We study the eect of the business cycle on optimal capital structure choice and thebenet to leverage. We propose a regime switching model with a state-dependentcash ow process to capture macroeconomic risk in a rm's cash ow. Our modelis parsimonious but still realistic and allows for a wide...

Standard equity valuation approaches (i.e., DDM, RIM, and DCF model) are derived under theassumption of ideal conditions, such as infinite payoffs and clean surplus accounting. Becausethese conditions are hardly ever met, we extend the standard approaches, based on thefundamental principle of...

In this paper we develop the rst estimator of the covariance matrix that relies solely onforward-looking information. This estimator only uses price information from a cross-sectionof plain-vanilla options. In an out-of-sample study for US blue-chip stocks we show that aminimum-variance strategy...

We examine the determinants and consequences of changes in hedge fund fee structures.We show that fee changes are asymmetric with much greater incidence of fee increasescompared to fee decreases. We find that managers of younger and smaller funds are morelikely to increase fees after good...

Using detailed holdings of exchange-traded options, we examine how mutual funds use optionsand how options affect portfolio performance and risk. Options users underperform nonusers bytwo to three percent per year. The underperformance is especially pronounced for funds that areheavy users of...

This paper introduces two measures to investigate potential window-dressing behavior amongmutual fund managers. We show that unskilled managers that perform poorly are more likely towindow dress by strategically purchasing winner stocks and selling loser stocks near quarterends. Further, funds...

We study the impact of the arrival of macroeconomic news on the informational andnoise-driven components in high-frequency quote processes and their conditional variances.Bid and ask returns are decomposed into a common ("ecient return") factorand two market-side-specic components capturing...

US equity mutual funds, on average, prefer realization of capital losses to capital gains. Nevertheless,a substantial fraction exhibits the disposition effect of realizing gains more readily than losses. Myanalysis suggests that learning effects have reduced the manifestation of the disposition...

The paper explores whether the co-movement of market returns and equity fundflows can be explained by a common response to macroeconomic news. I findthat variables that predict the real economy as well as the equity premium arerelated to mutual fund flows. Changes in dividend-price ratio explain...

The overvaluation hypothesis (Miller 1977) predicts that a) stocks are overvalued inthe presence of short selling restrictions and that b) the overvaluation increases in the degree ofdivergence of opinion. We design an experiment that allows us to test these predictions in thelaboratory. The...