This paper empirically examines how capital affects a bank’s performance (survival and market share) and how this effect varies across banking crises, market crises, and normal times that occurred in the US over the past quarter century. We have two main results. First, capital helps small banks to increase their probability of survival and market share at all times (during banking crises, market crises, and normal times). Second, capital enhances the performance of medium and large banks primarily during banking crises. Additional tests explore channels through which capital generates these effects. Numerous robustness checks and additional tests are performed.

This paper examines the characteristics of management forecasts available on Thomson First Call’s Company Issued Guidance (CIG) database relative to a sample of forecasts hand-collected through a search of company press releases. Due to the significantly lower cost of using CIG (relative to hand-collecting data), academics have increasingly relied on this database as a source of management forecasts. However, it is important for researchers to consider the properties of this database (such as coverage, accuracy, and breadth) when evaluating whether it is an appropriate data source for their study. Overall, our results suggest systematic differences between forecasts reported on CIG and forecasts gathered from company press releases. We suggest several sample criteria that will remove or mitigate these biases.

[Firm-specific information can affect expected returns if it affects investor uncertainty about risk-factor loadings. We show that a stock's expected return is decreasing in factor-loading uncertainty, controlling for the average level of its factor loading. When loadings are persistent, learning by investors can induce time-series variation in price-dividend ratios, expected returns, and idiosyncratic volatility, even when the aggregate risk-premium is constant and fundamental shocks are homoscedastic. Consistent with our predictions, we estimate that average annual returns of a firm with the median level of factor-loading uncertainty are 400 to 525 basis points lower than a comparable firm without factor-loading uncertainty.]

[We analyze auctions for the settlement of credit default swaps (CDS) theoretically and evaluate them empirically. The requirement to settle in cash with an option to settle physically leads to an unusual two-stage process. In the first stage, participants affect the amount of the bonds to be auctioned off in the second stage. Participants in the second stage may hold positions in derivatives on the assets being auctioned. We show that the final auction price might be either above or below the fair bond price because of strategic bidding on the part of participants holding CDS. Empirically, we observe both types of outcomes, with undervaluation occurring in most cases. We find that auctions undervalue bonds by an average of 6% on the auction day. Undervaluation is related positively to the amount of bonds exchanged in the second stage of the auction, as predicted by the theory. We suggest modifications of the settlement procedure to minimize the underpricing.]

ABSTRACT Overconfident managers overestimate future returns from their firms’ investments. Thus, we predict that overconfident managers will tend to delay loss recognition and generally use less conservative accounting. Furthermore, we test whether external monitoring helps to mitigate this effect. Using measures of both conditional and unconditional conservatism respectively, we find robust evidence of a negative relation between CEO overconfidence and accounting conservatism. We further find that external monitoring does not appear to mitigate this effect. Our findings add to the growing literature on overconfidence and complement the findings by Schrand and Zechman [2011] that overconfidence affects financial reporting behavior.

This paper measures the impact of vertically integrated and exclusive software on industry structure and welfare in the sixth-generation of the US video game industry (2000–2005). I specify and estimate a dynamic model of both consumer demand for hardware and software products, and software demand for hardware platforms. I use estimates to simulate market outcomes had platforms been unable to own or contract exclusively with software. Driven by increased software compatibility, hardware and software sales would have increased by 7 percent and 58 percent and consumer welfare by $1.5 billion. Gains would be realized only by the incumbent, suggesting exclusivity favored the entrant platforms. (JEL D12, L13, L22, L63, L86)

We examine the relation between inventory investment and the cost of capital in the time series and the cross section. We find consistent evidence that risk premiums, rather than real interest rates, are strongly negatively related to future inventory growth at the aggregate, industry, and firm levels. The effect is stronger for firms in industries that produce durables rather than nondurables, exhibit greater cyclicality in sales, require longer lead times, and are subject to more technological innovation. We then construct a production-based asset pricing model with two types of capital, fixed capital and inventories, to explain these empirical findings. Convex adjustment costs and a countercyclical price of risk lead to negative time series and cross-sectional relations between expected returns and inventory growth.