[This article examines the link between mortgage securitization and lender screening during the boom and bust of the U.S. housing market. Using comprehensive data on both prime and subprime securitized and bank-held loans, we provide evidence that securitization affected lenders' screening decisions in the subprime market for low-documentation loans through two channels: the securitization rate and the time it takes to securitize a loan. The change in decision-making by subprime lenders occurs on dimensions that are unreported to investors. Examining the time-series evolution of the securitization market further reinforces these findings. We exploit heterogeneity across subprime and prime markets to illustrate that the potential for moral hazard may be reduced with greater collection of hard information and increased monitoring of lenders. Our results suggest that the policy debate regarding securitization and lenders' underwriting standards should separately evaluate the agency and non-agency markets, with special attention toward the extent of soft information in assets being securitized.]

This article examines the link between mortgage securitization and lender screening during the boom and bust of the U.S. housing market. Using comprehensive data on both prime and subprime securitized and bank-held loans, we provide evidence that securitization affected lenders' screening decisions in the subprime market for low-documentation loans through two channels: the securitization rate and the time it takes to securitize a loan. The change in decision-making by subprime lenders occurs on dimensions that are unreported to investors. Examining the time-series evolution of the securitization market further reinforces these findings. We exploit heterogeneity across subprime and prime markets to illustrate that the potential for moral hazard may be reduced with greater collection of hard information and increased monitoring of lenders. Our results suggest that the policy debate regarding securitization and lenders' underwriting standards should separately evaluate the agency and non-agency markets, with special attention toward the extent of soft information in assets being securitized.

This paper investigates why Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) with strong political connections (i.e., politically connected firms) are more likely to list overseas than non-politically connected firms. We find that connected firms' post-overseas listing performance is worse than that of non-connected firms. This evidence suggests that connected firms' managers list their firms overseas for private (political) benefits. Consistent with this private benefits explanation, we further find that connected firms' managers are more likely to receive political media coverage or a promotion to a senior government position subsequent to overseas listing than domestic listing.

Our work provides refined tests of the source of merger gains in a neglected industry: utilities. Utilities offer fertile ground for analysis of traditional theories: synergy, collusion, hubris, and anticipation. Utility mergers create wealth for the combined firm, consistent with both the synergy and collusion hypotheses. To distinguish between these hypotheses, we study rival stock returns across dimensions related to collusion: deregulation, geography, and horizontal and withdrawn deals. We also find that the impact of mergers on consumer prices is consistent with synergy rather than collusion. Analysis of industry rivals that become targets also rejects collusion and is consistent with anticipation.

This paper presents the first theoretical analysis of the choice of firms between “preparing” and not preparing the equity market in advance of a possible dividend cut. In our model, insiders have private information about their firm’s intermediate cash flow as well as about the net present value of its growth opportunity. We show that, in equilibrium, firms in temporary financial difficulties but with good long-term growth prospects are more likely to prepare the market in advance of dividend cuts, while those with permanently declining earnings are less likely to prepare the market. Our model generates several new testable predictions.

We study decisions to sell nonexcludable private information in the presence of a trading opportunity. Sell-side agents heighten competition among agents who buy their signals to combine with their own for proprietary trading purposes and thereby promote financial market efficiency. This result holds even when the sell-side production technology is not unique. But sell-side information is subject to underinvestment if producers do not internalize the benefits. The model suggests that fee-based compensation for corporate advisory services diminishes this problem and that market efficiency is undermined by forces steering investment-banking resources toward proprietary trading.

Using a hand-collected data set of private firm acquisitions and IPOs, this paper develops the first empirical analysis in the literature of the “IPO valuation premium puzzle,” which refers to a situation where many private firms choose to be acquired rather than to go public at higher valuations. We also test several new hypotheses regarding a private firm's choice between IPOs and acquisitions. Our analysis of private firm valuations in IPOs and acquisitions indicates that IPO valuation premia disappear for larger VC backed firms after controlling for various observable factors affecting a firm's propensity to choose IPOs over acquisitions. Further, after controlling for the long-run component of the expected payoff to firm insiders from an IPO exit, we find that the IPO valuation premium vanishes even for larger non-VC backed firms and shrinks substantially for smaller firms as well. Our Heckman-style treatment effects regression analysis demonstrates that the above results are robust to controlling for the selection of exit mechanism by firm insiders based on unobservables. Our findings on private firms' choice between IPOs and acquisitions can be summarized as follows. First, firms operating in industries characterized by the absence of a dominant market player (and therefore more viable against product market competition) are more likely to go public rather than to be acquired. Second, more capital intensive firms, those operating in industries characterized by greater private benefits of control, and those which are harder to value by IPO market investors are more likely to go public rather than to be acquired. Third, the likelihood of an IPO over an acquisition is greater for venture backed firms and those characterized by higher pre-exit sales growth.

We study advertising at the brand level in a sample of corporate acquisitions. New owners display an elevated propensity to sharply cut advertising in acquired brands. This behavior is most pronounced in private equity transactions. When a buyer's existing brands overlap with the acquired brands, aggregate advertising spending on the merged portfolio of brands tends to shift downward. Sharp advertising cuts are more likely to be observed when the old owner of the assets was investing at an elevated level and when the new owner has displayed past restraint in their investment spending activities. Combined buyer and seller abnormal returns are more positive in deals characterized by post-acquisition cuts in advertising, suggesting that these cuts often represent efficiency-enhancing cost savings.

We examine the impact of tax burden on cash distribution using a sample of Brazilian firms, which are allowed by law to distribute cash to shareholders in two forms: dividends and tax-advantaged interest on equity. The Brazilian institutional setting is superior to those used in prior studies that examine the choice between dividends and capital gains because, in some cases, dividends provide advantages that outweigh their negative tax consequences, leading firms to rationally choose payout policies that are not optimal when viewed only from the perspective of taxes. We find that taxes are a primary determinant of Brazilian firms’ payout policy decisions, as profitability and payout ratios (nonequity tax shields) are positively (negatively) related to the likelihood that a firm pays interest on equity. However, many firms continue to pay dividends despite the tax advantages of interest on equity payments. Abnormal returns around payout policy announcements suggest that these firms are, at least in part, catering to investor demand.