Based on basic financial models and reports in the business press, exchange rate movements are generally believed to affect the value of nonfinancial firms. In contrast, the empirical research on nonfinancial firms typically produces fewer significant exposures estimates than researchers expect,...

In this paper, we compare option contracts from a traditional derivatives exchange to bank-issued options, also referred to as covered warrants. While bank-issued option markets and traditional derivatives exchanges exhibit significant structural differences such as the absence of a central...

While increases in cross-market correlations during periods of market crises are well documented, Forbes and Rigobon (2002) show that correlation coefficients are biased measures of dependence when markets become more volatile, and that there is no evidence of contagion in recent financial...

This paper investigates whether the low significance of the impact of foreign exchange rate risk on firm value reported in previous studies can be explained by the fact that only the linear exposure component has been estimated or that exchange rate indices were used. For a comprehensive sample...

Many interest rates are as volatile as exchange rates and thus represent an equally important source of risk for corporations. While this is true not only for financial institutions, but for other corporations as well, little is known about the interest rate exposure of nonfinancial firms....

Offshore centers have come to play an important role in the institutional structure of international financial markets. The article identifies two dimensions of dynamic competition that are relevant for an analysis of the offshore center phenomenon. First, there is competition between the...

We study the role played by "bond book-to-market" ratios in U.S. corporate bond pricing. Controlling for numerous risk factors tied to default and priced asset risk, including yield-to-maturity, we find that the ratio of a corporate bond's book value to its market price strongly predicts the...

Using a large panel of firms across the world from 1991-2006, we show that the median foreign firm has lower idiosyncratic risk than a comparable U.S. firm. Country characteristics help explain variation in the level of idiosyncratic risk, but less so than firm characteristics. Idiosyncratic...

Since 1965, average idiosyncratic risk (IR) has never been lower than in recent years. In contrast to the high IR in the late 1990s that has drawn considerable attention in the literature, average market-model IR is 44% lower in 2013-2017 than in 1996-2000. Macroeconomic variables help explain...

Since 1965, average idiosyncratic risk (IR) has never been lower than in recent years. In contrast to the high IR in the late 1990s that has drawn considerable attention in the literature, average market-model IR is 44% lower in 2013-2017 than in 1996-2000. Macroeconomic variables help explain...