We identify a key role of factor supply, driven by demographic changes, in shaping several empirical regularities that are a focus of active research in macro and labor economics. In particular, demographic changes alone can account for the large movements of the return to experience over the last four decades, for the differential dynamics of the age premium across education groups emphasized by Katz and Murphy (1992), for the differential dynamics of the college premium across age groups emphasized by Card and Lemieux (2001), and for the changes in cross-sectional and cohort-based life-cycle profiles emphasized by Kambourov and Manovskii (2005).

Although several researchers have speculated that stock splits may affect the ownership structure of firms, there is very little empirical evidence available in this regard. We investigate a broad sample of stock splits by firms without confounding events, controlling for industry and size effects. Our results show that stock splits increase the numbers of both individual and institutional shareholders, and they do not affect the proportion of equity held by institutions. Further, changes in the numbers of individual and institutional shareholders are positively related to the split factor. Abnormal announcement returns are positively correlated with changes in the total number of shareholders. These findings support the signaling hypothesis.

This article investigates the long-term equity performance of Japanese firms issuing convertible debt and equity. We find that issuing firms perform poorly (except for equity rights issues) compared to nonissuing firms even though the stock-price reaction to convertible debt and equity issues is not negative for Japanese firms. This underperformance is strongest for firms issuing public convertible debt. In contrast to the United States, poor performance is not concentrated in smaller firms and in firms with a high market-to-book ratio. Simple behavioral explanations advanced for the new issue puzzle in the United States do not seem consistent with the Japanese experience.

Offshore dollar-denominated equity-linked issues were a more important source of funds for Japanese companies during the 1980s than domestic equity and straight debt issues combined. Using a sample of Japanese equity-linked offshore issues from 1977 to 1989, we find that the announcement of these issues is accompanied by a significant positive abnormal return. This contrasts with evidence that U.S. equity-linked issues have a significant negative stock price reaction. We provide an explanation for the difference in stock price reactions between U.S. and Japanese issues that is based on the greater influence on managers' security issue decisions of long-term investors and banks in Japan than in the U.S.