We study holdings in M&A targets by financial conglomerates which affiliated investment banks advise the bidders. We show that advisors take positions in the targets before M&A announcements. These stakes are positively related to the probability of observing the bid and to the target premium....

We study IPOs by focusing on the degree of portfolio diversification of the shareholders taking the company public. We argue that a less diversified shareholder has more to gain from taking the company public and would be more willing to accept a lower price for the sale of its shares, i.e....

We study how debt market frictions constraining the ability to replace bank with bond financing during a tightening in bank credit supply affect corporate yield spreads. We document that more inflexible firms suffer bigger increases in bond yield spreads as bank credit supply tightens. Debt...

We investigate whether short sellers are subject to the disposition effect using a novel dataset that allows to identify the weekly closing of short positions. Consistent with the disposition effect, the closing of short sale positions is strongly related to a proxy of Shortsale Capital Gains...

We study the relation between information and fire sales during a crisis. We argue that the reinforcing effect of funding liquidity on market liquidity is weaker when investors have more information about the assets facing sudden price drops (Brunnermeier and Pedersen, 2009). We focus on the...

We investigate whether providers of high frequency news analytics affect the stock market. As identification, we exploit a unique experiment based on differences in news event classifications between different product releases of a major provider of news analytics. We document a causal effect of...

We examine how shareholder investment horizons influence firms’ payout decisions. We find that US firms held by short-term institutional investors have a higher propensity to buybacks shares instead of using dividends. Firm managers seem to respond to the preferred payout policy of investors...

We study how competition in the mutual fund industry affects stock market liquidity. We argue that mutual fund families operate as multi-product firms, jointly choosing fees, performance and number of funds and sharing common research facilities. The family-based organization generates economies...

We study the puzzle of portfolio underdiversification and proximity investment from a novel perspective, linking it to the process of urbanization. We find that urban portfolios are more focused – i.e., less diversified and more concentrated in ‘close’ stocks. We explain it in terms of the...

We exploit the restrictions of intertemporal portfolio choice in the presence of non-financial income risk to design and implement tests of hedging that use the information contained in the actual portfolio of the investor. We use a unique dataset of Swedish investors with information broken...