We study the cross-section of expected corporate bond returns using an inter-temporal CAPM (ICAPM) with three-factors: innovations in future excess bond returns, future real interest rates and future expected inflation. Our test assets are a broad range of corporate bond market index portfolios. We find that two factors – innovations about future inflation and innovations about future real interest rates – explain the cross-section of expected corporate bond returns in our sample. Our model provides an alternative to the ad hoc risk factor models used, for example, in evaluating the performance of bond mutual funds.

Catastrophe (Cat) bonds are insurance securitization vehicles which are supposed to transfer catastrophe-related underwriting risk from issuers to capital markets. This paper addresses key, unanswered questions concerning Cat bonds and offers the following results. First, our findings show firms that issue Cat bonds exhibit less risky underwriting portfolios with less exposure to catastrophe risks and overall less need to hedge catastrophe risk. These results show that the access to the market for insurance securitization is easiest for firms with less risky portfolios. Second, firms that issue Cat bonds are found to experience a reduction in their default risk relative to non-issuing firms and our results, therefore, demonstrate that Cat bonds provide effective catastrophe hedging for issuing firms. Third, firms with less catastrophe exposure, increase their catastrophe exposure following an issue. Therefore, our paper cautions that the ability to hedge catastrophe risk causes some firms to seek additional catastrophe risk.

We link the reputation incentives of independent directors to the informativeness of stock prices. We show that when more independent directors rank a directorship high, the firm-specific information content in a firm's stock price increases. Further, independent directors with high reputation incentives serve firms that voluntarily disclose more information and display lower crash risk. We find similar results when using plausibly exogenous shocks to the reputation incentives of independent directors. Our results therefore support a causal interpretation of the positive influence that independent directors with reputation incentives exert on corporate transparency.

We investigate the relationship between boardroom gender diversity and firm risk. To identify a causal effect of gender on risk, we use a dynamic model that controls for reverse causality and for gender and risk being influenced by unobservable firm factors. We find no evidence that female boardroom representation influences equity risk. We also show that findings of a negative relationship between the two variables are spurious and driven by unobserved between-firm heterogeneous factors.

Using hand-collected data on the CEOs of Chinese companies, we find that managers who grow up without siblings are associated with riskier firms and worse performance. Our analysis exploits regional and time variation in China's compulsory one-child policy as a shock to fertility rates. Consistent with explanations that only-children have not experienced competition among siblings, we show that firms led by only-child CEOs underperform when industry competition is stronger. Our findings suggest that fertility policies affect the supply of managerial capital and, consequently, corporate policies and performance.

Using global cross-firm ownership data, we find that both stock returns and cash-flow news of ownership-linked firms predict focal firm's returns for all types of ownership structures: subsidiary−parent, parent−subsidiary, subsidiary−subsidiary, and parent−parent. This effect, observed only after the establishment of cross-firm ownership, is not subsumed by focal firm or industry momentum, or alternative inter-firm relations, including customer−supplier links and shared analyst coverage. Our findings are explained by mispricing due to internal capital markets – a mechanism unique to complex ownership firms. Higher internal capital market activity among ownership-linked firms also induces larger investments and lower external financing of the focal firm.