This paper investigates both the magnitude and the drivers of bank window dressing behavior in euro-denominated repo markets. Using a confidential transaction-level data set, our analysis illustrates that banks engineer an economically sizeable contraction in their repo transactions around regulatory reporting dates. We establish a causal link between these reductions and banks’ incentives to window dress and document the role of the leverage ratio and the G-SIB framework as the most relevant drivers of window dressing behavior. Our findings suggest that regulatory action is warranted to limit banks’ ability to window dress.

How do investors perceive dependence between stock returns; and how does their perception of dependence affect investments and stock prices? We show experimentally that investors understand differences in dependence, but not in terms of correlation. Participants invest as if applying a simple counting heuristic for the frequency of comovement. They diversify more when the frequency of comovement is lower even if correlation is higher due to dependence in the tails. Building on our experimental findings, we empirically analyze U.S. stock returns. We identify a robust return premium for stocks with high frequencies of comovement with the market return.

This study examines the benefits of employee involvement in feedback system design for cooperation. Understanding how to enhance cooperation is important given the increasing use of team settings in practice. Control systems often provide feedback on cooperative actions of coworkers, which can help enable cooperation in teams and between organizational units. We predict that involvement in the design of feedback systems can be a source of trust between employees and enhances cooperation. This is particularly important for dynamic environments, in which an incomplete feedback system which initially provides perfect signals of cooperation no longer does so after the environment changes. Adding to prior evidence, we find that an incomplete feedback system can benefit cooperation in a static environment, but the benefit is greater when employees were initially involved in its design. In a dynamic environment, an incomplete feedback system fails to facilitate cooperation unless employees were involved in its design. Our results identify a behavioral benefit for firms that grant decision rights to employees as part of their organizational architecture.