Knowledge that Transforms

The paper investigates the portfolio allocation effects of increased asset co-movements during market downturns. We develop a model for the stock price process that allows for increased and asymmetric dependence between extreme return realizations. We isolate the portfolio hedging demands that arise due to extreme co-movements and find a substantial shift of the portfolio holdings toward the risk-free asset. We demonstrate that accounting for dependence between extreme events in portfolio decisions leads to significant economic gains that stem primarily from intertemporal hedging motives. These findings are robust along alternative modeling assumptions of extreme co-movements and conditional correlation.

We study a dynamic general equilibrium model in which firms choose their investment level and capital structure, trading off the tax advantages of debt against the risk of costly default. Bankruptcy costs are endogenous, as bankrupt firms are forced to liquidate their assets, resulting in a fire sale if the market is illiquid. When the corporate income tax rate is positive, firms have a unique optimal capital structure. In equilibrium, firms default with positive probability and their assets are liquidated at fire-sale prices. The equilibrium features underinvestment and is constrained inefficient. In particular there is too little debt and default.

We use the relative pricing of pairs of emerging market (EM) sovereign bonds issued in both dollars and euros to study capital markets frictions during periods of financial distress. During the 2007–2008 crisis, we find the emergence of large pricing anomalies in EM sovereign bond markets. Neither liquidity nor short-selling constraints can explain these persistent events. We use both cross-sectional and time-series information on these pricing anomalies to learn about specific geographical frictions in funding markets. We find support for explanations based on the interaction of banking capital-structure frictions and the fragility of wholesale funding markets. We document the effects of nonconventional policy interventions on this mispricing.

We develop a strategic trading model in which an insider exploits noise traders' overreaction. A feedback effect arises from the insider's trading on fundamental information (the expected growth rate of dividends) and nonfundamental information (insider's inventory or noise supply). We find that the stock price is not fully revealing; a faster mean-reverting noise supply leads to a more volatile price; the price impact can increase with insider's risk-aversion; and a risk-averse insider can trade more aggressively on fundamental information than a risk-neutral one does. Insider's current trade and his previous inventory exhibit simultaneously positive forecasting powers for future stock returns.

Neoclassical finance assumes that investors are Bayesian. In many realistic situations, Bayesian learning is challenging. Here, we consider investment opportunities that change randomly, while payoffs are observable only when invested. In a stylized version of the task, we wondered whether performance would be affected if one were to follow reinforcement learning principles instead. The answer is a definite yes. When asked to perform our task, participants overwhelmingly learned in a Bayesian way. They stopped being Bayesians, though, when not nudged into paying attention to contingency shifts. This raises an issue for financial markets: who has the incentive to nudge investors?

This paper studies how investors' differences of opinion affect liquidity and asset prices. In our economy, excessively optimistic investors are subject to an endogenous funding constraint that prevents default due to ex-ante-limited commitment. When the funding constraint binds, optimists use their savings to increase their consumption share, deterring default. This allows them to place speculative trades, increasing market liquidity. Their losses on these trades make them prone to default, leading to a renewed binding of the funding constraint. This feedback between funding illiquidity, disagreement, and market liquidity is consistent with several empirical features of liquidity and financial asset prices.

This paper derives the value and the risk of aggregate human capital in a dynamic equilibrium production model with Duffie-Epstein preferences. In this setting the expected return of a risky asset is a function of the asset's covariance with consumption growth and a weighted average of the asset's covariance with aggregate wage growth and aggregate financial returns. A calibration of the model matching the historical ratio of wages to consumption in the United States (85% between 1950 and 2007) suggests that the weight of human capital in aggregate wealth is 87%. The results of the calibration follow from the relative size of wages and dividends in the economy and the dynamics of the ratio of wages to consumption, which are counter-cyclical. As a result, human capital is less risky than equity, implying that the risk premium of human capital is lower than that of equity.

We derive conditions under which limits on executive compensation can enhance efficiency and benefit shareholders (but not executives). Having its hands tied in the future allows a board of directors to credibly enter into relational contracts with executives that are more efficient than performance-contingent contracts. This has implications for the ideal composition of the board. The analysis also offers insights into the political economy of executive-compensation reform.

Corporate managers frequently announce corporate distributions, including stock splits, stock dividends, special dividends, and increases in regular dividends, on the anniversary of a like announcement at the same firm. The market appears to not fully appreciate the implications of current distributions for future distributions and stock returns, as a simple strategy that involves purchasing firms with high predicted probabilities of distribution announcements earns significant abnormal monthly returns. These results are distinct from previously documented return regularities related to regular earnings and dividend announcements and return seasonality.

We develop an optimal tax-timing model that takes into account asymmetric long-term and short-term tax rates for positive capital gains and limited tax deductibility of capital losses. In contrast to the existing literature, this model can help explain why many investors not only defer short-term capital losses to long term but also defer large long-term capital gains and losses. Because the benefit of tax deductibility of capital losses increases with the short-term tax rates, effective tax rates can decrease as short-term capital gains tax rates increase.