We document a new empirical phenomenon in which the aggregate positions of money managers, who are sophisticated speculators in the commodity futures market, as disclosed by the Disaggregated Commitments of Traders reports, can predict the cross section of commodity producers’ stock returns in the subsequent week. We employ a number of cross-sectional methods, including calendar-time regression analysis, single-sort, double-sort, and Fama–MacBeth regressions, to confirm the predictability results. The results are more pronounced in firms with higher information asymmetry. We thus add more empirical evidence to the literature on costly information processing, which leads to gradual information diffusion across asset markets.

We study the impact of gender diversity in corporate boards on firm value by exploiting a natural experiment setting in India where the government mandated firms to appoint at least one female director on their boards. We find a significantly positive market reaction when firms comply with the mandate but only when they appoint qualified female directors who are not related to promoters. Moreover, market reward is higher for firms headquartered in states with severe gender bias. We show how regulatory intervention mitigates frictions related to gender bias to improve firm value through greater gender diversity when firms respond appropriately.

We exploit a unique experiment, where the intraday price moves of Indian IPO listings are restricted within a narrow band, to examine the consequences of price bands for stock prices, investor trading behavior, and stock market liquidity. Based on difference-in-differences estimations, we find that price bands lead to a significant reduction in the price variability of IPO stocks. The decrease in variability is accompanied by increases in post-IPO selling by individual investors, the price impact of trades, and IPO expected returns. Bid-ask spreads remain similar. The findings provide new evidence on the effects of intraday price bands on equity markets.

This paper shows that there is more scope for a borrower to engage in a sustainable infinite debt rollover (a “Ponzi scheme”) when interest/growth rates are stochastic. In this context, I prove that the relevant “r vs. g” comparison uses the yield r long to an infinite‐maturity zero‐coupon bond. I show that r long is lower than the risk‐neutral expectation of the short‐term yield when it is variable, and that r long is close to the minimal realization of the short‐term yield when it is highly persistent. The paper applies these results to illustrative heterogeneous agent dynamic stochastic general equilibrium models to obtain similarly weakened sufficient conditions for the existence of public debt bubbles.

Revisions in successive Greenbook forecasts of quarterly real GDP growth proxy for news of current and expected future economic growth. In the sample 1975 through 2015, news of future growth is slightly negatively related to contemporaneous changes in Treasury bond yields, while news of current growth is strongly positively related to changes in these yields. Both results are difficult to reconcile with a representative agent's bondholding first‐order condition. A continuous‐time dynamic model of output attributes almost all of the covariation with yields to martingale innovations in log output and a minimal amount to innovations in the conditional drift of log output.

Many U.S. private firms choose either a financial statement compilation or review rather than the higher assurance provided by an audit, yet little is known about these choices. We explore economic aspects of private firm choice of less-than-audit levels of assurance applied to GAAP-based financial statements. We find that CPA fees more than double for each increment in assurance. Commonly used financial reporting quality proxies are higher for both reviews and audits relative to compilations but are statistically indistinguishable on average between reviews and audits. Cost of debt is significantly lower for reviews than for compilations and significantly lower for audits than for reviews. Finally, we find that assurance level choices are associated with bank debt, trade credit, and potential internal information reliability and control concerns.

We investigate labor market consequences for CFOs employed by fraud firms, focusing on reputational contagion for those who are not implicated. These individuals provide an opportunity to understand reputational contagion and the nuanced meaning of “guilt” because the labor market may suspect complicity or infer negligence regardless of whether that is truly the case. We compare these CFOs to a matched sample of non‐fraud CFOs and track both turnover and subsequent employment positions. Non‐implicated CFOs are more likely to experience turnover compared to non‐fraud CFOs, driven in particular by the public revelation of fraud to the labor market. We further find that non‐implicated CFOs are more likely to obtain comparable subsequent employment than non‐fraud CFOs before the fraud is publicly revealed, but not after. In supplementary analyses, we find that turnover rates are highest for non‐implicated CFOs who started their employment with the firm before the fraud began as compared to non‐implicated CFOs who started their employment after the fraud began. These results highlight the labor market significance of the public revelation of fraud and imply that the labor market does not fully distinguish between fraud firm association and general firm performance when making executive hiring decisions.