Knowledge that Transforms

We investigate the socially optimal design of financial networks, that allows to tackle the trade-off between risk sharing and contagion. We identify conditions on the shock distribution under which full integration or maximal segmentation is optimal. We also show that, under different conditions, the optimal network displays different levels of strength of linkages to other firms or intermediate degrees of segmentation. In the latter case, the individual and social incentives to establish linkages are not necessarily aligned. When firms face heterogeneous distributions of risks, they should optimally form linkages only with firms facing risks of the same kind. Received November 8, 2014; editorial decision April 28, 2017 by Editor Itay Goldstein.

We study how relationship lending determines the financing of innovation. Exploiting a negative shock to relationships, we show that it reduces the number of innovative firms, especially those that depend more on relationship lending such as small, opaque firms. This credit supply shock leads to reallocation of inventors whereby young and productive inventors leave small firms and move out of geographical areas where lending relationships are hurt. Overall, our results show that credit markets affect both the level of innovation activity and the distribution of innovative human capital across the economy.Received April 11, 2013; editorial decision May 25, 2016 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.

We construct a “universe” of over 18,000 fundamental signals from financial statements and use a bootstrap approach to evaluate the impact of data mining on fundamental-based anomalies. We find that many fundamental signals are significant predictors of cross-sectional stock returns even after accounting for data mining. This predictive ability is more pronounced following high-sentiment periods and among stocks with greater limits to arbitrage. Our evidence suggests that fundamental-based anomalies, including those newly discovered in this study, cannot be attributed to random chance, and they are better explained by mispricing. Our approach is general and we also apply it to past return–based anomalies. Received October 22, 2015; editorial decision October 27, 2016 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.

We use novel monthly survey data from 1993 to 2012 on small business managerial perceptions of financial constraints and other conditions, matched with information on banks in their local markets. The data suggest that small banks have comparative advantages in alleviating these constraints. These advantages tend to be greater during adverse economic conditions and do not appear to decrease or increase secularly. Small banks also appear to have comparative advantages in providing liquidity insurance to small business customers of large banks experiencing liquidity shocks during financial crises. Our findings suggest a source of social costs from ongoing consolidation of the banking industry. Received December 28, 2015; editorial decision January 13, 2017 by Editor Philip Strahan.

Financial regulators and investors have expressed concerns about high pay inequality within firms. Using a proprietary data set of public and private firms, this paper shows that firms with higher pay inequality—relative wage differentials between top- and bottom-level jobs—are larger and have higher valuations and stronger operating performance. Moreover, firms with higher pay inequality exhibit larger equity returns and greater earnings surprises, suggesting that pay inequality is not fully priced by the market. Our results support the notion that differences in pay inequality across firms are a reflection of differences in managerial talent. Received March 14, 2016; editorial decision January 21, 2017 by Editor Itay Goldstein.

The unique regulation of U.S. public pension funds links their liability discount rate to the expected return on assets, which gives them incentives to invest more in risky assets in order to report a better funding status. Comparing public and private pension funds in the United States, Canada, and Europe, we find that U.S. public pension funds act on their regulatory incentives. U.S. public pension funds with a higher level of underfunding per participant, as well as

Weather is a key source of income risk for many firms and households, particularly in emerging market economies. This paper studies how an innovative risk management instrument for hedging rainfall risk affects production decisions among a sample of Indian agricultural firms, using a randomized controlled trial approach. We find that the provision of insurance induces farmers to shift production towards higher-return but higher-risk cash crops, particularly amongst more-educated farmers. Our results support the view that financial innovation may help mitigate the real effects of uninsured production risk. In a second experiment we elicit willingness to pay for insurance policies that differ in their contract terms, using the Becker-DeGroot-Marshak mechanism. Willingness-to-pay is increasing in the actuarial value of the insurance, but substantially less than one-for-one, suggesting that farmers’ valuations are inconsistent with a fully rational benchmark.

Previous studies have identified a negative relation between firms’ hiring rates and future stock returns in the cross-section. We document that this relation is significantly steeper in industries that rely relatively more on high-skill workers than low-skill workers. A long-short portfolio sorted on firm-level hiring rate earns an average annual return of 8.6% in high-skill industries, and only 0.9% in low-skill industries. Moreover, this pattern is not explained by the standard CAPM. These findings are consistent with a neoclassical model with labor force heterogeneity and labor market frictions if it is more costly to replace high-skill than low-skill workers. Received August 14, 2015; editorial decision December 31, 2016 by Editor Leonid Kogan.

Firms differ in their dependence on skilled labor and face labor adjustment costs that increase with their workers’ skill level. We show that firms with a higher share of skilled workers, and thus less flexibility to adjust their labor demand in response to cash flow shocks, hold more precautionary cash. The effect of labor skills on cash holdings is more pronounced for financially constrained firms and varies with exogenous differences in firing and hiring costs. We address endogeneity concerns by using subsamples of firms with reasonably similar characteristics, propensity score matching, and a quasi-experimental shock to labor markets. Received March 21, 2014; editorial decision February 21, 2017 by Editor David Denis.

Markowitz (1952) portfolio selection requires an estimator of the covariance matrix of returns. To address this problem, we promote a nonlinear shrinkage estimator that is more flexible than previous linear shrinkage estimators and has just the right number of free parameters (i.e., the Goldilocks principle). This number is the same as the number of assets. Our nonlinear shrinkage estimator is asymptotically optimal for portfolio selection when the number of assets is of the same magnitude as the sample size. In backtests with historical stock return data, it performs better than previous proposals and, in particular, it dominates linear shrinkage. Received January 21, 2014; editorial decision January 25, 2017 by Editor Geert Bekaert.