This paper investigates the dynamics of individual portfolios in a unique data set containing the disaggregated wealth of all households in Sweden. Between 1999 and 2002, we observe little aggregate rebalancing in the financial portfolio of participants. These patterns conceal strong household-level evidence of active rebalancing, which on average offsets about one-half of idiosyncratic passive variations in the risky asset share. Wealthy, educated investors with better diversified portfolios tend to rebalance more actively. We find some evidence that households rebalance toward a greater risky share as they become richer. We also study the decisions to trade individual assets. Households are more likely to fully sell directly held stocks if those stocks have performed well, and more likely to exit direct stockholding if their stock portfolios have performed well; but these relationships are much weaker for mutual funds, a pattern that is consistent with previous research on the disposition effect among direct stockholders and performance sensitivity among mutual fund investors. When households continue to hold individual assets, however, they rebalance both stocks and mutual funds to offset about one-sixth of the passive variations in individual asset shares. Households rebalance primarily by adjusting purchases of risky assets if their risky portfolios have performed poorly, and by adjusting both fund purchases and full sales of stocks if their risky portfolios have performed well. Finally, the tendency for households to fully sell winning stocks is weaker for wealthy investors with diversified portfolios of individual stocks.

ABSTRACT Our results highlight the importance of interaction among management, labor, and investors in shaping corporate governance. We find that strong union laws protect not only workers but also underperforming managers. Weak investor protection combined with strong union laws are conducive to worker–management alliances, wherein poorly performing firms sell assets to prevent large‐scale layoffs, garnering worker support to retain management. Asset sales in weak investor protection countries lead to further deteriorating performance, whereas in strong investor protection countries they improve performance and lead to more layoffs. Strong union laws are less effective in preventing layoffs when financial leverage is high.

As domestic sources of outside finance are limited in many countries around the world, it is important to understand factors that influence whether foreign investors provide capital to a country's firms. We study 4, 409 firms from twenty-nine countries to assess whether and why concerns about corporate governance result in fewer foreign holdings. We find that foreigners invest less in firms that reside in countries with poor outsider protection and disclosure and have ownership structures that are conducive to governance problems. This effect is particularly pronounced when earnings are opaque, indicating that information asymmetry and monitoring costs faced by foreign investors likely drive the results. The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]., Oxford University Press.

International audience

We investigate the consequences of demographic change for business cycle analysis. We find that changes in the age composition of the labor force account for a significant fraction of the variation in cyclical volatility observed in the G7. Since World War II, these countries have experienced dramatic demographic changes, although details regarding timing and nature differ across countries. We exploit this variation to show that the workforce age composition has a large and significant effect on cyclical volatility. We relate our results to the recent decline in US macroeconomic volatility, finding that demographic change accounts for approximately one-fifth to one-third of this moderation. (JEL E32, J11)

Principal-agent models usually invoke the strong assumption that the parties know for sure ex ante whether a variable is verifiable or not. This paper assumes that only the probability of verification is known, and that this probability is endogenously determined. We analyze a principal-agent relationship where the verifiability of the agent's output is determined by the principal's investment in drafting an explicit contract. The model is well suited for analyzing the relationship between explicit contracting, legal courts, trust, and relational contracting. In particular, we show how trust—established through repeated interaction—and legal courts may induce contractual incompleteness. (JEL D82, D86)

In this paper, we analyze a class of models in which there are interjurisdictional spillovers among heterogeneous jurisdictions, as illustrated for instance by CO2 emissions that affect the global environment. Each jurisdiction's emissions depend upon the local stock of private capital. Capital is interjurisdictionally - mobile and may be taxed to help finance local public expenditures. We show that decentralized policymaking leads to efficient resource allocations in important cases, even in the complete absence of corrective interventions by higher - level governments or coordination of policy through Coasian bargaining. In particular, even when the preferences and production technologies differ among the agents, the decentralized system can still result in globally efficient allocation.

Much research has investigated the differences between option implied volatilities and econometric model-based forecasts. Implied volatility is a market determined forecast, in contrast to model-based forecasts that employ some degree of smoothing of past volatility to generate forecasts. Implied volatility has the potential to reflect information that a model-based forecast could not. This paper considers two issues relating to the informational content of the S&P 500 VIX implied volatility index. First, whether it subsumes information on how historical jump activity contributed to the price volatility, followed by whether the VIX reflects any incremental information pertaining to future jump activity relative to model-based forecasts. It is found that the VIX index both subsumes information relating to past jump contributions to total volatility and reflects incremental information pertaining to future jump activity. This issue has not been examined previously and expands our understanding of how option markets form their volatility forecasts.

Recessions appear to be times when the marginal rate of substitution between goods and workers’ time falls below the marginal product of labor. If so, the allocation of workers’ time is inefficient. I develop a model of households and production that reconciles cyclical movements in the marginal value of time and the marginal product. The model embodies the findings of research that the Frisch elasticity of labor supply is less than one. It treats unemployment in a search‐and‐matching setup. Recessions do not result in private inefficiency in the allocation of labor, but the unemployment rate may be socially inefficiently high.