Knowledge that Transforms

We examine the performance of liquidity proxies in commodities. The Amihud measure has the largest correlation with liquidity benchmarks. Amivest and Effective Tick measures also perform well. These proxies are useful for studies of commodity liquidity over a long time period and those that lack access to high-frequency data. We use various aspects of transaction costs, such as spread, depth, immediacy, and resiliency, to give insight into the costs of different execution approaches. Transaction costs increase with volatility and exhibit mean reversion. Splitting trades over one hour can reduce trading costs by two-thirds compared to an immediate execution.

We show that in countries with strong investor protection, developed financial markets, and active markets for corporate control, family firms evolve into widely held companies as they age. In countries with weak investor protection, less developed financial markets, and inactive markets for corporate control, family control is very persistent over time. While family control in high investor protection countries is concentrated in industries that have low investment opportunities and low merger and acquisition (M&A) activity, the same is not so in countries that have low investor protection, where the presence of family control in an industry is unrelated to investment opportunities and M&A activity.

We investigate whether stock betas vary with the release of firm-specific news. Using daily firm-level betas estimated from intraday prices, we find that betas increase on earnings announcement days and revert to their average levels two to five days later. The increase in betas is greater for earnings announcements that have larger positive or negative surprises, convey more information about other firms in the market, and resolve greater ex ante uncertainty. Our results are consistent with a learning model in which investors use information on announcing firms to revise their expectations about the profitability of the aggregate economy. The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]., Oxford University Press.

We compare the ability of three measurement error remedies to deliver unbiased estimates of coefficients in investment regressions. We examine high-order moment estimators, dynamic panel estimators, and simple instrumental variables estimators that use lagged mismeasured regressors as instruments. We show that recent investigations of this question are largely uninformative. We find that all estimators can perform well under correct specification, all can be biased under misspecification, and misspecification is easiest to detect in the case of high-order moment estimators. We develop and demonstrate a minimum distance technique that extends the high-order moment estimators to be used on unbalanced panel data. Published by Oxford University Press 2011., Oxford University Press.

Do macroeconomic conditions affect firms' abilities to raise capital? If so, how do they affect the manner in which the capital is raised? Using a large sample of publicly traded debt issues, seasoned equity offers, bank loans, and private placements of equity and debt, we find that a borrower's credit quality significantly affects its ability to raise capital during macroeconomic downturns. For noninvestment-grade borrowers, capital raising tends to be procyclical, while for investment-grade borrowers, it is countercyclical. Poor market conditions also affect the structure of securities offered, shifting them toward shorter maturities and more security. Overall, our results suggest that macroeconomic conditions influence the securities that firms issue to raise capital, the way in which these securities are structured, and indeed firms' ability to raise capital at all.

We study the interaction between financing and investment decisions in a dynamic model, where the firm has multiple debt issues and equityholders choose the timing of investment. Jointly optimal capital and priority structures can virtually eliminate investment distortions because debt priority serves as a dynamically optimal contract. Examining the relative efficiency of priority rules observed in practice, we develop several predictions about how firms adjust their priority structure in response to changes in leverage, credit conditions, and firm fundamentals. Notably, financially unconstrained firms with few growth opportunities prefer senior debt, while financially constrained firms, with or without growth opportunities, prefer junior debt. Moreover, lower-rated firms are predicted to spread priority across debt classes. Finally, our analysis has a number of important implications for empirical capital structure research, including the relations between market leverage, book leverage, and credit spreads and Tobin's Q, the influence of firm fundamentals on the agency cost of debt, and the conservative debt policy puzzle.

This article examines the link between mortgage securitization and lender screening during the boom and bust of the U.S. housing market. Using comprehensive data on both prime and subprime securitized and bank-held loans, we provide evidence that securitization affected lenders' screening decisions in the subprime market for low-documentation loans through two channels: the securitization rate and the time it takes to securitize a loan. The change in decision-making by subprime lenders occurs on dimensions that are unreported to investors. Examining the time-series evolution of the securitization market further reinforces these findings. We exploit heterogeneity across subprime and prime markets to illustrate that the potential for moral hazard may be reduced with greater collection of hard information and increased monitoring of lenders. Our results suggest that the policy debate regarding securitization and lenders' underwriting standards should separately evaluate the agency and non-agency markets, with special attention toward the extent of soft information in assets being securitized.

We study the government equity infusions into banks under the Capital Purchase Program (CPP) of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Strong banks opted out of CPP, and equity infusions were provided to banks that posed systemic risk and faced high financial distress costs but had strong asset quality. Concerns over executive compensation led banks to reject CPP infusions and exit the program. CPP infusions did not have meaningful certification effects, but the subsequent stress tests conducted for the major banks had significant certification effects. CPP equity infusions increased investor expectations regarding future regulatory interventions in the banking sector.

Cross-listed firms in the United States have a higher investment-to-price sensitivity than do firms that never cross-list. This difference is strong, does not exist prior to the cross-listing date, and does not vanish afterward. Moreover, it does not appear to be primarily driven by improvements in governance, disclosure, and access to capital associated with a U.S. cross-listing. Instead, we argue that a cross-listing enhances managers' reliance on stock prices because it makes stock prices more informative to them. Consistent with this explanation, U.S. cross-listings that are more likely to strengthen the informativeness of stock prices for managers feature a higher investment-to-price sensitivity. The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]., Oxford University Press.

This article analyzes the dynamic coordination problem among creditors of a firm with a time-varying fundamental and a staggered debt structure. In deciding whether to roll over his debt, each maturing creditor is concerned about the rollover decisions of other creditors whose debt matures during his next contract period. We derive a unique threshold equilibrium and characterize the roles of fundamental volatility, credit lines, and debt maturity in driving runs. In particular, we show that when fundamental volatility is sufficiently high, commonly used measures such as temporarily keeping the firm alive under runs and increasing debt maturity can exacerbate rather than mitigate runs.