I present a simple model of informed trading in which asset values are derived from imperfectly competitive product markets and private information events occur at individual firms. The model predicts that informed traders may have incentives to make information‐based trades in the stocks of competitors, especially when events occur at firms with large market shares. In the context of 759 earnings announcements, I use intraday transactions data to test the hypothesis that net order flow and returns in the stocks of nonannouncing competitors have information content for announcing firms.

Does the ability of suppliers of corporate debt capital to hedge risk through credit default swap (CDS) contracts impact firms' capital structures? We find that firms with traded CDS contracts on their debt are able to maintain higher leverage ratios and longer debt maturities. This is especially true during periods in which credit constraints become binding, as would be expected if the ability to hedge helps alleviate frictions on the supply side of credit markets. The Author 2013. 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.

We exploit threshold rules governing margin trading eligibility in India to identify a causal link between margin trading and increased comovement during crises. Margin trading explains more than one-quarter of the increase return comovement that we observe during crises. To understand the mechanisms driving this result, we evaluate the relative importance of stock connections through common brokers (who provide margin financing) versus common margin traders. We find that common brokers are most important. Margin-eligible stocks that are more connected through common brokers experience larger crisis-period increases in pairwise return comovement, especially when those brokers’ clients have experienced recent portfolio losses, when their clients have outstanding margin loans in more volatile stocks, and when the brokers are large. These findings are consistent with Brunnermeier and Pedersen (2009), in which initial shocks propagate due to the tightening of margin constraints imposed by financial intermediaries.

We present new data on female representation in the academic finance profession. In our sample of finance faculty at top‐100 U.S. business schools during 2009 to 2017, only 16.0% are women. The gender imbalance manifests in several ways. First, after controlling for research productivity, women hold positions at lower ranked institutions and are less likely to be full professors. Results also suggest that they are paid less. Second, women publish fewer papers. This gender gap exists in research quantity, not quality. Third, women have more female coauthors, suggesting smaller publication networks. Time‐series data suggest shrinking gender gaps in recent years.

IPO firms’ rivals tend to experience performance declines following an IPO in the industry. Why? We estimate a dynamic structural oligopoly model to distinguish between alternative theories that can explain an industry’s evolution post-IPO. We find that most changes in rivals’ performance are due to industry trends that also drive IPOs. However, we also find some “competitive” IPOs where the IPO enhances the IPO firm’s performance at the expense of competitors. These findings help reconcile prior evidence of average performance reductions of both IPO firms and their rivals with well-known cases in which firms have benefited from going public.

Non-financial corporations typically cite risk management as the primary reason for their derivatives use. If hedging programs are effective, then firms using derivatives should have lower credit risk than those that do not. Consistent with this idea, we find that CDS spreads are lower for firms with derivatives positions that are designated as accounting hedges (typically low basis risk) compared to firms without the accounting hedge designation as well as firms that do not use derivatives. Surprisingly, we find that firms with derivatives positions without a hedge accounting designation have higher CDS spreads than firms that do not hedge with derivatives at all. We do not find evidence that these non-designated positions are associated with future credit realizations, as captured by changes in either credit ratings or CDS spreads. We examine alternative explanations and find evidence that is consistent with a market penalty for high basis risk positions when overall market conditions are poor.

This article examines the potential impact of capital supply on security issuance. We focus on the role of convertible bond arbitrageurs as suppliers of capital to convertible bond issuers. We estimate a simultaneous equations model of demand and supply of convertible bond capital, linking the time series of aggregate convertible bond issuance to measures of capital supply: convertible bond arbitrage hedge fund flows, returns, and a proxy for arbitrageurs’ use of leverage. We find that issuance is positively and significantly related to increases in all three supply measures. To provide further interpretation, we use the September/October 2008 short-selling ban as a natural experiment to examine the impact of an exogenous shock to the supply of capital from arbitrageurs. Results from both empirical approaches provide evidence that the supply of capital from convertible bond arbitrageurs impacts issuance.