We decompose the structural estimate of the probability of informed trading, PIN, into components that capture informed trading on good and on bad news. We estimate these two components at quarterly intervals, and provide new evidence that they capture informed trading around earnings...

Illiquidity measures appear to be related to monthly realized returns but do they impact long-run costs of capital (CoC) for firms? Using U.S. data, we find cross-sectional evidence that, controlling for market capitalization, the Amihud (2002) measure of illiquidity is negatively related to CoC...

This chapter is concerned with the classical applied problem of capital allocation by a corporation whose securities are traded in competitive and frictionless markets. Under reasonable assumptions that are discussed, this amounts to choosing projects whose market value exceeds their cost, so...

We analyze the relation between comprehensive measures of board quality and the cost as well as the non-price terms of bank loans. We show that firms with higher quality boards and even a single (non-insider) advisory board member borrow at lower interest rates. This relation exists even after...

The security market line (SML) accords with the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) by taking on an upward slope in pessimistic sentiment periods, but is downward sloping during optimistic periods. We hypothesize that this finding obtains because periods of optimism attract equity investment by...