Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract We explore the use of voluntary disclosure by managers to solicit market feedback. Using managerial capital expenditure forecasts, we find that managers adjust annual capital expenditures upward (downward) in response to positive (negative) stock market reactions to capital expenditure forecasts, but only for those forecast announcements that stimulate rather than discourage informed trading. These capex adjustments motivated by market feedback correlate with higher future performance and are stronger (weaker) when outsiders (managers) are more informed. Finally, we show that managers are more likely to issue and learn from capex forecasts when predisclosure stock prices are affected by transitory nonfundamental shocks.

Abstract We show that time-varying risk premium in financial markets can explain a key, yet puzzling, feature of labor markets: the large differences in unemployment risk across worker age groups over the business cycle. Our search model features a time-varying risk premium and learning about unobserved heterogeneity in worker productivity. Their interaction generates large real effects through firms’ labor policies. Our model predicts higher unemployment risk of younger workers relative to prime-age workers when risk premium is high, and the employment ratio of prime-age to young workers to be more cyclical in high beta industries. We find empirical support for these predictions. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Abstract By exploiting variation in state capital gains taxation as an instrument, we analyze the economic consequences of housing speculation during the U.S. housing boom in the 2000s. We find that housing speculation, anchored, in part, on extrapolation of past housing price changes, led not only to greater price appreciation, economic expansions, and housing construction during the boom in 2004–2006 but also to more severe economic downturns during the subsequent bust in 2007–2009. Our analysis supports supply overhang and local household demand as two key channels for transmitting these adverse effects.