We study the role of social networks in hedge fund activism. Actively managed funds whose managers are socially connected to activists are more likely than unconnected managers to invest in target stocks; their investment decisions are profitable. Importantly, such effects are greater for funds facing more severe information asymmetry. Connected funds are 14.2 percentage points more likely to support activists in proxy contests and contribute to reducing proxy contest costs. Our evidence shows that social ties benefit both connected investors and activists, and suggests that social networks reduce information asymmetry around activist campaigns by facilitating information exchange and increasing trust.

We develop an equilibrium model in a 2-country, 2-good, pure exchange economy in which investors with logarithmic utility functions have heterogeneous beliefs about exogenously given output or endowment processes. We obtain closed-form representations of real exchange rates and of stock prices. We show that heterogeneous beliefs together with heterogeneous preferences make the volatility of real exchange rates and of stocks exhibit some properties that have been well documented in the empirical literature. These properties include the high volatility of both real exchange rates and stocks compared with that of economic fundamentals, the high correlation of stocks during periods of volatile markets. The model can also generate the clustering of the volatility of foreign exchange rates and stocks if the differences of beliefs are clustering.

Certification by analysts on a FinTech platform that harnesses the “wisdom of crowds” is associated with successful initial coin offerings (ICOs). We show that favorable ratings by a group of analysts with diverse backgrounds positively predict fundraising success and long-run token performance. Analysts’ ratings also help detect potential fraud ex ante. We document that analysts have career concerns and are incentivized by the platform to issue informative ratings. Overall, our results suggest that a market-based certification process that relies on a diverse group of individuals is at play in financing blockchain startups.

There is a large and growing literature on how to model the dynamics of the default-free term structure to fit the observed historical data. Much less is known about how best to model the dynamics of defaultable yield curves. This paper develops a class of defaultable term structure models that is tractable enough to be empirically implemented and flexible enough to capture some important behaviors of the credit spreads in the data. We compare two non-nested models within this class using a Bayesian estimation technique, which helps to solve the problem of latent state variables. The Bayesian approach also enables us to test the two non-nested models on the basis of the Bayes factor. The results strongly suggest that models with constant transition probabilities will not be able to fit the observed dynamics of inter-rating spreads.

Following the global financial crisis, banks lengthened the average maturity of their assets relative to that of their liabilities, principally by increasing their investments in mortgage-related assets. Whether such maturity transformation exposes banks to interest rate risk depends, in part, on the effectiveness of bank deposits as a hedge against interest rate shocks. In this paper we provide evidence that interest pass-through rates on deposits vary significantly with interest rates, which reduces the effectiveness of deposits as a hedge when interest rates increase. The dynamic nature of the deposit betas explains, in part, why the duration of bank equity varies with interest rates and why interest rate risk models need to account for how pass-through rates vary with interest rates.

This article studies how the three-way interaction among shareholders, creditors, and managers shapes firms’ executive compensation. Firms with a higher ownership share by “dual holders”—institutional investors that simultaneously hold equity and bond of the company—adopt a less risk-inducing compensation structure: less stock options and more inside debt. Exploiting financial institution mergers that increase or decrease dual ownership for portfolio companies, we identify a causal link between dual ownership and CEO compensation policies. Mutual fund proxy voting data suggest that shareholder voting is an important channel for dual holders to implement less convex contracts.

There are two major institutional investors in the syndicated loan market: collateralized loan obligations (CLOs) and loan mutual funds. CLOs are closed-end funds while loan funds are open-end funds that issue claims that are redeemable on demand. In this paper, we examine whether CLOs provide arbitrage capital that contributes to the resilience of loan funds. We find that CLOs act as shock absorbers, providing liquidity through par-building trades when loan funds experience large outflows. However, CLO-provided liquidity is limited to par build–eligible loans, leading to potential flow-induced fire sales among par build–ineligible loans. (JEL G23, G38

We present the first comprehensive study of mutual fund voting in proxy contests. Among contests where voting takes place, passive funds are 10 percentage points less likely than active funds to vote for dissidents. The gap shrinks significantly when accounting for votes withheld from management nominees, settled contests, and votes by non-“Big-Three” fund families. Passive and active funds are equally informed about firm fundamentals, although passive funds view contest-related SEC filings more often than active funds during contests, in absolute levels and incrementally relative to noncontest periods. We conclude that passive funds are engaged shareholders in high-stakes voting events.

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) have emerged as a new organizational structure that leverages smart contracts and blockchain technology. Academics and practitioners have paid significant attention to DAOs, yet DAO decision-making processes and the broader implications remain under-studied. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature. First, we compare the proposal- and voting-based governance mechanisms of DAOs with those of traditional corporate governance. Second, we introduce various novel voting models adopted by DAOs. Third, we discuss DAOs' drawbacks and highlight a unique agency problem arising from large token holders, termed “whales,” within these organizations. The concentrated ownership such whales, whose interests may diverge from those of smaller token holders (i.e., users), obtain can result in governance vulnerabilities. After discussing recent instances of investor activism and contentious votes involving DAOs, we conclude by surveying the literature on the optimal DAO design.

We document numerous occurrences of pump-and-dump schemes (P&Ds) targeting cryptocurrencies, which tend to trigger short-term episodes that feature dramatic increases in prices, volume, and volatility, followed by quick reversals. The evidence we document, including price run-ups before P&Ds start, suggests wealth transfers from outsiders to insiders. Our findings based on wallet-level data are consistent with the reasoning that gambling preferences, overconfidence, and naïve reinforcement learning help explain P&D participation. Finally, exploiting two natural experiments in which exchanges altered P&D policies, we find evidence consistent with the idea that P&Ds contribute to reduced cryptocurrency liquidity and lower prices.