s fundamentals is measured by the dispersion in analyst forecasts of earnings. The results show that momentum profits are significantly larger for portfolios characterized by higher heterogeneity of beliefs. Predictive cross-sectional regressions show that heterogeneity of beliefs has a positive effect on return continuation after controlling for a stock’s visibility, the speed of information diffusion, uncertainty about fundamentals, information precision, and volatility. The results in this paper are robust to the potential presence of short-sale constraints and are not explained by arbitrage risk.

Abstract This paper examines the intertemporal relation between downside risk and expected stock returns. Value at Risk (VaR), expected shortfall, and tail risk are used as measures of downside risk to determine the existence and significance of a risk-return tradeoff. We find a positive and significant relation between downside risk and the portfolio returns on NYSE/AMEX/Nasdaq stocks. VaR remains a superior measure of risk when compared with the traditional risk measures. These results are robust across different stock market indices, different measures of downside risk, loss probability levels, and after controlling for macroeconomic variables and volatility over different holding periods as originally proposed by Harrison and Zhang (1999).

Abstract We investigate the (sell-side) analyst rankings of Institutional Investor (I/I) and The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), using data from 1993–2005. We find that factors with a primary component of recognition are the most important determinants of the rankings, although performance measures are statistically significant determinants in some cases. The single exception to this finding is with existing WSJ stars, where industry-adjusted investment-recommendation performance is the only significant determinant of repeating as a star. Further, in the year after becoming stars, the recommendations of WSJ stars are significantly worse than those of nonstars; and the recommendations and earnings forecasts of I/I stars, as well as the earnings forecasts of WSJ stars, are not significantly different from those of nonstars. We conclude that these rankings are largely “popularity contests.”

Abstract This paper tests alternative theories about the effect of asset liquidity on capital structure. Using data from a broad sample of U.S. public companies, I find that leverage is positively related to asset liquidity. Further analysis reveals that the relation between asset liquidity and secured debt is positive, whereas the relation between asset liquidity and unsecured debt is curvilinear. The results are consistent with the view that the costs of financial distress and inefficient liquidation are economically important and that they affect capital structure decisions. In addition, the results are consistent with the hypothesis that the costs of managerial discretion increase with asset liquidity.

Abstract Using a proprietary database of currency trades, this paper explores the effects of trading gains and losses on risk-taking among large institutional investors. We find that institutional investors, unlike individuals, are not prone to the disposition effect. Instead, institutions aggressively reduce risk following losses and mildly increase risk following gains. This asymmetry is more pronounced later in the calendar year and among older and more experienced funds. We show that such performance dependence is consistent with dynamic loss aversion (Barberis, Huang, and Santos (2001)) and overconfidence. In addition, prior institutional gains and losses have palpable implications for future prices.

Abstract We examine the impact of block ownership on the firm’s trading activity and secondary-market liquidity. Our empirical results show that block ownership takes potential trading activity off the table relative to a diffuse ownership structure and impairs the firm’s market liquidity. These adverse liquidity effects disappear, however, once we control for trading activity. Our findings suggest that block ownership is detrimental to the firm’s market liquidity because of its adverse impact on trading activity—a real friction effect. After controlling for this real friction effect, we find little evidence that block ownership has a negative impact on informational friction. Our results suggest that the relative lack of trading, and not the threat of informed trading, explains the inverse relation between block ownership and market liquidity.

Abstract Recent empirical studies of mutual fund competition examine the relation between a fund’s performance, the fund manager’s compensation, and the fund manager’s choice of portfolio risk. This paper models a manager’s portfolio choice for compensation rules that can be either a concave, linear, or convex function of the fund’s performance relative to that of a benchmark. For particular compensation structures, a manager increases the fund’s “tracking error” volatility as its relative performance declines. However, declining performance does not necessarily lead the manager to raise the volatility of the fund’s return. The paper presents nonparametric and parametric tests of the relation between mutual fund performance and risk taking for more than 6,000 equity mutual funds over the 1962 to 2006 period. There is a tendency for mutual funds to increase the standard deviation of tracking errors, but not the standard deviation of returns, as their performance declines. This risk-shifting behavior appears more common for funds whose managers have longer tenures.

Abstract This paper tests international asset pricing models using firm-level expected returns estimated from an implied cost of capital approach. We show that the implied approach provides clear evidence of economic relations that would otherwise be obscured by the noise in realized returns. Among G-7 countries, expected returns based on implied costs of capital have less than one-tenth the volatility of those based on realized returns. Our tests show that firm-level expected returns increase with world market beta, idiosyncratic volatility, financial leverage, and book-to-market ratios, and decrease with currency beta and firm size.