Knowledge that Transforms

Firms increasingly borrow via sustainability-linked loans (SLLs), contractually tying spreads to their ESG performance. SLLs vary widely in transparency of disclosure regarding sustainability-related contract details and tend to be issued to borrowers with superior ESG profiles. While high-transparency SLL borrowers maintain this performance, low-transparency SLL borrowers exhibit significantly deteriorating ESG performance after issuance. Both high- and low-transparency borrowers pay substantial fees to obtain SLLs. The results are consistent with high-transparency borrowers using SLLs to “certify” their preexisting ESG commitments, but low-transparency borrowers “greenwashing” with empty SLL labels. Evidence on drawdowns, renegotiations, and stock market reactions further supports these interpretations.

We extract information about future economic conditions from firms’ cross-border merger and acquisition announcements, and show it predicts changes in relative economic growth rates and foreign exchange rate returns. We find the predictability is driven by the acquisition decisions of domestic firms, which signal turning points in local economic growth. The findings are motivated by a simple model of exchange rate determination with heterogeneous expectations and support the theorized relationship between foreign exchange rates and macroeconomic fundamentals. The results provide new tools for policy makers seeking to predict economic activity and offer global investors a novel source of portfolio diversification.

Liquidity provision is often attributed to debt-issuing intermediaries like banks. We develop a unified theoretical framework and empirically show that mutual funds issuing demandable equity also provide an economically significant amount of liquidity by insuring against idiosyncratic liquidity shocks. Quantitatively, bond funds provide 12.5% of the liquidity that banks provide per dollar. Our model further shows that when equity values incorporate the liquidation cost from redemptions, as in swing pricing, liquidity provision is not necessarily reduced. This is because swing pricing may increase funds’ capacity for holding illiquid assets without inducing panic runs.

We study the valuation of state-issued tax-exempt municipal bonds and find that there are significant convenience premia in their prices. These premia parallel those identified in Treasury markets. We find evidence that these premia are tax related. Specifically, the premia are related to measures of tax and fiscal uncertainty, forecast flows into state municipal bond funds, and are directly linked to outmigration from high-tax to low-tax states and to other measures of tax aversion such as IRA and retirement plan contributions. These results suggest that investors are willing to pay a substantial premium to avoid taxes.

Our paper examines analyst reports and online stock opinion articles which recommend buying stocks that, based on the literature, trade at high prices and earn low future returns (“short-leg securities”). Using a textual analysis, we test whether the justifications primarily (1) emphasize safe-haven qualities, (2) indicate exuberance, or (3) highlight lottery-like features. Our results strongly point to (3). We subsequently validate our text-based inferences through a survey of institutional and retail investors with long positions in short-leg securities. Overall, perceived upside potential appears to play a material role in driving investor demand for stocks in the short legs of anomalies.

I find that foreign multinational firms engage in tax-motivated income shifting out of the United States. The analysis uses novel data on foreign-owned U.S. subsidiaries as well as variation in foreign countries’ tax rates and controlled foreign corporation rules. Foreign multinational firms primarily rely on tax-motivated transfer pricing to shift income out of the United States, and the aggregate amount of shifted income is modest. When foreign tax policy changes inhibit income shifting, foreign-owned U.S. subsidiaries’ investment and employment fall. The results indicate that the U.S. economy has limited exposure to tax policies set abroad through foreign direct investment in the United States.

We propose a new asset pricing model that generalizes the mean-variance framework by including probability weighting, specifically the overweighting of rare, high-impact events. Our model—the $ Π $-CAPM—generates several new predictions: (i) skewness has a positive price effect, amplified by volatility; (ii) the price effect of volatility is negative for left-skewed assets but positive for right-skewed assets; and (iii) option-implied variance premiums for stocks have a U-shaped relation to skewness, amplified by volatility. We find strong empirical support for these predictions. Finally, we show that the $ Π $-CAPM predicts an exaggerated co-movement of assets and can explain the correlation premium.

This paper provides evidence that the U.S. dollar affects trade through a financial channel of the exchange rate. Using global data over three decades, we show that dollar appreciation increases import prices and decreases import quantities for non-U.S. dollar countries. In line with a financial channel, these effects are stronger when the exporting country borrows more in U.S. dollars abroad. The financial channel was active before the global financial crisis, has strengthened since, and operates independently of the dominant currency invoicing channel. Instrumenting the dollar is key to uncovering the full effect of the financial channel.

We study how passive investing affects asset prices. Flows into passive funds disproportionately raise the stock prices of the economy’s largest firms, especially those large firms in high demand by noise traders. Because of this effect, the aggregate market can rise even when flows are entirely due to investors switching from active to passive funds. Intuitively, passive flows increase the idiosyncratic risk of large firms in high demand, which discourages investors from correcting the flows’ effects on prices. Consistent with our theory, prices and idiosyncratic volatilities of the largest S&P500 firms rise the most following flows into that index.