Knowledge that Transforms

[Many economic agents take corrective actions based on information inferred from market prices of firms' securities. Examples include directors and activists intervening in the management of firms and bank supervisors taking actions to improve the health of financial institutions. We provide an equilibrium analysis of such situations in light of a key problem: if agents use market prices when deciding on corrective actions, prices adjust to reflect this use and potentially become less revealing. We show that market information and agents' information are complementary, and discuss measures that can increase agents' ability to learn from market prices.]

[We study the role of institutional investors in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As). We find that foreign institutional ownership is positively associated with the intensity of cross-border M&A activity worldwide. Foreign institutional ownership increases the probability that a merger deal is cross-border, successful, and the bidder takes full control of the target firm. This relation is stronger in countries with weaker legal institutions and in less developed markets, suggesting some substitutability between local governance and foreign institutional investors. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that foreign institutional investors act as facilitators in the international market for corporate control; they build bridges between firms and reduce transaction costs and information asymmetry between bidder and target. We conclude that cross-border portfolio investments of institutional money managers and cross-border M&As are complements in promoting financial integration worldwide.]

[Using a large sample of cross-border mergers, we measure the effect of a change in location on systematic risk. When a target firm's location moves, a large part of its systematic risk switches from being related to its home equity market to that of the acquirer. On average, the change in betas is equivalent to an excess shift of about 0.5 in the target's beta from its home market to that of the acquirer. We test whether the change in systematic risk can be explained by fundamental factors related to changes in the operations of the firm or merger synergy and find that it cannot.]

[We analyze theoretically and empirically the implications of information asymmetry for equilibrium asset pricing and portfolio choice. In our partially revealing dynamic rational expectations equilibrium, portfolio separation fails, and indexing is not optimal. We show how uninformed investors should structure their portfolios, using the information contained in prices to cope with winner's curse problems. We implement empirically this pricecontingent portfolio strategy. Consistent with our theory, the strategy outperforms economically and statistically the index. While momentum can arise in the model, in the data, the momentum strategy does not outperform the price-contingent strategy, as predicted by the theory.]

[We provide new evidence linking board characteristics and performance. Using manually collected governance data from the mutual fund industry, we find an inverse relation between board size and fund performance. We also find evidence that organizational form plays an important role in determining operational performance. Overall, the results are consistent with the notion that there may not be a single optimal board structure that is applicable to all funds, that attempts to regulate board attributes should be considered with caution, and that sponsor-level factors are important board structure considerations.]

[Numerous studies have examined the mean/variance efficiency of various market proxies by employing sample parameters and have concluded that these proxies are inefficient. These findings cast doubt about the capital asset pricing model (CAPM), one of the cornerstones of modern finance. This study adopts a reverse-engineering approach: given a particular market proxy, we find the minimal variations in sample parameters required to ensure that the proxy is mean/variance efficient. Surprisingly, slight variations in parameters, well within estimation error bounds, suffice to make the proxy efficient. Thus, many conventional market proxies could be perfectly consistent with the CAPM and useful for estimating expected returns.]

[This article integrates the problem of designing corporate bankruptcy rules into a theory of optimal debt structure. We show that, in an optimal contracting framework with imperfect renegotiation, having multiple creditors increases a firm's debt capacity while increasing its incentives to default strategically. The optimal debt contract gives creditors claims that are jointly inconsistent in case of default. Bankruptcy rules are therefore a necessary part of the overall financing contract, to make claims consistent and to prevent a valuereducing run for the assets of the firm. We characterize these rules, with predictions about the allocation of security rights, the right to trigger bankruptcy, and the symmetry of treatment of creditors in default.]

[Behavioral theories suggest that investor misperceptions and market mispricing will be correlated across firms. We use equity and debt financing to identify common misvaluation across firms. A zero-investment portfolio (UMO, undervalued minus overvalued) built from repurchase and issue firms captures comovement in returns beyond that in some standard multifactor models, and substantially improves the Sharpe ratio of the tangency portfolio. Loadings on UMO incrementally predict the cross-section of returns on both portfolios and individual stocks, even among firms not recently involved in external financing activities. Further evidence suggests that UMO loadings proxy for the common component of a stock's misvaluation.]

[This article analyzes optimal financial contracts for an incumbent and potential entrant accounting for prospective asset mergers. Exercising a first-mover advantage, the incumbent increases his share of surplus by issuing public debt that appreciates in the event of merger. Incumbent debt reduces the equilibrium value of entrant assets and thus reduces the return to (likelihood of) entry through two channels: venture capitalists recover less in default and ownership rights provide weaker managerial incentives. High incumbent leverage has a countervailing cost, since the resulting debt overhang prevents ex post efficient mergers if merger surplus is low. Event risk covenants limiting counterparty debt are optimal for the incumbent, further limiting the entrant's share of merger surplus. A poison-put covenant is also optimal for the incumbent, allowing him to extract the same surplus with lower debt face value.]

[This article uses a large panel dataset that tracks the housing wealth and credit card spending of 12,793 individuals in Hong Kong to study the relationship between housing wealth and household consumption. I identify a significant effect of housing wealth on consumption. A pure wealth effect can explain part of the sensitivity: households with multiple houses have much stronger consumption responses. Consistent with a relaxation of the credit constraints, mortgage refinancing significantly increases households' consumption sensitivities. However, for the majority of the households that do not refinance, consumption sensitivity appears to be due to a reduction in precautionary saving.]