In this paper, we examine whether managers use information included in stock prices when making labor investment decisions. Specifically, we examine whether stock price informativeness affects labor investment efficiency. We find that a higher probability of informed trading (PIN) is associated with lower deviations of labor investment from the level justified by economic fundamentals, i.e., higher labor investment efficiency. This finding is robust to using alternative proxies for stock price informativeness and labor investment efficiency, when we control for earnings quality and mispricing, and when we address endogeneity issues. Furthermore, we report evidence suggesting that the positive impact of stock price on labor investment efficiency is more (less) pronounced in firms from highly unionized industries and firms facing higher financial constraints (firms from industries that rely more on skilled labor).

Mukesh Eswaran's Why Gender Matters in Economics presents a generally well-researched review of the literature on women and economics, and admirably attempts take a global perspective. Eswaran's analysis is compromised, however, by an unreflective use of perspectives and methods that themselves, when seen in a broader perspective, reflect gendered biases. With particular reference to Eswaran's discussions of gender differences in preferences, the preferential treatment of groups, and work/family issues, this essay outlines how these biases arise, and how economic analysis must change if it is to become more rigorous.

This article examines managers’ incentive to play it safe. We find that, after managers are insulated by the adoption of an antitakeover law, they take value-destroying actions that reduce their firms’ stock volatility and risk of distress. To illustrate one such action, we show that managers undertake diversifying acquisitions that target firms likely to reduce risk, have negative announcement returns, and are concentrated among firms with managers who gain the most from reducing risk. Our findings suggest that instruments typically used to motivate managers, such as greater financial leverage and larger ownership stakes, exacerbate risk-related agency challenges.

We study approximately 5.0 million stock picks submitted by individual users to the “CAPS” website run by the Motley Fool company (www.caps.fool.com). These picks prove to be surprisingly informative about future stock prices. Shorting stocks with a disproportionate number of negative picks and buying stocks with a disproportionate number of positive picks yields a return of over 12% per annum over the sample period. Negative picks mostly drive these results; they strongly predict future stock price declines. Returns to positive picks are statistically indistinguishable from the market. A Fama–French decomposition suggests that stock-picking rather than style factors largely produced these results.

We propose a framework for estimating time-varying systemic risk contributions that is applicable to a high-dimensional and interconnected financial system. Tail risk dependencies and systemic risk contributions are estimated using a penalized two-stage fixed-effects quantile approach, which explicitly links time-varying interconnectedness to systemic risk contributions. For the purposes of surveillance and regulation of financial systems, network dependencies in extreme risks are more relevant than simple (mean) correlations. Thus, the framework provides a tool for supervisors, reflecting the market's view of tail dependences and systemic risk contributions. The model is applied to a system of 51 large European banks and 17 sovereigns during the period from 2006 through 2013, utilizing both equity and CDS prices. We provide new evidence on how banking sector fragmentation and sovereign-bank linkages evolved over the European sovereign debt crisis, and how they are reflected in estimated network statistics and systemic risk measures. Finally, our evidence provides an indication that the fragmentation of the European financial system has peaked.

We present a real options model of a firm’s make-or-buy decision under demand uncertainty. “Making” is subject to decreasing returns to scale, fixed costs, and capital investment. “Buying” happens at a fixed price and requires no investment. Three distinct procurement regimes endogenously arise: buying, making, or concurrent sourcing for, respectively, low, intermediate, and high demand. Capital constraints encourage buying or concurrent sourcing. Operating leverage peaks when the firm switches between buying and making, and it is lowest (and negative) at the switch between making and concurrent sourcing. This non-monotonic pattern mirrors and drives the behavior of the firm’s beta.

We explore the effect of financial development on corporate capital structure and the tightness of financial constraints that firms face. We employ an econometric technique that allows us to explicitly test for convergence in capital structure. This technique increases the power of our statistical tests. In doing so, we identify a group of convergent firms. The driving force of convergence is financial development, which positively affects the firms' leverage ratio. We also identify a group of firms, whose leverage is not affected by financial development, because they are financially constrained.

We use an arbitrage-free term structure model with spanned stochastic volatility to determine the value of the deflation protection option embedded in Treasury inflation-protected securities. The model accurately prices the deflation protection option prior to the financial crisis when its value was near zero; at the peak of the crisis in late 2008 when deflationary concerns spiked sharply; and in the post-crisis period. During 2009, the average value of this option at the 5-year maturity was 41 basis points on a par-yield basis. The option value is shown to be closely linked to overall market uncertainty as measured by the VIX, especially during and after the 2008 financial crisis.

We examine the effect of institutional ownership on corporate disclosure policy using a regression discontinuity design. Using a novel dataset comprising every 8-K filing between 1996 and 2006, we find that positive shocks to institutional ownership around Russell index reconstitutions increase the quantity, form, and quality of disclosure. Compared with those at the bottom of the Russell 1000 index, firms at the top of the Russell 2000 index increase institutional ownership by 9.8%, and disclose 4.7% longer 8-K filings with 21.3% more embedded graphics. This incremental disclosure significantly increases the information content of 8-K filings for the market and for analysts.