Knowledge that Transforms

We model and experimentally examine the board structure–performance relationship. We examine single-tiered boards, two-tiered boards, insider-controlled boards, and outsider-controlled boards. We find that even insider-controlled boards frequently adopt institutionally preferred rather than self-interested policies. Two-tiered boards adopt institutionally preferred policies more frequently but tend to destroy value by being too conservative, frequently rejecting good projects. Outsider-controlled single-tiered boards, both when they have multiple insiders and only a single insider, adopt institutionally preferred policies most frequently. In those board designs where the efficient Nash equilibrium produces strictly higher payoffs to all agents than the coalition-proof equilibria, agents tend to select the efficient Nash equilibria.

We explore the influence of priming on financial decisions by reinforcing subjects' risk-seeking behavior under uncertainty and comparing it to behavior in control groups. We focused on professionals: commercial banks' investment advisors and accountants in CPA firms. Results indicate that priming affects subjects' risk attitudes and investment decisions. Professionals' decisions were affected more than undergraduates', suggesting they employ a more intuitive and less analytic approach in making their decisions. Our work is related to field-data research documenting correlations between returns (investors' decisions) and situational factors, (i.e., weather) by suggesting controlled tests of professionals' behavior vis-a-vis the complexity inherent in field data.

Large U.S. banks dramatically increased their capitalization during the 1990s, to the highest levels in more than 50 years. We document this buildup of capital and evaluate several potential motivations. Our results support the hypothesis that regulatory innovations in the early 1990s weakened conjectural government guarantees and enhanced bank counterparties' incentives to monitor and price default risk. We find no evidence that a bank holding company's (BHC's) market capitalization increases with its asset volatility prior to 1994. Thereafter, the data display a strong cross-sectional relation between capitalization and asset risk.

This paper examines the expropriation of a foreign investor by a local partner and the subsequent resolution of the case through international arbitration in favor of the investor. Despite the investor's 99% interest in the joint venture, the local partner managed to divert the entire value of the underlying entity for his personal benefit. This clinical examination of an expropriation and its aftermath illustrates the interaction of property and contract rights in a global setting, how corporate control is shaped by geography, and how multinational firms may be advantaged by availing themselves of stronger investor protections than local firms.

I present evidence of inefficient information processing in equity markets by documenting that negative information withheld by securities analysts is incorporated in stock prices with a significant delay. I estimate the extent of the withheld negative information based on the proportion of analysts who stop revising their annual earnings forecasts. This measure predicts negative earnings surprises and negative price reaction around earnings announcements. It could also be used to generate profitable trading strategies. I show that institutions tend to sell their stock holdings as my measure of unreported negative news increases, thus ameliorating the mispricing.

Using a large panel data set containing detailed information on educational attainments as well as financial and socioeconomic variables for individual investors, we show that economists are more likely to hold stocks than otherwise identical investors. First, we consider the change in stockholdings associated with (i) completing an economics education and (ii) an economist moving into the household. Second, we model stock market participation using a probit model with unobserved individual heterogeneity. Third, instrumental variables estimation allows us to identify the causal effect of an economics education on stock market participation. Throughout, we focus explicitly on the effect of a change in educational status on the likelihood of holding stocks.

The paper examines the impact of executive compensation on private securities litigation. We find that incentive pay in the form of options increases the probability of securities class action litigation, holding constant a wide range of firm characteristics. We further document that there is abnormal upward earnings manipulation during litigation class periods and that insiders exercise more options and sell more shares during class periods, but that this activity is largely driven by pre-existing option holdings of the managers. Our results suggest that option-based compensation may have the unintended side effect of giving executives an incentive to focus excessively on the short term share price.

This study shows that U.S. individual investors hold under-diversified portfolios, where the level of under-diversification is greater among younger, low-income, less-educated, and less-sophisticated investors. The level of under-diversification is also correlated with investment choices that are consistent with over-confidence, trend-following behavior, and local bias. Furthermore, investors who over-weight stocks with higher volatility and higher skewness are less diversified. In contrast, there is little evidence that portfolio size or transaction costs constrains diversification. Under-diversification is costly to most investors, but a small subset of investors under-diversify because of superior information.

We study the effects of a market-wide short-sale constraint in a dynamic economy with heterogeneous beliefs. Imposing the constraint reduces the stock price if the optimistic investors' intertemporal elasticity of substitution (IES) is less than one and increases the stock price if the optimist's IES is greater than one. In calibrated examples, the optimist's market price of risk falls and the interest rate rises when the constraint binds. Imposing the constraint leads to a higher stock volatility if the optimist's IES is less than one and a lower stock volatility if the IES is greater than one.

Extant research posits that cross-listing improves firms' access to lower cost external financing. But so far, there is scarce evidence that improved access to external funds through cross-listing contributes to higher firm growth. Documenting the relation between firm growth and cross-listing is critical because the presumption in prior research is that funds raised via cross-listing will be channeled towards potentially profitable projects. Using a sample of firms from thirty-seven countries that are cross-listed in the USA, we find a positive association between cross-listing and subsequent externally financed firm growth rates. However, we do not find that increases in externally financed firm growth after cross-listing vary systematically as a function of the home-country attributes of the cross-listed firms. Overall, our results provide new and direct evidence on the impact of cross-listing on the firm growth rates.