Knowledge that Transforms

We develop and empirically test a theory of optimal security design under adverse selection accounting for strategic trading by uninformed investors who will liquidate a security in secondary markets only if their idiosyncratic carrying costs exceed the security's expected trading loss. Such investors demand primary market discounts equaling expected carrying costs borne plus trading losses incurred. Issuers minimize the total illiquidity discount by splitting cash-flow into tranched debt claims with liquidity predicted to increase with seniority, while the optimal number of tranches increases with underlying cash-flow risk. Empirical tests confirm our model predictions.

Recent reforms across Eastern European countries have given more flexibility and information to parties to engage in secured debt transactions. The menu of assets legally accepted as collateral was enlarged to include movable assets (e.g., machinery and equipment). Generalized difference-in-differences tests show that firms operating more movable assets borrowed more as a result. Those firms also invested more, hired more, and became more efficient and profitable following the changes in the contracting environment. The financial deepening we document triggered important reallocation effects: firms affected by the reforms increased their share of fixed assets and employment in the economy.

We propose and test a theory of using commodities as collateral for financing. Under capital control and collateral constraint, investors import commodities and pledge them as collateral to earn higher expected returns. Higher collateral demands increase commodity prices and make the inventory-convenience yield relation less negative. Our model illustrates these equilibrium effects and suggests that the violation of covered interest-rate parity is a proxy for collateral demands. Evidence from eight commodities in China and developed markets supports the theoretical predictions. Our findings complement the theory of storage and provide new insights into the financialization of commodity markets.

We estimate a dynamic investment model in which firms finance with equity, cash, or debt. Misvaluation affects equity values, and firms optimally issue and repurchase overvalued and undervalued shares. The funds flowing to and from these activities come from investment, dividends, or net cash. The model fits a broad set of data moments in large heterogeneous samples and across industries. Our parameter estimates imply that misvaluation induces larger changes in financial policies than investment. The investment responses are strongest for small firms but nonetheless modest. Managers' rational responses to misvaluation increase shareholder value by up to 4%.

A five-factor model that adds profitability (RMW) and investment (CMA) factors to the three-factor model of Fama and French (1993) suggests a shared story for several average-return anomalies. Specifically, positive exposures to RMW and CMA (stock returns that behave like those of profitable firms that invest conservatively) capture the high average returns associated with low market β, share repurchases, and low stock return volatility. Conversely, negative RMW and CMA slopes (like those of relatively unprofitable firms that invest aggressively) help explain the low average stock returns associated with high β, large share issues, and highly volatile returns.

Proxy advisory firms have become important players in corporate governance, but the extent of their influence over shareholder votes is debated. We estimate the effect of Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) recommendations on voting outcomes by exploiting exogenous variation in ISS recommendations generated by a cutoff rule in ISS voting guidelines. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that from 2010 to 2011, a negative ISS recommendation on a say-on-pay proposal leads to a 25 percentage point reduction in say-on-pay voting support, suggesting a strong influence over shareholder votes. We also use our setting to examine the informational role of ISS recommendations.

Previous studies have argued that entrepreneurs earn less and bear more risk than salaried workers with otherwise similar characteristics. In a simple model of entrepreneurship, I show that estimates of mean and variance of returns to entrepreneurship used by these previous studies are biased, as they fail to account for the option value of experimenting with new ideas. Using longitudinal data, I find patterns that are consistent with entrepreneurship as experimentation and returns to entrepreneurship that are more attractive than established by previous research.

Since 2012, all European Union countries have required disclosure of large short positions. This reduces short interest, bid-ask spreads, and the informativeness of prices. After specific disclosures, short-run abnormal returns are insignificantly negative, but 90-day cumulative abnormal returns are a statistically significant −5.23%. We find disclosures are likely to be followed by other disclosures, especially when the initial discloser is large or centrally located. However, there is no subsequent increase in short interest, and prices do not subsequently reverse. These results indicate that large short sellers are well informed, and that disclosures are not being used to coordinate manipulative attacks.

This paper examines apparent fraud among securitized nonagency loans using three indicators: unreported second liens, owner occupancy misreporting, and appraisal overstatements. We find that around 48% of loans exhibited at least one indicator of misrepresentation. Surprisingly, misreporting is similar in both low and full documentation loans and is associated with a 51% higher likelihood of delinquency. Two-thirds of loans with unreported second liens had the same originator issuing both the first and second lien. Misrepresentations in MBS pools can explain substantial cross-sectional differences in future losses. Losses were predictable and initiating from apparent fraud by MBS underwriters and loan originators.

We examine how production flexibility affects financial leverage. A worldwide sample of energy utilities allows us to apply direct measures for production flexibility based on their power plants. We find that production flexibility increases financial leverage. For identification, we exploit privatizations and deregulations of electricity markets, geographical variations in natural resources, the technological evolution of gas-fired power plants, and differences in electricity prices and recapitalization cost across regions. Production flexibility affects financial leverage via the channels of reduced expected cost of financial distress and higher present value of tax shields. The relative importance of these channels depends on firms' profitability.