Knowledge that Transforms

[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.]

[We provide fully analytical, optimal dynamic hedges in incomplete markets by employing the traditional minimum-variance criterion. Our hedges are in terms of generalized "Greeks" and naturally extend no-arbitrage-based risk management in complete markets to incomplete markets. Whereas the literature characterizes either minimum-variance static, myopic, or dynamic hedges from which a hedger may deviate unless able to precommit, our hedges are time-consistent. We apply our results to derivatives replication with infrequent trading and determine hedges and replication values, which reduce to generalized Black-Scholes expressions in specific settings. We also investigate dynamic hedging with jumps, stochastic correlation, and portfolio management with benchmarking.]

[The average cash holdings of Chinese-listed firms decreased significantly after the split share structure reform in China, which specified a process that allowed previously nontradable shares held by controlling shareholders to be freely tradable on the exchanges. The reduction in cash holdings is greater for firms with weaker governance and firms facing more financial constraints prior to the reform. The reform also significantly reduced the average corporate savings rate, as measured by cash-to-cash-flow sensitivity. These findings are consistent with the premise that the reform removed a significant market friction, which led to better incentive alignment between controlling shareholders and minority shareholders and relaxed financial constraints. Additional analyses show that the reform affects firms' cash management policies, investment decisions, dividend payout policies, and financing choices differently in private firms than in state-owned enterprises.]

[We study the real effects of market segmentation due to credit ratings by using a matched sample of firms just above and just below the investment-grade cutoff. These firms have similar observables, including average investment rates. However, flows into high-yield mutual funds have an economically significant effect on the issuance and investment of the speculative-grade firms relative to their matches, especially for firms likely to be financially constrained. The effect is associated with the discrete change in label from investment- to speculative-grade, not with changes in continuous measures of credit quality. We do not find similar effects at other rating boundaries.]

[Firms that intentionally increase leverage through substantial debt issuances do so primarily as a response to operating needs rather than a desire to make a large equity payout. Subsequent debt reductions are neither rapid, nor the result of proactive attempts to rebalance the firm's capital structure toward a long-run target. Instead, the evolution of the firm's leverage ratio depends primarily on whether or not the firm produces a financial surplus. In fact, firms that generate subsequent deficits tend to cover these deficits predominantly with more debt even though they exhibit leverage ratios that are well above estimated target levels. Our findings are broadly consistent with a capital structure theory in which financial flexibility, in the form of unused debt capacity, plays an important role in capital structure choices.]

[Using institutional investor demand as a proxy for revisions in sophisticated investors' expectations, we test whether financial strength information is gradually impounded over time. Consistent with the gradual incorporation of information, financial strength predicts both future returns and future institutional investor demand. Further consistent with the gradual incorporation of information, more sophisticated transient (high-turnover) institutions respond to financial strength signals prior to less sophisticated, nontransient institutions. A number of additional tests suggest that financial strength forecasts stock returns, at least in part, because it forecasts institutional demand, and institutional demand drives prices.]

[This article solves the portfolio choice problem in a multi-asset jump-diffusion model. We decompose the optimal portfolio weight into components that correspond to a collection of fictitious economies, one of which is a standard diffusion economy, and the others of which are pure-jump economies. We derive a semi-closed-form solution for the optimal portfolio weight, and investigate its properties with or without ambiguity aversion. We find that an investor may not reduce her investment in risky assets when facing more frequent jumps, as suggested by a single-asset jump-diffusion model. Moreover, an investor who is extremely cautious about her estimates of higher moments of asset returns may still hold risky assets, contrary to the prediction of a pure-diffusion model with ambiguity aversion to the first moment.]

[The surge in public debt triggered by the financial crisis has raised uncertainty about future tax pressure and economic activity. We examine the asset pricing effects of fiscal policies in a production-based general equilibrium model in which taxation affects corporate decisions by: (1) distorting profits and investment; (2) reducing the cost of debt through a tax shield; and (3) depressing productivity growth. In settings with recursive preferences, these three tax-based channels generate sizable risk premia, making tax uncertainty a first-order concern. We document further that corporate tax smoothing can substantially alter the effects of public expenditure shocks.]

[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.]

[We compare the dividend policies of publicly and privately held firms in order to help identify the forces shaping corporate dividends, and shed light on the behavior of privately held companies. We show that private firms smooth dividends significantly less than their public counterparts, suggesting that the scrutiny of public capital markets plays a central role in the propensity of firms to smooth dividends over time. Public firms pay relatively higher dividends that tend to be more sensitive to changes in investment opportunities than otherwise similar private firms. Ultimately, ownership structure and incentives play key roles in shaping dividend policies.]