I exploit information in the cross-section of bid-ask spreads to develop a new measure of extreme event risk. Spreads embed tail risk information because liquidity providers require compensation for the possibility of sharp changes in asset values. I show that simple regressions relating spreads and trading volume to factor betas recover this information and deliver high-frequency tail risk estimates for common factors in stock returns. My methodology disentangles financial and aggregate market risks during the 2007–2008 financial crisis; quantifies jump risks associated with Federal Open Market Committee announcements; and anticipates an extreme liquidity shock before the 2010 Flash Crash. Received April 27, 2016; editorial decision August 10, 2018 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.

I show that when an issuer has superior information about the value of its assets, it is better off selling assets separately rather than as a pool due to the information destruction effect of pooling. If, however, the issuer can create a derivative security that is collateralized by the assets, pooling and “tranching” may be optimal. If the residual risk of each asset is not highly correlated, tranching allows the issuer to exploit the risk diversification effect of pooling to create a low-risk and highly liquid security. In contrast, for an uninformed seller, pure pooling reduces underpricing and is preferred to separate asset sales. These results lead to a dynamic model of financial intermediation: originators sell pools of assets, some of which are purchased by informed intermediaries who then further pool and tranche them. Pooling and tranching allow intermediaries to leverage their capital more efficiently, enhancing the returns to their private information.

This paper examines how physical climate exposure affects firm performance and global supply chains. We document that heat at supplier locations reduces the operating income of suppliers and their customers. Further, customers respond to perceived changes in suppliers’ exposure: when suppliers’ realized exposure exceeds ex ante expectations, customers are 7% more likely to terminate supplier relationships. Consistent with experience-based learning, this effect increases with signal strength and repetition and decreases with country-level climate adaptation. Subsequent replacement suppliers show a lower expected and realized but similar projected heat exposure. We find similar results for suppliers’ exposure to floods.

This paper characterizes how firms' strategic interaction in product markets affects the industry dynamics of investment and expected returns. In imperfectly competitive industries, a firm's exposure to systematic risk is affected by both its own investment strategy and the investment strategies of its peers, so that the dynamics of its expected returns depend on the intraindustry value spread. In the model and the data, firms' betas and returns correlate more positively in industries with low value spread, low dispersion in operating markups, and low concentration.

We present a rational general equilibrium model that highlights the fact that relative wealth concerns can play a role in explaining financial bubbles. We consider a finite-horizon overlapping generations model in which agents care only about their consumption. Though the horizon is finite, competition over future investment opportunities makes agents' utilities dependent on the wealth of their cohort and induces relative wealth concerns. Agents herd into risky securities and drive down their expected return. Even though the bubble is likely to burst and lead to a substantial loss, agents' relative wealth concerns make them afraid to trade against the crowd.

We examine a change in the European Central Bank’s collateral framework, which significantly lowered the rating requirement for eligible residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), and its impact on bank lending and risk-taking in the Netherlands. Banks most affected by the policy increase loan supply and lower interest rates on new mortgage originations. These lower-interest-rate loans serve as collateral for newly issued RMBS with lower-rated tranches and subsequently experience worse repayment performance. The performance deterioration is pronounced among loans with state guarantees, which suggests that looser collateral requirements may lead to undesired credit risk transfer to the sovereign. Received June 14, 2016; editorial decision September 8, 2017 by Editor Philip Strahan.

The unique regulation of U.S. public pension funds links their liability discount rate to the expected return on assets, which gives them incentives to invest more in risky assets in order to report a better funding status. Comparing public and private pension funds in the United States, Canada, and Europe, we find that U.S. public pension funds act on their regulatory incentives. U.S. public pension funds with a higher level of underfunding per participant, as well as

We investigate why only some banks use regulatory arbitrage. We predict that banks wanting to be riskier than allowed by capital regulations (constrained banks) use regulatory arbitrage, while others do not. We find support for this hypothesis using trust-preferred securities issuance, a form of regulatory arbitrage available to almost all U.S. banks from 1996 to Dodd-Frank. We also find support for predictions that constrained banks are riskier, perform worse during the crisis, and use multiple forms of regulatory arbitrage. We show that neither too-big-to-fail incentives nor misaligned managerial incentives are first-order determinants of this type of regulatory arbitrage.

Between March and August 2020, S&P and Moody’s downgraded approximately 25% of collateral feeding into CLOs and only 2% of tranche values, with rating actions concentrating in junior tranches. Both S&P and Moody’s modeling indicate that the impacts should have been considerably larger, especially for higher-rated tranches. Neither changes in correlation nor the accumulation of pre-COVID-19 protective cushions can explain the downgrade asymmetry on upper tranches. Instead, CLO managers repositioned their collateral pools to dampen the negative credit shock and rating agencies incorporated qualitative adjustments in their CLO ratings. Important potential policy and market implications from these findings are discussed.

Are standard structural models able to explain credit spreads on corporate bonds? In contrast to much of the literature, we find that the Black-Cox model matches the level of investment-grade spreads well. Model spreads for speculative-grade debt are too low, and we find that bond illiquidity contributes to this underpricing. Our analysis makes use of a new approach for calibrating the model to historical default rates that leads to more precise estimates of investment-grade default probabilities. Received October 25, 2016; editorial decision January 12, 2018 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.