The default risk sensitivity of yield spreads on bank-issued subordinated notes and debentures (SNDs) decreased after banks started issuing trust-preferred securities (TPS). The too-big-to-fail (TBTF) discount on yield spreads is absent prior to the LTCM bailout, but the size discount doubles after the LTCM bailout. Prior to TPS issuance and the LTCM bailout, SND yield spreads are sensitive to conventional firm-specific default risk measures, but not after the bailout. We find paradigm shift in determinants of yield spreads after the LTCM bailout. Yield spreads on TPS are sensitive to default risks and can provide an additional source of market discipline.

This study provides empirical support for theoretical models that allow for time-varying rare disaster risk. Using a database of 447 international political crises during the period 1918–2006, we create a crisis index that shows substantial variation over time. Changes in this crisis index, our proxy for changes in perceived disaster probability, have a large impact on both the mean and volatility of world stock market returns. Crisis risk is positively correlated with the earnings–price ratio and the dividend yield. Cross-sectional tests also show that crisis risk is priced: Industries that are more crisis risk sensitive yield higher returns.

We offer an explanation for the forward premium puzzle in foreign exchange markets based upon investor overconfidence. In the model, overconfident individuals overreact to their information about future inflation, which causes greater overshooting in the forward rate than in the spot rate. Thus, when agents observe a signal of higher future inflation, the consequent rise in the forward premium predicts a subsequent downward correction of the spot rate. The model can explain the magnitude of the forward premium bias and several other stylized facts related to the joint behaviour of forward and spot exchange rates. Our approach is also consistent with the availability of profitable carry trade strategies.

Despite their ubiquity, observational studies to infer the causal effect of a so-called immutable characteristic, such as race or sex, have struggled for coherence, given the unavailability of a manipulation analogous to a “treatment” in a randomized experiment and the danger of posttreatment bias. We demonstrate that a shift in focus from actual traits to perceptions of them can address both of these issues while facilitating articulation of other critical concepts, particularly the timing of treatment assignment. We illustrate concepts by discussing the designs of various studies of the role of race in trial court death penalty decisions.

This paper examines how labor market fluctuations around the time of retirement affect the labor force status and Social Security receipt of individuals ages 55 to 69 and the income of retirees in their 70s, using data from the March Current Population Survey, Census, and American Community Surveys. We find that workers are more likely to leave the labor force, to collect Social Security earlier, and to have lower Social Security income when they face a recession near retirement. The impact is greatest for the less-educated, who are more susceptible to job loss and rely more heavily on Social Security.

We examine changes in equity mutual funds' investment advisory contracts. We find substantial advisory compensation rate changes in both directions, with typical percentage fee shifts exceeding one‐fourth. Rate increases are associated with superior past market‐adjusted performance, whereas rate decreases reflect economies of scale associated with growth, and are not associated with extreme poor performance. There are within‐family spillover effects. Superior (e.g., star) performance for individual funds is associated with rate increases for a family's other funds. Rate reductions post‐2004 by family funds involved in market timing scandals do not have large industry spillover effects.

This study examines the impact of country-level earnings quality on IPO underpricing. Examining 10,783 IPOs from 37 countries, we find that IPOs are underpriced less in countries where public firms produce higher quality earnings information. This finding persists after controlling for other deal- and country-specific factors that affect IPO underpricing, and it is driven neither by the large and relatively transparent markets in the U.S. and U.K. nor by the relatively opaque Japanese market. The impact of low earnings quality on underpricing is partially offset by the use of a top-tier underwriter.

This article develops a general equilibrium model of multiple-product, multiple-destination firms, which allows for heterogeneity in ability across firms and in product attributes within firms. Firms make endogenous entry and exit decisions and each surviving firm chooses optimally the range of products to supply to each market. We show that the resulting selection, across and within firms, provides a natural explanation for a number of features of trade across firms, products, and countries. Using both time-series changes in trade policy and cross-section variation in trade, we provide empirical evidence in support of the predictions of the model.

We study put option sales on company stock by large firms. An often‐cited motivation for these transactions is market timing, and managers' decision to issue puts should be sensitive to whether the stock is undervalued. We provide new evidence that large firms successfully time security sales. In the 100 days following put option issues, there is roughly a 5% abnormal stock return, with much of the abnormal return following the first earnings release date after the sale. Direct evidence on put option exercises reinforces these findings: exercise frequencies and payoffs to put holders are abnormally low.

We develop a non-linear Markov error correction approach to examine the general co-integration relation between the H- and A-prices of cross-listed Chinese stock issuers across the period January 1999 to March 2009. We unravel three important dimensions of this relation. These pertain to (i) the long-run expectation of the H- (to A-price) discount; (ii) the level of short-run co-movement in prices; and (iii) the magnitude of error corrections. Findings point to significant improvements in all three areas. Policy and corporate governance change appears to be the principal force driving the efficiency gains. Weakening informational asymmetries underlie much of the change in the markets’ relative pricing. In contrast, sentiment effects strongly underpin the contemporaneous response and error correction adjustments. Finally, the escalating Global Financial Crisis of 2008 appears to have not only bolstered the A- and H-markets’ short-term pricing dynamic but also temporarily increased the long-term H-share discount.