We consider a model of external financing in which entrepreneurs are privately informed about the quality of their projects and seek funds from competitive financiers. The literature restricts attention to monotonic, or “manipulation proof,” securities and finds that straight debt is the uniquely optimal contract. Monotonicity is commonly justified by the argument that it would endogenously arise if the entrepreneur can window dress the realized earnings before contract maturity. We explicitly characterize the optimal contracts when entrepreneurs engage in window dressing and/or output diversion and derive necessary and sufficient conditions for straight debt to be optimal. Contrary to conventional wisdom, debt is often suboptimal, and it is never uniquely optimal. Optimal contracts are nonmonotonic and induce profit manipulation in equilibrium. They can be implemented as performance-sensitive debt. Received: March 24, 2018; Editorial decision September 22, 2018 Editor: Uday Rajan

From 2007 to 2016, S&P 500 firms distributed $7 trillion via buybacks and dividends, over 96% of their aggregate net income, prompting claims that “short-termism” is impairing firms’ ability to invest and innovate. We show that, accounting for both direct and indirect equity issuances, net shareholder payouts by all public firms during this period totaled only 41% of net income. And, during this decade, investment substantially increased while cash balances ballooned. In short, S&P 500 shareholder-payout figures cannot provide much basis for the notion that short-termism has been depriving public firms of needed capital. Received September 23, 2018; Editorial decision November 13, 2018; Editor Andrew Ellul

This paper studies liability management exercises (LME) by banks, which have comparable regulatory capital effects than contingent capital triggers. LMEs are concentrated on low capitalization situations, both in the cross-section and in the time series and are frequently associated with equity issuances. These exercises prove effective at improving bank capitalization levels. The market reaction to LMEs is positive and mostly accrues to debt holders. These findings strengthen the case for innovative liabilities securities as a tool to improve bank resilience. Received February 8, 2019; editorial decision May 16, 2019 by Editor Andrew Ellul

We examine how performance changes at airlines in response to a change in executive incentives. Airlines with executive bonuses contingent on on-time arrival do improve on-time performance. We find evidence of strategic gaming of the incentive as some carriers increase scheduled flight times, making it easier for flights to arrive on time. This effect is more pronounced for competitive routes. Carriers also do not decrease the frequency of flights or the number of passengers to make it easier to be on time, but they do slightly decrease fares. Competitors on the same routes also improve their on-time performance, even when their executive bonuses are not contingent on on-time performance, consistent with competition in strategic complements. (JEL G30, G34, G32) Received February 5, 2018; editorial decision April 3, 2019 by Editor Andrew Ellul.

Among U.S. public firms, technological innovation is concentrated on a small set of large players, with innovation “leaders” having considerably lower systematic risk than “laggards.” To understand this fact, we build a winner-takes-all patent race model and show that a firm’s expected return decreases in its innovation output and increases in that of its rivals. Using a comprehensive firm-level panel of information on patenting activity by fields of technology in 1950–2010, we find strong support for the model’s predictions. Our results highlight that strategic interactions among firms competing in innovation are an important determinant of risk and expected returns. (JEL G12, G31) Received August 6, 2018; editorial decision October 19, 2019 by Andrew Ellul.

We consider a dynamic model of investment in which a firm can hold inventory to mitigate the price risk of an input commodity. Our model predicts that inventory hedges against net worth risk by smoothing investment in capital, regardless of the level of current net worth. Savings enhance the operational hedge offered by inventory, because they better conserve net worth when the commodity price is low. These predictions are confirmed in a sample of U.S. manufacturing corporations. We find that the empirical sensitivity of inventory investment to price changes is positive for any level of firms’ net worth. Savings and inventory are both positively related to financing constraints and cash-flow risk, but investment is more sensitive to inventory. Received November 13, 2017, Editorial decision September 25, 2018 by Editor Uday Rajan.

In a panel across twenty-eight countries over 10 years, we show that family firms on average enjoy performance advantages over nonfamily firms only when labor markets are less regulated. We confirm this result in a matched firm sample using a survey-based instrument as a family control. Furthermore, family firms exhibit lower variation in employment levels in less-regulated labor markets, supporting the notion that labor relations drive family firms’ performance advantages. Our results are consistent with the notion that both family ownership and labor market reforms provide employment protection and thus partly substitute as governance mechanisms. Received December 17, 2018; editorial decision April 3, 2019 by Editor Andrew Ellul.

Unlike broad-based equity ownership by employees, ownership of company debt by rank-and-file employees has not received much attention. We argue that company debt held by employees in the form of in-company deposits can monitor risk-taking and facilitate risk discovery. Employee deposits have been historically widely used in Japan. For a sample of 2,104 Japanese firms, using an identification strategy that utilizes a new law in 2003 that changed the priority of employee deposits in bankruptcy and led to large-scale withdrawals of employee deposits, we find that employee deposits mitigate firms’ risk-taking behavior and reduce the agency cost of debt. Received November 2, 2018; editorial decision May 1, 2019 by Editor Andrew Ellul.

I use the introduction of deposit insurance in eight U.S. states in the early twentieth-century to study the effects of deposit insurance on the banking system. Using a triple difference approach exploiting regulatory differences between national and state banks and between states, I find that insured banks experienced higher deposit growth and decreased funding costs. I also observe a replacement of demand deposits by riskier time deposits. However, I find no aggregate effects on failure rates or risk-taking. Using hand-collected micro-level data, I show that small and large banks reacted differently and that banks facing funding problems especially benefited. Received July 20, 2017; editorial decision November 12, 2018 by Editor Efraim Benmelech.

Information, which can arrive in multiple forms, is a fundamental component of all financial transactions and markets. We define hard and soft information and describe the relative advantages of each. Hard information is quantitative, is easy to store, and can be transmitted in impersonal ways. Its information content is independent of its collection. As technology changes, the way we collect, process, and communicate information, it changes the structure of markets, the design of financial intermediaries, and the incentives to use or misuse information. We survey the literature to understand how information type influences the continued evolution of financial markets and institutions. Received October 25, 2016; editorial decision September 6, 2018 by Editor Efraim Benmelech.