This paper introduces a new model-free approach to measuring the expectation of market variance using VIX derivatives. This approach shows that VIX derivatives carry different information about future variance than S&P 500 (SPX) options, especially during the 2008 financial crisis. I find that...

This paper develops a tractable real options framework to analyze the effects of asymmetric information on investment and financing decisions when firms require external funds to finance investment. Our analysis shows that corporate insiders can signal their private information to outside...

We analyze the impact of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) on corporate bond ratings issued by credit rating agencies (CRAs). We find no evidence that Dodd-Frank disciplines CRAs to provide more accurate and informative credit ratings. Instead, following...

We test if issuers of asset- and mortgage-backed securities receive rating favors from agencies with which they maintain strong business relationships. Controlling for issuer fixed effects and a large set of credit risk determinants, we show that agencies publish better ratings for those issuers...

We study how competition between banks and non-banks affects lending standards. Banks have private information about some borrowers and are subject to capital requirements to mitigate risk-taking incentives from deposit insurance. Non-banks are uninformed and market forces determine their...

We study the functioning and possible breakdown of the interbank market in the presence of counterparty risk. We allow banks to have private information about the risk of their assets. We show how banks' asset risk affects funding liquidity in the interbank market. Several interbank market...

Using positions data on bond futures, I document that speculators' spread trades contain private information about future economic activities and asset prices. Strong steepening trades are associated with negative payroll surprises in subsequent months and can predict asset markets' reaction to...

A competitive stock market is embedded into a neoclassical growth economy to analyze the interplay between the acquisition of information about firms, its partial revelation through stock prices, capital allocation and income. The stock market allows investors to share their costly private...

For models of the probability of informed trading (PIN), estimation can fail for firms with high levels of trading due to computer over/under-flow. Since active firms tend to have large market capitalizations, studies that use PIN have excluded as much as 40% of total market capitalization from...

This paper explores commonalities across asset pricing anomalies. In particular, we assess implications of financial distress for the profitability of anomaly-based trading strategies. Strategies based on price momentum, earnings momentum, credit risk, dispersion, idiosyncratic volatility, and...