We argue that the Merton (1974) model's relatively high ability to forecast bankruptcy stems from its ability to capture either the chance of net worth dropping below an externally-imposed threshold or of an economic insolvency. Using unique bankruptcy data from fifteen countries, our evidence...

We offer evidence that exposures to consumption growth, expected consumption growth, and consumption volatility are significantly priced in the cross-section of delta-hedged option and straddle returns. Consumption growth and expected consumption growth command a positive risk premium, whereas...

Many studies report that American option investors often exercise their positions suboptimally late. Yet, when that can happen in case of puts, there is an arbitrage opportunity in perfect markets, exploitable by longing the asset-and-riskfree-asset portfolio replicating the put and shorting the...

We use a stochastic frontier model to obtain a stock-level estimate of the difference between a firm's installed production capacity and its optimal capacity. We show that this “capacity overhang” estimate relates significantly negatively to the cross-section of stock returns, even when...

We offer evidence that the tendency of high real-investment stocks to underperform others is driven by firms physically constructing new capacity. The conditioning ability of construction work does not come from differences in investment intensity, financing sources, or profitability. Yet, it...

In this article, we show that only distressed firms not identified as distressed by creditors are able to transfer wealth from creditors to shareholders. Using the number of years to future bankruptcy as a proxy for genuine distress and measures based on observable firm characteristics as...

Motivated by a real-options framework in which managers learn about the unobservable characteristics of new production technologies from their recently installed assets and their stock price, we show that the corporate investment-to-stock price sensitivity rises with the time since a firm last...