Knowledge that Transforms

This article proposes a novel perspective on the term structure of market equity yields. Instead of using market dividend futures, we aggregate equity yields of individual firms to estimate the market equity yield curve. This approach allows studying the aggregation effect that shapes the market equity yield curve. During the period from 1990 to 2019, we find a positive aggregation effect: companies with high equity yields were expected to grow at higher rates than companies with low equity yields. Thus, high-yield companies were expected to generate an increasing share of total market dividends when expanding the investment time horizon. Under the assumption of flat firm-risk premia, this implies an upward-sloping term structure of equity risk premia. Together with the concave bond yield curve, the market equity yield curve was upward-sloping.

We investigate the joint optimal risk management and capital structure decisions of banks when they use contingent-convertible (CoCo) futures contracts to hedge financial-sector risk. In spite of banks choosing significantly higher leverage ratios, their default probabilities drop appreciably while their equity values increase, allowing banks to compete more favorably with the shadow-banking system. Banks’ value-maximizing decision to hedge financial-sector risk unintentionally leads to an economy with extremely low aggregate bank default rates across all future states of nature. Thus, CoCo futures offer a powerful microprudential and macroprudential policy tool. That banks choose not to hedge financial-sector risk in practice is consistent with managers internalizing bank bailouts.

We develop a stylized model that generates the following empirical predictions: the less (more) accessible the underlying market is ex ante, the more its liquidity improves (deteriorates) when basket trading becomes available. We empirically test these predictions using corporate bonds before and after the introduction of exchange-traded funds. Consistent with the model’s prediction, liquidity improvement is larger for highly arbitraged, low-volume, and high-yield bonds, and for 144A bonds to which retail investor access is prohibited by law. Our article leads to a more nuanced understanding of the impact of basket security introduction than previous research suggested.

Before regulations were enacted to prevent such practices, information leaked through selective disclosure was incorporated into markets prior to the public release of news. “News days” did not deliver news to markets; now they do. We provide novel evidence of changes in returns and turnover behavior around the enactment of regulations barring selective disclosure practices in the United States and the EU. We conversely document lack of such changes in Australia and Japan, which did not implement similar measures. We conclude that selective disclosure resolves Roll’s R2 puzzle.

Environmental and social (ES) funds in non-ES families must balance incorporating the stakeholders’ interests they advertise and maximizing shareholder value favored by their families. We find that these funds support ES proposals that are far from the majority threshold, while opposing them when their vote is more likely to be pivotal. This strategy results in a high average support for ES proposals, seemingly consistent with their fiduciary responsibilities, while opposing contested ES proposals. This greenwashing strategy is driven by ES funds in non-ES families who cater to institutional investors. Indeed, these funds experience lower inflows when providing low average support for ES proposals. This strategic voting is not exhibited in governance proposals, nor by ES funds in ES families or by non-ES funds in non-ES families, reinforcing the notion of strategic voting to accommodate family preferences while appearing to meet the fiduciary responsibilities of the funds.

We test the effect of going public on economic growth in the areas surrounding initial public offering (IPO) firms. We compare the effects of IPO filers that complete their IPOs with those that do not, using post-filing stock market fluctuations as an instrument for IPO completion. We show that IPOs that are large relative to the size of their counties lead to a 1.1 percentage point relative reduction in annual county-level establishment growth, with similar effects for employment and population growth. There are no corresponding effects for relatively small IPOs. These negative effects appear to be driven by a crowding out of local sector peers, but the crowding out also disrupts local agglomerations and slows down growth among other businesses that rely on local demand. Overall, our results indicate that macroeconomic gains from IPOs trade off against disruptions in local agglomeration economies where public firms originate.

In common-law systems, firms’ litigation risk depends both on written laws and how courts interpret these laws. Using 321 US circuit court rulings, we introduce a novel measure capturing courts’ attitudes toward defendants in securities lawsuits. Our results confirm that financial misreporting firms in more defendant-friendly circuits face fewer lawsuits. Consistent with lower expected litigation costs, firms in these circuits face less negative market reactions when misreporting is revealed, invest less in preventing misreporting, and are more likely to engage in aggressive misreporting. We conclude that defendant-friendly precedents reduce firms’ legal liability and worsen their financial reporting quality.

Traders may run on financial markets merely out of fear of future liquidity shocks. We present a model that shows that adequately calibrated circuit breakers can prevent such coordination failures by curbing excessive trading. It suggests a novel, forward-looking circuit breaker that becomes most restrictive in cases when expected welfare losses of inefficient market runs are largest. The probabilities of current and future liquidity shortages are important determinants for such welfare-optimized circuit breakers. We empirically illustrate how to calibrate these parameters. We also determine under which economic conditions circuit breakers damage welfare and should not be implemented.

Using a comprehensive dataset of Italian small and medium-sized enterprises, we find that differences between private and public information on firm creditworthiness affect the decision to issue bonds. Our evidence supports favorable (rather than adverse) selection in corporate bond markets. Specifically, holding public information constant, firms with better private fundamentals are more likely to access bond markets. These effects are weaker for opaque firms and stronger for firms with worse publicly observable risk. Additionally, credit conditions improve for issuers following the bond placement, compared with a matched sample of non-issuers. This is consistent with a model where banks offer more flexibility than markets during financial distress and firms use market lending to signal credit quality to outside stakeholders.

I analyze time series momentum along the Treasury term structure. Yield curve momentum is primarily due to changes in the level factor of yields. Because yield changes are partly induced by changes in the federal funds rate, yield curve momentum is related to post-FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) announcement drift. The momentum factor is unspanned by the information in the term structure today and is hence inconsistent with standard term structure, macrofinance, and behavioral models. I argue that the results are consistent with a model with unpriced longer term dependencies.