Knowledge that Transforms

This paper develops a model of the optimal investment strategy for a firm confronted with a sequence of technological innovations. We incorporate many of the most important characteristics of real-world technology markets. For example, we permit innovations to be stochastic in their arrival times and their profitability. We also incorporate learning so that firms adopting current innovations become better able to benefit from future innovations. The model yields four distinct investment strategies. The model is then used to predict actual firm policy. These implications are discussed and compared with observed firm behavior.

This paper examines the value effects of improvements in the trading mechanism. Selected stocks on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange were transferred gradually from a daily call auction to a mechanism where the call auction was followed by iterated continuous trading sessions. This event was associated with a positive and permanent price appreciation. The cumulative average market-adjusted return over a period that started five days prior to the announcement and ended 30 days after the stocks started trading by the new method was approximately 5.5%. In addition, we find positive liquidity externalities (spillovers) across related stocks, and improvements in the value discovery process due to the improved trading method. Finally, there was a positive association between liquidity gains and price appreciation.

Shareholder activists and regulators are pressuring U.S. firms to separate the titles of CEO and Chairman of the Board. They argue that separating the titles will reduce agency costs in corporations and improve performance. The existing empirical evidence appears to support this view. We argue that this separation has potential costs, as well as potential benefits. In contrast to most of the previous empirical work, our evidence suggests that the costs of separation are larger than the benefits for most large firms.

This paper shows the simultaneous optimally of debt and equity contracts in a principal-agent model. The agent (an entrepreneur) has an investment project but does not have the necessary funds to finance it. There is moral hazard in the model, generated by the dependence of the project's expected return on the (unobservable) agent's effort. Key to the optimality of these financial instruments is the nonassignable rent produced by the project and captured by the entrepreneur when the investment is successful.

The behavior of a risk neutral corporation in selection of a line of credit is modeled in a new framework where demand for credit lines by a firm arises from the stochastic arrival in continuous time of short-lived opportunities to capture investment projects. The firm needs speed and secrecy to capture projects before competitors. The firm chooses a credit line that balances its up-front commitment cost against the expected extra cost of borrowing in the spot market upon exhaustion of its credit line. The firm's demanded credit line depends upon both relative pricing within the contract and the nature of the firm's growth opportunities. Interestingly, while credit line demand is positively related to business growth prospects, it is potentially negatively related to uncertainty in those prospects.

In this article we have reviewed “Modern Portfolio Analysis” and outlined some important topics for further research. Issues discussed include the history and future of portfolio theory, the key inputs necessary to perform portfolio optimization, specific problems in applying portfolio theory to financial institutions, and the methods for evaluating how well portfolios are managed. Emphasis is placed on both the history of major concepts and where further research is needed in each of these areas.

This paper addresses a little examined intersection between the problem loan literature and the bank efficiency literature. We employ Granger-causality techniques to test four hypotheses regarding the relationships among loan quality, cost efficiency, and bank capital. The data suggest that problem loans precede reductions in measured cost efficiency; that measured cost efficiency precedes reductions in problem loans; and the reductions in capital at thinly capitalized banks precede increases in problem loans. Hence, cost efficiency may be an important indicator of future problem loans and problem banks. Our results are ambiguous concerning whether or not researchers should control for problem loans in efficiency estimation.

This paper investigates the deterioration of the banking industry's risk-control system during the 1980s and the time-varying relation between a bank's ex-ante risk-taking incentives and its ex-post risk-taking behavior over the period 1977–1994. We document that banks with high charter value imposed self-discipline on risk-taking behavior at all times. In contrast, banks with low charter value assumed significantly more risk beginning around 1983, and this behavior continued into the early 1990s. These findings have several important policy implications.

Over the past several years, substantial research effort has gone into measuring the efficiency of financial institutions. Many studies have found that inefficiencies are quite large, on the order of 20% or more of total banking industry costs and about half of the industry's potential profits. There is no consensus on the sources of the differences in measured efficiency. this paper examines several possible sources, including differences in efficiency concept, measurement method, and a number of bank, market, and regulatory characteristics. We review the existing literature and provide new evidence using data on US banks over the period 1990–1995.

This study tests the hypothesis that common stock call options are exercised rationally and in accordance with the commonly used frictionless markets boundary conditions. Using two years of historical early exercise data for common stock call options, the results show that contrary to the frictionless markets boundary conditions, approximately 20 percent of the early call exercise occurs at times other than ex-dividend dates. While most of the non-dividend related early exercise may be explained by transactions costs, a significant number of contracts appear to be exercised irrationally. These results suggest that failure to incorporate market frictions in option pricing models is likely to lead to specification error.