Bonds issued in high and low interest-rate environments often list at different prices despite very similar characteristics. From a risk-neutral investor's perspective, higher current prices imply higher losses in case of default, which must be compensated, if markets are efficient. We call this...

Using close to 800,000 (2,000,000) transactions by 66,000 (303,000) households in the United States (in Finland), we show that individual investors with longer holding periods choose to hold less liquid stocks in their portfolios, consistent with Amihud and Mendelson’s (1986) theory of...

Using close to 800,000 (2,000,000) transactions by 66,000 (303,000) households in the United States (in Finland), we show that individual investors with longer holding periods choose to hold less liquid stocks in their portfolios, consistent with Amihud and Mendelson’s (1986) theory of...

Using close to 800,000 (2,000,000) transactions by 66,000 (303,000) households in the United States (in Finland), we show that individual investors with longer holding periods choose to hold less liquid stocks in their portfolios, consistent with Amihud and Mendelson’s (1986) theory of...

Using close to 800,000 (2,000,000) transactions by 66,000 (303,000) households in the United States (in Finland), we show that individual investors with longer holding periods choose to hold less liquid stocks in their portfolios, consistent with Amihud and Mendelson’s (1986) theory of...

In recent years, a number of papers have established a new empirical regularity. Stocks of distressed firms vastly underperform those of financially healthy firms. It is not necessary to attribute the negative excess returns of distressed firms to inefficient or irrational markets. We show that...

The standard measures of distress risk ignore the fact that firm defaults are correlated and that some defaults are more likely to occur in bad times. We use risk premium computed from corporate credit spreads to measure a firm’s exposure to systematic variation in default risk. Unlike...

The standard measures of distress risk ignore the fact that firm defaults are correlated and that some defaults are more likely to occur in bad times. We use risk premium computed from corporate credit spreads to measure a firm’s exposure to systematic variation in default risk. Unlike...

We examine the relation between firm reputation and the cost of debt financing. We posit that corporate reputation represents “soft information” not captured by balance sheet variables, which is nonetheless valuable to lenders. Using Fortune magazine’s survey of company reputation, we find...

We show that the post earnings announcement drift (PEAD) is stronger for conglomerates than single-segment firms. Conglomerates, on average, are larger than single segment firms, so it is unlikely that limits-to-arbitrage drive the difference in PEAD. Rather, we hypothesize that market...