Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract This paper models an unexplored source of liquidity risk large broker-dealers face: a withdrawal of collateral providers. By setting different contracting terms on repurchase agreements with cash borrowers and lenders, dealers can source funds for their own activities. Cash borrowers internalize the risk of losing their collateral in case their dealer defaults, prompting them to withdraw it. This incentive creates strategic complementarities among collateral providers, reducing a dealer’s liquidity position and compromising their solvency. Collateral runs are triggered by a contraction in dealers’ assets making them markedly different than traditional wholesale funding runs. Mitigating these risks involves different policy recommendations.

We extend the canonical epidemiology model to study the interaction between economic decisions and epidemics. Our model implies that people cut back on consumption and work to reduce the chances of being infected. These decisions reduce the severity of the epidemic but exacerbate the size of the associated recession. The competitive equilibrium is not socially optimal because infected people do not fully internalize the effect of their economic decisions on the spread of the virus. In our benchmark model, the best simple containment policy increases the severity of the recession but saves roughly half a million lives in the United States.

Abstract The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have created societal and political pressure for pension funds to address sustainable investing. We run two field surveys (n = 1,669, n = 3,186) with a pension fund that grants its members a real vote on its sustainable-investment policy. Two-thirds of participants are willing to expand the fund’s engagement with companies based on selected SDGs, even when they expect engagement to hurt financial performance. Support remains strong after the fund implements the choice. A key reason is participants’ strong social preferences.

Abstract High Tobin’s q industries receive more funding from capital markets than low Tobin’s q industries from 1971 to 1996. Since then, the opposite is true. The key to understanding this shift is that large firms, for which q is more a proxy for rents than investment opportunities, have become more important within industries. For these firms, repurchases but not capital expenditures increase in the cross-section with q, so that q explains the variation of repurchases more than of capital expenditures. Consequently, equity capital flows out of high q industries because for these industries stock repurchases are high and issuances are low.

Abstract We exploit an exogenous reduction in bank supervision and examination to demonstrate a causal effect of supervisory oversight on financial institutions’ risk taking. The additional risk took the form of risky lending, faster asset growth, and a greater reliance on low-quality capital. This response to less oversight boosted banks’ odds of failure. Lastly, we show that the reduction in oversight capacity led to more costly failures because there were longer delays in closing insolvent institutions, and because more bad assets were passed to the government insurance fund.

Abstract We investigate how information choices affect equity returns and risk. Building on an existing theoretical model of information and investment choice, we estimate a learning index that reflects the expected benefits of learning about an asset. High learning index stocks have lower future returns and risk compared to low learning index stocks. Analysis of a conditional asset pricing model, long-run patterns in returns and volatilities, other measures of information flow, and the information environment surrounding earnings announcements reinforce our interpretation of the learning index. Our findings support the model’s predictions and illustrate a novel empirical measure of investor learning.

Abstract We study how political party turnover after German state elections affects banks’ lending to the regional government. We find that between 1992 and 2018, party turnover at the state level leads to a sharp and substantial increase in lending by local savings banks to their home-state government. This effect is accompanied by an equivalent reduction in private lending. A statistical association between political party turnover and government lending is absent for comparable cooperative banks that exhibit a similar regional organization and business model. Our results suggest that political frictions may interfere with government-owned banks’ local development objectives.

Abstract Firms in the same networks tend to have similar corporate governance practices. However, disentangling peer effects, where governance practices propagate from one firm to another, from selection effects, where firms with similar preferences self-select into linked groups, is difficult to do. Studying board-interlocked firms, we utilize the staggered adoption of universal demand laws across states to identify and estimate causal peer effects in governance policies. We find support for the existence of peer effects in the adoption of antitakeover provisions. The impact of universal demand laws on the governance experience of interlocking directors likely explains these effects.

Abstract We introduce aggregate transmission shocks to an epidemic model and link firm valuations to infections via an asset pricing framework with vaccines. Infections lower earnings growth but firms can mitigate damages. We estimate a large reproduction number $\mathcal R_0$ and transmission volatility for COVID-19. Using these estimates, we quantify the bias of deterministic approximations based on $\mathcal R_0$. Our model generates predictions consistent with the data: unexpected infection resurgence, nonmonotonic mitigation policies, and higher price-to-earnings ratios during a pandemic. Valuations would be significantly lower absent mitigation and a high vaccine arrival rate.

Abstract Real estate—housing in particular—is a less profitable investment in the long run than previously thought. We hand-collect property-level financial data for the institutional real estate portfolios of four large Oxbridge colleges over the period 1901–1983. Gross income yields initially fluctuate around 5%, but then trend downward (upward) for agricultural and residential (commercial) real estate. Long-term real income growth rates are close to zero for all property types. Our findings imply annualized real total returns, net of costs, ranging from approximately 2.3% for residential to 4.5% for agricultural real estate.