Abstract This paper analyzes the relation between agency conflicts and risk management. In contrast to previous contributions, our analysis incorporates not only stockholder-debtholder conflicts but also manager–stockholder conflicts. We show that the costs of both underinvestment and overinvestment are essential in determining the firm's hedging policy. In particular, firms that derive more of their value from assets in place (lower market-to-book ratios), although having lower costs of underinvestment, generally display larger costs of overinvestment. Thus, they may be more likely to hedge to control these overinvestment incentives. Our analysis explains why large profitable firms with fewer growth opportunities tend to hedge more (Bartram et al., 2004). It also provides a number of new predictions relating the benefits associated with risk management to various dimensions of the firm's economic environment.

We study the interaction between relationship banking and short-term arm’s length activities of banks, called trading. We show that a bank can use the franchise value of its relationships to expand the scale of trading, but may allocate too much capital to trading ex post, compromising its ability to build relationships ex ante. This effect is reinforced when trading is used for risk shifting. Overall, combining relationship banking and trading offers benefits under small-scale trading, but distortions may dominate when trading is unbridled. This suggests that trading by banks, while benign historically, might be distortive with deeper financial markets.

Abstract Popular investment advice recommends that stock/bond and stock/wealth ratios should rise with investor risk tolerance and investment horizon respectively, prescriptions that are difficult to reconcile with the simple mean-variance model. We show that extending the mean-variance model to include human capital, without any other modifications, can simultaneously justify both recommendations, so long as the correlation between labour income and stock returns falls within a range determined by market and investor-specific parameters. Aggregate labour income data from 11 countries generally satisfy this requirement, as do plausible individual income processes. We also consider the implications of human capital for the optimal bond/wealth ratio over the investment horizon, and examine the sensitivity of the stock/bond mix to the volatility of labour income.

Abstract In rational, efficiently functioning and complete markets, returns on derivative and underlying securities should be perfectly contemporaneously correlated. Due to market imperfections, one of these markets may reflect information faster. The use of high-frequency data and the choice for a small unit time interval to measure these lead-lag relations comes at the cost of some or many missing observations, causing traditional estimators to either under- or overestimate covariances and correlations. We use a new estimator to estimate lead-lag relationships between the cash AEX index, options and futures. We find that futures returns lead both options and cash index returns by approximately 10 minutes. The relationship between options and the cash market is not completely unidirectional. JEL Classification: G13, G14

Abstract During the 1790s, European investors began to purchase substantial quantities of US government and corporate securities. A number of these securities were traded in markets on both sides of the Atlantic. Based on market price quotations we compiled for the same securities in London and New York markets, we ask if these early trans-Atlantic securities markets were integrated, and, if so, when they became integrated. We find little evidence of market integration before 1816, and substantial evidence of it thereafter. Financial globalization – the convergence of financial asset prices in markets on different continents – began earlier than most have suspected.

Abstract Fama and French (1992) show that size and book-to-price dominate CAPM beta and other variables such as the price-earnings ratio and dividend yield in explaining the cross-section of US stock returns. Comparable evidence for the UK points to a book-to-price effect, but not a size effect (Chan and Chui, 1996; Strong and Xu, 1997). In this paper, our first contribution is to show that a measure of research and development (RD) helps explain cross-sectional variation in UK stock returns. Our cross-sectional results on the association between stock returns and RD are consistent with recent US evidence reported by Lev and Sougiannis (1996, 1999) and Chan, Lakonishok and Sougiannis (2001).Fama and French (1993, 1995, 1996) also show that a three-factor model captures a high proportion of the time series variation in portfolio returns, again for the US. Our second contribution is to show, for the UK, that a modification to the three-factor model to take account of RD activity can significantly enhance the explanatory power of the three-factor model. We show that, as a practical matter, estimated risk premia based on the modified three-factor model can differ considerably from risk premia estimated using the CAPM or the three-factor model. In particular, risk premia for industries in which few firms undertake RD activities tend to be over-estimated.

Abstract The capital structure irrelevance argument of Modigliani and Miller (1958) implies that the use of debt or leases should have no impact on firm values. This classical argument leaves out several important considerations crucial for the result, in particular, counterparty credit risk. We re-examine the capital structure problem for firms that can utilize debt and leases in the presence of counterparty risk. Our numerical and empirical estimates show a negative term structure of lease rates that steepens as a function of counterparty risk. Moreover, we document numerical evidence for the complementary relationship between debt and leases in the presence of counterparty risk.

Abstract Liquidity plays an important role in global research. We identify high-quality liquidity proxies based on low-frequency (daily) data, which provide 1,000× to 10,000× computational savings compared to computing high-frequency (intraday) liquidity measures. We find that: (i) Closing Percent Quoted Spread is the best monthly percent-cost proxy when available, (ii) Amihud, Closing Percent Quoted Spread Impact, LOT Mixed Impact, High–Low Impact, and FHT Impact are tied as the best monthly cost-per-dollar-volume proxy, (iii) the daily version of Closing Percent Quoted Spread is the best daily percent-cost proxy, and (iv) the daily version of Amihud is the best daily cost-per-dollar-volume proxy.

We propose a simple model of non-exclusive financial advice in which two households rely on a self-interested (common) expert to make their investment choices. There is only one source of risk, and the expert is privately informed about the risky asset’s volatility. When monetary transfers are unenforceable, we show that investors may delegate their investment decisions to the expert. When doing so, however, they impose restrictions on her choices which crucially depend on whether the expert perceives investors’ asset allocations as complements or as substitutes. Finally, we analyze the implications of non-exclusivity in financial advice on investment behavior and welfare, and highlight a set of novel testable implications.

Abstract This article explores the relationship between a firm’s legal contracting environment and its innovation incentives. Using granular data from the pharmaceutical industry, we examine a contracting mechanism through which incumbents maintain market power: “pay-for-delay” agreements to delay the market entry of competitors. Exploiting a shock where such contracts become legally tenuous, we find that affected incumbents subsequently increase their innovation activity across a variety of project-level measures. Exploring the nature of this innovation, we also find that it is more “impactful” from a scientific and commercial standpoint. The results provide novel evidence that restricting the contracting space can boost innovation at the firm level. However, at the extensive margin we find a reduction in innovation by new entrants in response to increased competition, suggesting a nuanced effect on aggregate innovation.