Knowledge that Transforms

In this study we examine the effect of boardroom social capital, defined as the aggregate benefits from the social networks of outside directors, on director compensation. Using a large panel of nine thousand firm-year observations for the period 2007–2013, we find that boardroom social capital is positively priced. Further analysis shows that firms pay a premium for networked directors. Firms that have suffered adverse events such as a bad merger, performance declines, or dividend cuts, pay a higher connection premium. We determine that well-connected directors perform important board roles and hold multiple directorships. Overall, our results are consistent with an efficient contracting explanation for boardroom pay.

Over the last decade many developing countries strengthened their transparency standards with the objective of improving asset market allocations and macroeconomic outcomes. This paper develops a general equilibrium model and argues that in a financially underdeveloped economy - with uninsurable consumption risk and stochastic-investment - enforcing financial transparency might be counterproductive. The framework builds upon a standard property that illiquid asset markets cause under-investment in assets that pay in the long-run, because individually rational agents hoard cash to exploit sales of underpriced long-term assets. First, I show that in this environment private revelation of news about investment-returns could give a chance to sell low-quality assets and then characterize the conditions under which the lack of financial transparency reduces under-investment and improves macroeconomic development. An empirical analysis reveals that the theoretical predictions of the model is in line with cross-country data.

This study empirically investigates the relationship between banking integration and liquidity management. To measure banks’ connectivity, we use the number of partnerships proxied via the syndicated loan arrangements in which they serve as lead arrangers. If banks establish more business partnerships through syndicated loan arrangements, those under market stress are more likely to face increased funding costs, create reduced liquidity, and originate declined small business loans and mortgages. Those banks with more partners are shown to have a lower liquidity coverage ratio, suggesting that business partnerships create a disincentive toward liquidity risk management.

In this paper, we empirically examine the spreads of syndicated and non-syndicated loans. We compare the spreads from tranches belonging to both types of contracts across deals of similar sizes. Our study of large corporate loans in the US market for the period from 1990 to 2013 shows that the differential between syndicated and non-syndicated spreads is, on average, 19.23 basis points. Moreover, for small and medium loans, the differences are 39.3 and 21.89 basis points, respectively. We use different methodologies and time periods and address endogeneity concerns on the decision of syndication to provide robust empirical evidence that, contrary to some previous studies, syndicated loans are not less expensive than non-syndicated loans and in most cases are significantly more expensive, particularly for small loans.

Using a sample of firms from 40 countries cross-listed in the U.S. during the 1982–2018 period, we find that the discrepancy between a firm's home industry valuation and its corresponding U.S. industry valuation—the relative industry valuation—is an important factor in the listing decision and valuation after listing. International firms whose home market industries are undervalued relative to the corresponding U.S. industries are more likely to cross-list. They also enjoy permanent valuation gains after listing. These firms issue more equity, invest more, and realize higher growth rates.

This paper investigates the impact of institutional shareholder investment horizons on a firm's use of bank debt. We find that short-term institutional ownership of the borrowing firm has a negative effect on bank debt financing. This finding provides evidence consistent with the monitoring avoidance incentives of short-term shareholders. In contrast, long-term institutional ownership has a positive impact on the firm's reliance on bank debt financing. These effects are attenuated by higher managerial ownership and more motivated investors and are exacerbated by higher information opacity. Our results are robust to potential endogeneity concerns, the potential use of bonds, firm size effects, and alternative measures of investment horizon. Investigating the effects of investment horizons on other aspects of debt corroborates our main findings.

This study constructs finance journal rankings and classifications using the active scholar assessment (ASA) methodology with nested effects regression estimation. We observe some interesting changes over the past nine years and also compare the new ASA journal rankings with Scimago's SJR rankings, Thomson Reuters’ JCR rankings and ABS classifications. Responses from active finance scholars in a web survey are used to endogenously rank and classify a broad set of 102 finance journals by quality and importance. Regression estimation with nested random journal-within-tier effects enables journals in the four tier groups (A-D) to be separated into “upper”, “middle” and “lower” categories (e.g. A+, A and A-). In addition to citation-based ranking, ASA study results can provide useful information and guidance to authors and editors on active scholar perceptions of journal quality and importance, tenure & promotion committees in assessing research, and university libraries in managing their resources.

End-of-day stock price manipulation is generally associated with short-termism, long-term damage to equity values, and reduced incentives for employees to innovate. We use a sample of suspected stock price manipulation events based on intraday data for stocks from nine countries over eight years and find evidence of negative effects of market manipulation on innovation. We show that these negative effects are particularly harmful to innovation in markets with low intellectual property rights and high shareholder protection.

In a two-country general equilibrium setting, we study competition between governments with two policy tools: capital requirements and a bank tax. Since banks raise equity and deposits from domestic and foreign households, governments face cross-country externalities the sign of which depends on the extent of positive spillovers, i.e., revenues from taxing banks, and negative spillovers, i.e., deposit guarantee costs. We show that regulatory competition yields the efficient allocation when governments have at their disposal policy tools that enable them to optimally internalize domestic distortions. Our first finding is that this is the case when governments are not restricted by supranational regulation. Our second finding is that supranational regulation may or may not impede efficiency. This conclusion is the result of a detailed analysis where we consider conceivable supranational regulatory schemes, derive their welfare implications and identify those that cause inefficiencies.

We develop a heterogeneous-beliefs asset pricing model with microeconomic foundations that reproduces asset prices, cash flows and trading activity in a real asset economy. In contrast to the majority of financial markets’ behavioural models, and in line with the nature of the shipping industry, in this model agents extrapolate fundamentals. Formal estimation of the model indicates that an economy where a small fraction of agents significantly extrapolates fundamentals can explain the positive relation between earnings, vessel prices, and trading activity.