This paper considers the impact of takeover (or acquisition) likelihood on firm valuation. If firms are more likely to acquire during times when they have free cash and/or when the required rate of return is low, takeover targets become more sensitive to shocks to aggregate cash flows and/or to...

This paper studies the interaction between takeover defenses and product market competition. We find that firms in more competitive industries have more takeover defenses. This is the opposite result from what one would expect if takeover defenses always constitute an inefficient outcome that...

We investigate the effects of shareholder governance mechanisms on bondholders and document two new findings. First, the impact of shareholder control (proxied by large institutional blockholders) on credit risk depends on takeover vulnerability. Shareholder control is associated with higher...

This paper reinvestigates the performance of risk-based multifactor models. In particular, we generalize the Bayesian methodology of Shanken (1987b) and Kandel, McCulloch and Stambaugh (1995) from mean-variance efficiency to the ICAPM notion of multifactor efficiency. This methodology uses...

The idea that uncertainty about a firm's profitability could increase its stock valuation has been proposed by Pastor and Veronesi (2003) to explain several phenomena in financial markets. We further examine this idea in a setup with both stocks and bonds, and show that unless a firm is deeply...

This paper explores the role played by multiple credit rating agencies (CRAs) in the market for corporate bonds. Moody's, Samp;P and Fitch operate in a competitive setting with market demand for both credit information and the certification value of a high rating. We empirically document the...

This paper examines the impact on shareholder voting of the mutual fund voting disclosure regulation adopted by the SEC in 2003, using a paired sample of proposals submitted before and after the rule change. We focus on how voting outcomes relate to institutional ownership and the voting...

We use a unique database on the ownership stakes of equity mutual fund directors to analyze whether the directors' incentive structure is related to fund performance. We find that the ownership stakes of both independent and non-independent directors play an economically substantial and...