[This article provides a theory of foreign equity investment restrictions. We consider a model where the demand function for domestic shares differs between domestic and foreign investors because of deadweight costs in holding domestic and foreign securities that depend on the country of residence of investors. We show that domestic entrepreneurs maximize firm value by discriminating between domestic and foreign investors. The model implies that countries benefiting from capital flight have binding ownership restrictions such that foreign investors pay a higher price for shares than domestic investors. The empirical implications of this theory are supported by evidence from Switzerland.]

[The existing literature measures the contribution of analyst recommendation changes using average stock-price reactions. With such an approach, recommendation changes can have a significant impact even if no recommendation has a visible stock-price impact. Instead, we call a recommendation change influential only if it affects the stock price of the affected firm visibly. We show that only 12% of recommendation changes are influential. Recommendation changes are more likely to be influential if they are from leader, star, previously influential analysts, issued away from consensus, accompanied by earnings forecasts, and issued on growth, small, high institutional ownership, or high forecast dispersion firms.]

This article systematically examines the importance of exchange rate movements and industry competition for stock returns. Common shocks to industries across countries are more important than competitive shocks due to changes in exchange rates. Weekly exchange rate shocks explain almost nothing of the relative performance of industries. Using returns measured over longer horizons, the importance of exchange rate shocks increases slightly and the importance of industry common shocks increases more substantially. Both industry and exchange rate shocks are more important for industries that produce internationally traded goods, but the importance of these shocks is economically small for these industries as well.

[This article studies the shareholder wealth effects associated with 875 new security issues in Japan from January 1, 1985, to May 31, 1991. The announcement of convertible debt issues has a significant positive abnormal return of 1.05 percent. There is an abnormal return of 0.45 percent at the announcement of equity issues that is offset by an abnormal return of 1.01 percent on the issue day. Abnormal returns are negatively related to firm size, so that large Japanese firms have abnormal returns less different from those of U.S. firms than small Japanese firms. Our evidence is consistent with the view that Japanese managers decide to issue shares based on different considerations than American managers.]

As barriers to international investment fall and technology improves, the cost advantages for a firm's securities to trade publicly in the country in which that firm is located and for that country to have a market for publicly traded securities distinct from the capital markets of other countries will progressively disappear. Securities laws remain an important determinant of whether and where securities are issued, how they are valued, who owns them, and where they trade. I show that there is a demand from entrepreneurs for mechanisms that allow them to commit to credible disclosure because disclosure helps reduce agency costs. Under some circumstances, mandatory disclosure through securities laws can help satisfy that demand, but only provided investors or the state can act on the information disclosed and the laws cannot be weakened ex post too much through lobbying by corporate insiders. With financial globalization, national disclosure laws can have wide‐ranging effects on a country's welfare, on firms and on investor portfolios, including the extent to which share holdings reveal a home bias. In equilibrium, if firms can choose the securities laws they are subject to when they go public, some firms will choose stronger securities laws than those of the country in which they are located and some firms will do the opposite.

The decomposition of real variables into a trend or growth, a cycli-cal, and a seasonal component has a long history in macroeconomics. The cyclical part is generally considered to be of special interest, because it is believed to dominate short-run fluctuations in real activity and to

This paper assesses the contributions of Michael C. Jensen to financial economics and to American business. His work on agency theory is the cornerstone of modern corporate finance. He influenced how American business operates by helping make the internal and external governance of firms more efficient. He changed how knowledge in financial economics is diffused both through the founding of the Journal of Financial Economics and of the Social Science Research Network. I question the claim made by some that he recanted his ideas in the 2000s.

From 1973 to 2014, the common stock of U.S. banks with loan growth in the top quartile of banks over a three-year period significantly underperformed the common stock of banks with loan growth in the bottom quartile over the next three years. After the period of high growth, these banks have a lower return on assets and increase their loan loss reserves. The poorer performance of fast-growing banks is not explained by merger activity. The evidence is consistent with banks, analysts, and investors being overoptimistic about the risk of loans extended during bank-level periods of high loan growth.