Knowledge that Transforms

This study uses intraday when-issued rate quotes to examine the rewards and risks of the Treasury coupon auctions for bidders who face different tradeoffs between the winner's curse and quantity risk. The data indicate that markups of auction average rates over bid when-issued rates at auction times average 3/8 basis point. I also find that when-issued rates react as strongly to bidding aggressiveness at auctions before the auction results are announced as theydo afterward, and that quantity risk is as important as the winner's curse.

This study provides the first large-sample analysis of the stock-market reactions to interfirm litigation. When a suit is filed, the common stock of the typical defendant declines by about 1%, while the plaintiff experiences no significant gains. For the average pair of firms, the combined drop in value upon filing is $21 million. Much of the loss is regained if the suit is settled. The findings suggest that bargaining among firm claimants sometimes leads to very inefficient outcomes. Part of the leakage is explained by the costs of increased financial distress imposed on the defendant.

This paper examines the timing of initial public offerings and private financings by venture capitalists. Using a sample of 350 privately held venture-backed biotechnology firms between 1978 and 1992, I show that these companies go public when equity valuations are high and employ private financings when values are lower. Seasoned venture capitalists appear to be particularly proficient at taking companies public near market peaks. The results are robust to a variety of controls and alternative explanations.

Suppose that a firm receives a cash windfall which does not change its investment opportunity set or, equivalently, its marginal Tobin's Q. What will this firm do with the money? We provide empirical answers to this question using a sample of eleven firms with such windfalls in the form of a won or settled lawsuit. We examine a variety of decisions of the firm to shed light on alternative theories of corporate financing and investment. Our evidence is broadly inconsistent with the perfect capital markets model. The results need to be stretched considerably to fit the asymmetric information model in which managers act in the interest of shareholders. The evidence supports the agency model of managerial behavior, in which managers try to ensure the long-run survival and independence of the firms with themselves at the helm.

This paper updates Kaplan (1989) by comparing Federated Department Stores' value before its purchase by Campeau Corporation to its post-bankruptcy value. The post-bankruptcy value includes all direct and indirect costs of bankruptcy and financial distress. Federated's assets increased in value by 3.1 billion in 1992 dollars(or 1.6 billion in 1987 dollars). This increase is only slightly below that in Kaplan (1989), suggesting that net bankruptcy costs were modest, and, possibly, nonexistent. The Federated purchase illustrates that a highly-leveraged transaction can increase value, but still be unable to meet its debt obligations; and bankruptcy (and financial distress) need not be costly.

This study investigates the information conveyed by intrafirm exchange offers. I find that leverage increases and leverage decreases convey qualitatively different information. Leverage-increasing offers appear to lower investors' assessment of risk of the firm's common stock, but do not appear to change their expectations of cash flows; leverage-decreasing offers appear to lower investors' expected cash flows, but do not appear to change their assessment of risk. The nature of changes in leverage, capital outlays, and dividends is also asymmetric. Further, I find that, for leverage-increasing offers, corporate control activity does not explain the information content or its asymmetry.

When trades are executed inside the posted bid-ask spread, the posted spread is no longer an accurate measure of transactions costs faced by investors. Using two samples of market orders, one based on orders submitted by retail brokers and one based on orders submitted electronically to the NYSE, we document a significant difference between the posted spread and the effective spread paid by investors. For most orders, the effective spread averages half the posted spread. In addition, when the posted spread widens, only 10 to 22% of the increase appears in the effective spread. These results have significant implications for any empirical work that uses the posted spread as a measure of the cost of trading. Our findings also document a significant difference in the expected execution price across exchanges. This finding is robust to controls for the type of order, and implies that U.S. equity markets are not completely integrated.

We investigate the financial recontracting of firms completing distressed exchanges and those reorganizing under Chapter 11. We find that recovery rates for creditors, on average, are higher in distressed exchanges than in Chapter 11 reorganizations, as are equity deviations from absolute priority. The difference in deviations potentially provides valuable information on the higher costs of formal reorganization. Also, cash is used more extensively to redeem creditors' claims in Chapter 11 than in distressed exchanges. The greater use of cash can be attributed to provisions of the Bankruptcy Code that permit conservation of cash and facilitate asset sales.

This paper examines the role of financial policy as a catalyst for organizational change. The subject is Sealed Air Corporation, a company with substantial free cash flow that undertakes a leveraged special dividend. While the stock price response to announcement is typical, Sealed Air exhibits dramatic, sustained, post-dividend performance improvement. Evidence indicates this performance results from managers' conscious and successful use of financial leverage as a tool to disrupt the status quo and promote internal change, including establishing a new objective, changing compensation systems, and reorganizing manufacturing and capital budgeting processes.

We study the effects of barriers to capital flows using data from the Stock Exchange of Thailand, which segments local and foreign trading of securities that have reached foreign ownership limits. Cross-sectional differences between local and foreign prices are correlated with proxies for the severity of foreign ownership limits, liquidity, and information availability. Time-series variability in the spread between local and foreign returns is consistent with differences in risk exposures and expected risk premiums, suggesting effective capital market segmentation. The results have numerous implications for portfolio and direct investment activity in developing countries.