This paper examines the optimal consumption and portfolio-choice problem of long-horizon investors who have access to a riskless asset with constant return and a risky asset (“stocks”) with constant expected return and time-varying precision—the reciprocal of volatility. Markets are incomplete, and investors have recursive preferences defined over intermediate consumption. The paper obtains a solution to this problem which is exact for investors with unit elasticity of intertemporal substitution of consumption and approximate otherwise. The optimal portfolio demand for stocks includes an intertemporal hedging component that is negative when investors have coefficients of relative risk aversion larger than one, and the instantaneous correlation between volatility and stock returns is negative, as typically estimated from stock return data. Our estimates of the joint process for stock returns and precision (or volatility) using U.S. data confirm this finding. But we also find that stock return volatility does not appear to be variable and persistent enough to generate large intertemporal hedging demands.

Responding to a September 2002 regulatory enforcement, the Island electronic communications network stopped displaying its limit order book in the three most active exchange-traded funds (ETFs) where it was the dominant venue. Island's share of trading activity and price discovery fell, fragmenting the market. ETF prices adjust more slowly when Island goes dark, and there is substantial price discovery movement from ETFs to the futures market. Trading costs increase on Island and decrease off Island, with higher trading costs overall. When Island later redisplays its orders, market quality improves, with transparency and the reduction in fragmentation both playing important roles.

This paper examines the optimal consumption and portfolio-choice problem of long-horizon investors who have access to a riskless asset with constant return and a risky asset ("stocks") with constant expected return and time-varying precision–the reciprocal of volatility. Markets are incomplete, and investors have recursive preferences defined over intermediate consumption. The paper obtains a solution to this problem which is exact for investors with unit elasticity of intertemporal substitution of consumption and approximate otherwise. The optimal portfolio demand for stocks includes an intertemporal hedging component that is negative when investors have coefficients of relative risk aversion larger than one, and the instantaneous correlation between volatility and stock returns is negative, as typically estimated from stock return data. Our estimates of the joint process for stock returns and precision (or volatility) using U.S. data confirm this finding. But we also find that stock return volatility does not appear to be variable and persistent enough to generate large intertemporal hedging demands.

We examine the importance of industry to firm-level financial and real decisions. We find that in addition to standard industry fixed effects, financial structure also depends on a firm's position within its industry. In competitive industries, a firm's financial leverage depends on its natural hedge (its proximity to the median industry capital-labor ratio), the actions of other firms in the industry, and its status as entrant, incumbent, or exiting firm. Financial leverage is higher and less dispersed in concentrated industries, where strategic debt interactions are also stronger, but a firm's natural hedge is not significant. Our results show that financial structure, technology, and risk are jointly determined within industries. These findings are consistent with recent industry equilibrium models of financial structure.

We investigate the use of a warrant‐pricing approach to incorporate employee stock options (ESOs) into equity valuation and to account for the dilutive effect of ESOs in the valuation of option grants for financial reporting purposes. Our valuation approach accounts for the jointly determined nature of ESO and shareholder values. The empirical results show that our stock price estimate exhibits lower prediction errors and higher explanatory powers for actual share price than does the traditional stock price estimate. We use our valuation approach to assess the implications of dilution on the fair‐value estimates of ESO grants. We find that the fair value is overstated by 6% if we ignore the dilutive feature of ESOs. Furthermore, this bias is larger for firms that are heavy users of ESOs, small, and R&D intensive, and for firms that have a broad‐based ESO compensation plan.

Corporations use a variety of processes to allocate capital. This article studies the benefits and costs of several common budget procedures from the perspective of a model with agency and information problems. Processes that delegate aspects of the decision to the agent result in too many projects being approved, while processes in which the principal retains the right to reject projects cause the agent to strategically distort his information about project quality. We show how the choice of a decision process depends on these two costs, and specifically on severity of the agency problem, quality of information, and project risk.

This article uses unique data from the London Stock Exchange to examine how trader anonymity and market liquidity affect dealers' decisions about where to place interdealer trades. During our sample period, dealers could trade with each other in the direct, nonanonymous public market or use one of four anonymous brokered trading systems. Surprisingly, we find that adverse selection is less prevalent in the anonymous brokered markets. We show that this pattern can be explained by the way dealers "price" the adverse selection risk inherent in trading with other dealers. We also relate our findings to recent changes in dealer markets.