Abstract In Los Angeles, all-cash home purchases quintupled during the last decade. Compared with an else-equal mortgage offer, a cash offer is associated with 29 percent shorter time-to-close and a 2–3.9 percent price discount, indicating a substantial amount of financing risk—the risk to a seller that a transaction may not close on time and may fail to occur again because a mortgage contingency fails. The estimated cash discount aligns well with a canonical model calibrated to the sample market. Our findings reveal that closing risk alone is insufficient to explain the cash discount. Rather, it turns on the possibility that a property back on the market may fail to sell, requiring a substantial risk compensation. The estimated cash discount is smaller during booms and in larger markets, highlighting the inseparability of financial frictions in the mortgage market and search frictions in the housing market.

Abstract We argue that syndicates associate venture capitalists (VCs) with uneven skill levels in order to lower their expected gains from threatening to stop financing: Non-continued participation would send a milder negative signal to alternative financiers. This can explain the empirical observations that i) early-round syndicates regularly associate VCs with different levels of experience and ii) follow-on syndicates often involve none of the early-round VCs. Consistent with the theory, we find empirically that the heterogeneity of VC experience levels in a syndicate is i) negatively related to the extent to which the founders of the VC-backed firm are professionally well connected and ii) positively related to the likelihood of syndicate switching in a later round.

This study investigates whether insiders exploit the information advantage arising from customer identity concealment to profit from selling their shares. We examine this issue in the context of China, given the voluntary nature of customer information disclosure there. We find that insider selling profitability is significantly greater when firms conceal customer identities than when they disclose them, especially when customer identities are more informative. We also find evidence of significant trading profitability for both insiders and their relatives, as well as both core and general executives. Furthermore, we find that the results are weaker for firms with more effective internal monitoring and those with more attention from sophisticated market participants but are stronger for firms with more information disclosure manipulation. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that insiders opportunistically trade on customer-related private information rather than unintentionally sell shares. In additional tests, we find that insiders deliberately conceal customer identities in response to their personal trading incentives, indicating that insiders may increase their information advantage through strategic customer information disclosure. Overall, our research sheds light on the black box of information sources of insider trading from the perspective of supply chains and the insider trading incentives behind firms' concealment of customer identities.

We show how external credit market development can affect corporate social responsibility. Using a sample of US public firms over the period 1991–2010, we find that bank deregulation negatively affects CSR performance. We argue that deregulation-induced banking competition enhances credit accessibility, thereby reducing firms’ incentives to pursue CSR as a means of securing stakeholder rewards. Empirical evidence shows that firms increase their use of debt financing in response to the intensified banking competition, and these firms experience a more pronounced decline in CSR performance. We alleviate the potential concern that the observed decline in CSR could be attributed to changes in bank monitoring following deregulation. Further analyses find that firms reduce CSR regardless of their material nature, suggesting that the primary driver of CSR could be the trade-off between costs and returns. Overall, our findings shed light on the strategic motives of CSR, which exhibits adaptability in response to business dynamism.

Abstract We document and explain the sharp performance deterioration of smart beta indexes after the corresponding exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are launched for investment. While smart beta is purported to deliver excess returns through factor exposures, the market-adjusted return of smart beta indexes drops from about 3% “on paper” before ETF listings to about −0.50% to −1% after ETF listings. This performance decline cannot be explained by variation in factor premia, strategic timing, or diminishing returns to scale. Instead, we find strong evidence of data mining in the construction of smart beta indexes, which helps ETFs attract flows, as investors respond positively to backtests.

Abstract We investigate whether a larger CEO employment network provides access to information that improves firms' earnings forecasts and find a significantly positive relation between CEO employment network size and management earnings forecast accuracy. Our results suggest that firms use information obtained from CEO contacts to increase the accuracy of their earnings forecasts. Our conclusion is further supported by evidence of positive associations between CEO employment network size and the likelihood, frequency, and precision of management earnings forecasts. We also find that CEO employment network size is positively related to analysts' reactions to the forecast news and the accuracy of management earnings forecasts relative to analyst forecasts. Overall, our results are consistent with a larger CEO employment network generating external information that increases the accuracy of firms' earnings forecasts.

Utilising climate-related narratives in conference call transcripts to measure firm-level exposure to climate risks, we examine the association between such exposure and the corporate cost of debt financing. Using a sample of 21 European countries from 2001 to 2020, we find that firms exposed to greater climate change experience higher debt costs. The impact is even more extreme when using climate-related opportunity and regulatory exposure measures. We further find critical economic channels through which the higher debt costs occur: financial development and credit supplies. Specifically, our findings hold only for firms in weakly developed financial markets and institutions as measured by the new broad-based multi-dimensional financial development indices. We also find some other conditioning factors. Firstly, the higher the carbon intensity level, the greater the debt cost a firm with more climate change exposure must pay. Secondly, debtholders appear to punish firms with high environmental and social disclosure that are exposed to more climate change. Thirdly, the findings are more pronounced in financially constrained firms.

Abstract In this article, we show that firms can become conservative in innovation when their directors face job insecurity. We find that after the staggered enactment of majority voting legislation that strengthens shareholders’ power in director elections, firms produce fewer patents, particularly exploratory patents, and fewer forward citations. This effect is stronger for directors facing higher dismissal costs or threats and for firms with greater needs for board expertise and is mitigated by institutional investors’ expertise in innovation. Overall, our results suggest that heightened job insecurity induces director myopia, which leads to a reduction in investment in risky, long-term innovation projects.

Abstract In this study, we investigate whether and how trust between board members and the CEO (board–CEO trust) affects the performance of mergers and acquisitions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that firms with higher levels of board–CEO trust exhibit poor M&A performance. High trust is associated with low acquisition announcement returns, long-term stock return performance, and post-deal operating performance. This negative effect of board–CEO trust is more pronounced among acquiring companies prone to agency problems. Our results suggest that, in the institutional setting of corporate boards, high trust can be too much of a good thing.