I study asset price amplification in an asymmetric information model. Entrepreneurs issue debt to finance investments in a physical asset. They have private information about their success probabilities. For a given debt level, higher asset prices require entrepreneurs to invest more of their own funds. This makes bad entrepreneurs more reluctant to mimic good ones; as a result, good entrepreneurs increase their equilibrium leverage and invest more, and this amplifies the initial asset price increase. This model generates predictions about the credit market that are qualitatively consistent with existing evidence. Received April 24, 2015; editorial decision June 15, 2016 by Editor Itay Goldstein.

We document strong weekly lead-lag return predictability across stocks from different industries with no customer-supplier linkages (economically unrelated stocks). Between 1980 and 2010, the industry-neutral long-short hedge portfolio earns an average of over 19 basis points per week. This predictability is related to common institutional ownership and is distinct from previously documented lead-lag effects. Common institutional ownership is a complementary rather than a substitute explanation for return predictability. Information linkages are enough to induce return predictability among stocks in the same industry, but economically unrelated stocks exhibit return predictability only when they have common institutional owners. Our findings suggest that institutional portfolio reallocations can induce return predictability among otherwise unrelated stocks.

Accountants making judgments with respect to a particular set of standards are increasingly aware of standards from other reporting regimes that offer additional or conflicting guidance. In fact, IFRS encourages reliance on out‐of‐regime standards when IFRS lacks guidance. This paper reports the results of two experiments which provide evidence that auditors in such circumstances are vulnerable to contrast effects , whereby reporting judgments under IFRS are systematically influenced away from the accounting treatment supported by standards from another regime (U.S. GAAP ). Contrast effects are observed (i) when out‐of‐regime standards are considered before making a reporting judgment under IFRS , and (ii) when out‐of‐regime standards are applied as local GAAP for a subsidiary of a foreign parent that reports under IFRS . We also find that contrast effects are reduced when auditors believe IFRS lacks guidance. These results have implications for financial statement preparers and auditors in the current incomplete‐convergence environment.

Measuring consumer responsiveness to medical care prices is a central issue in health economics and a key ingredient in the optimal design and regulation of health insurance markets. We leverage a natural experiment at a large self-insured firm that required all of its employees to switch from an insurance plan that provided free health care to a nonlinear, high-deductible plan. The switch caused a spending reduction between 11.8% and 13.8% of total firm-wide health spending. We decompose this spending reduction into the components of (i) consumer price shopping, (ii) quantity reductions, and (iii) quantity substitutions and find that spending reductions are entirely due to outright reductions in quantity. We find no evidence of consumers learning to price shop after two years in high-deductible coverage. Consumers reduce quantities across the spectrum of health care services, including potentially valuable care (e.g., preventive services) and potentially wasteful care (e.g., imaging services). To better understand these changes, we study how consumers respond to the complex structure of the high-deductible contract. Consumers respond heavily to spot prices at the time of care, reducing their spending by 42% when under the deductible, conditional on their true expected end-of-year price and their prior year end-of-year marginal price. There is no evidence of learning to respond to the true shadow price in the second year post-switch.

In spite of mounting losses banks continued to pay dividends during the crisis. We present a model that addresses this behavior. By paying out dividends, a bank transfers value to its shareholders away from creditors, among whom are other banks. This way, one bank's dividend payout policy affects the equity value and risk of default of other banks. When such negative externalities are strong and bank franchise values are not too low, the private equilibrium can feature excess dividends relative to a coordinated policy that maximizes the combined equity value of banks.