We find that investor sentiment should affect a firm's employment policy in a world with moral hazard and noise traders. Consistent with the model's predictions, we show that higher sentiment among US investors leads to: (1) higher employment growth worldwide; (2) lower labor productivity, as the...

We develop an economic theory of “flexibility”, which we interpret as the discretion orability to make a decision that others disagree with. We show that flexibility is essentiallyan option for the decisionmaker, and can be valued as such. The value of the flexibilityoption is decreasing in...

In this paper we analyze an entrepreneur /manager's choice between private and public ownership in a setting in which management needs some "elbow room" or autonomy to optimally manage the firm. In public capital markets, the corporate governance regime in place exposes the firm to exogenous...

We develop an economic theory of “flexibility”, which we interpret as the discretion or ability to make a decision that others disagree with. We show that flexibility is essentially an option for the decisionmaker, and can be valued as such. The value of the flexibility option is decreasing...

In this paper we introduce flexibility as an economic concept and apply it to the firm’s security issuance decision and capital structure choice. Flexibility is the ability to make decisions that one thinks are best even when others disagree. The firm’s management values flexibility because...

In this paper we analyze an entrepreneur /manager's choice between private and public ownership in a setting in which management needs some "elbow room" or autonomy to optimally manage the firm. In public capital markets, the corporate governance regime in place exposes the firm to exogenous...

In this paper we introduce flexibility as an economic concept and apply it to the firm’ssecurity issuance decision and capital structure choice. Flexibility is the ability to makedecisions that one thinks are best even when others disagree. The firm’s management valuesflexibility because it...

This paper investigates the importance of speed for technical trading rule performance for three highly liquid ETFs listed on NASDAQ over the period January 6, 2009 up to September 30, 2009. In addition we examine the characteristics of market activity over the day and within subperiods...

This discussion paper resulted in an article in the <I>Journal of Financial Econometrics</I> (2012). Vol. 10, pages 354-389.<p> This paper considers spot variance path estimation from datasets of intraday high frequency asset prices in the presence of diurnal variance patterns, jumps, leverage effects and...</p></i>

We assess the effect of aggregate stock market illiquidity on U.S. Treasury bond risk premia. We find that the stock market illiquidity variable adds to the well established Cochrane-Piazzesi and Ludvigson-Ng factors. It explains 10%, 9%, 7%, and 7% of the one-year-ahead variation in the excess...