Knowledge that Transforms

We study how a firm's decision to offer bonds of various maturities affects the portfolio allocations of institutional investors. We argue that because of lower information-collection costs, institutional investors tilt their portfolios towards firms that offer bonds of various maturities. We show that this translates into lower bond yields, both in the primary and in the secondary bond markets.

This study examines the financing of innovation in the presence of adverse selection in the capital market. An entrepreneur with private information needs outside funding for a project requiring costly experimentation. Equilibrium contracts use the duration of the experimentation period, together with pay-for-performance, to signal information to outside investors. As a result, investment is delayed, entrepreneurs with stronger growth options receive vested stock options, and entrepreneurs with a lower probability of success are compensated in case of failure. These predictions are in line with empirical evidence on venture capital contracts, and on the impact of internal financing on risk taking. The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]., Oxford University Press.

Shocks to equity options' implied volatility are followed by persistently lower short-term rates. Shocks to puts' over calls' out-of-the-money implied volatilities (P/C) are followed by persistently higher rates. Stock and Treasury bond implied volatilities, which measure market and policy uncertainty, are countercyclical, while P/C, which measures downside risk, is procyclical. An equilibrium model in which investors and the central bank learn about composite regimes of economic and policy variables explains these dynamics, linking them to a learning-based, forward-looking Taylor rule. Survey data support our model's predictions on the effect of uncertainty on the level and fluctuations of implied volatilities.

We develop and solve a model of optimal portfolio choice with transaction costs and predictability in house prices. We model house prices using a process with a time-varying expected growth rate. Housing adjustments are infrequent and characterized by both the wealth-to-housing ratio and the expected growth in house prices. We find that the housing portfolio share immediately after moving to a more valuable house is higher during periods of high expected growth in house prices. We also find that the share of wealth invested in risky assets is lower during periods of high expected growth in house prices. Finally, the decrease in risky portfolio holdings for households moving to a more valuable house is greater in high-growth periods. These findings are robust to tests using household-level data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) and Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) surveys. The coefficients obtained using model-simulated data are consistent with those obtained in the empirical tests.

I solve in closed form for the optimal dynamic risk choice of a fund manager who is compensated with a high-water mark contract. The optimal risk choice depends on the ratio of the fund's assets under management to its high-water mark. If the manager's outside option value is low, investors' termination policy is strict, or management fees are high, then negative returns induce the manager into “derisking.” Otherwise, he engages in “gambling.” Having the option to walk away increases risk taking, though in many cases exercise is never optimal. In particular, leaving to restart at a proportionally smaller fund is always suboptimal.

We first study a stylized model of self-fulfilling panic among agents with differing fragilities to strategic risk and show that depending on the severity of coordination problems, the panic trigger threshold can depend only on one type's fragility. We then present a model of systemic panic among financial institutions with heterogeneous fragilities to financial spillovers. Concerns about potential spillovers generate strategic interaction, triggering a pre-emption game in which one tries to exit the market before others to avoid spillovers. Although financial contagion originates in weaker institutions, systemic risk can critically depend on financial health of stronger in the contagion chain. In this case, bolstering the strong, rather than the weak, more effectively enhances systemic stability.

We investigate the effect of ambiguity about hedge fund investment strategies on asset prices and aggregate welfare. We model some traders (mutual funds) as facing ambiguity about the equilibrium trading strategies of other traders (hedge funds). This ambiguity limits the ability of mutual funds to infer information from prices and has negative effects on market outcomes. We use this analysis to investigate the implications of regulations that affect disclosure requirements of hedge funds or the cost of operating a hedge fund. Our analysis demonstrates how regulations affect asset prices and welfare through their influence on opaque trading.

The dividend-price ratio is a noisy proxy for expected returns when expected dividend growth is time-varying. This paper uses a new and forward-looking measure of dividend growth extracted from S&P 500 futures and options to correct the dividend-price ratio for changes in expected dividend growth. Over January 1994 through June 2011, dividend growth implied by derivative markets reliably forecasts future dividend growth, and the corrected dividend-price ratio predicts S&P 500 returns substantially better than the standard dividend-price ratio, in-sample and out-of-sample. Time-varying expected dividend growth is important to explain price movements, especially because it is highly correlated with expected returns.

Using a novel data set on correlation swaps, we study the relation between correlation risk, hedge fund characteristics, and their risk-return profile. We find that the ability of hedge funds to create market-neutral returns is often associated with a significant exposure to correlation risk, which helps to explain the large abnormal returns found in previous models. We also estimate a significant negative market price of correlation risk, which accounts for the cross-section of hedge fund excess returns. Finally, we detect a pronounced nonlinear relation between correlation risk exposure and the tail risk of hedge fund returns.

At year-end, some allege that institutional investors try to mislead investors by placing trades that inflate performance (portfolio pumping) or distort reported holdings (window dressing). We contribute direct tests using daily institutional trades and find that year-end price inflation derives from a lack of institutional selling rather than institutional buying. In fact, institutional buying declines at year-end. Consistent with pumping, institutions tend to buy stocks in which they already have large positions. We find no evidence of window dressing, as institutions are not more likely to buy high-past return stocks or sell low-past return stocks at year- or quarter-end.