This paper develops a dynamic trade-off model of optimal capital structure that takes intoaccount the fact that most firms have both invested assets and growth opportunities. Thesetwo sources of value react quite differently to business cycle risk. In particular, growth optionsare more sensitive...

This paper studies the extent to which risk-taking incentives of CEOs and other governancefeatures in a range of years prior to the recent financial crisis were related to the write-downsof U.S. financial institutions during the crisis. We document that institutions whose CEOs hadparticularly...

We propose a simple but effective estimation procedure to extract the level and the volatilitydynamics of a latent macroeconomic factor from a panel of observable indicators. Our approachis based on a multivariate conditionally heteroskedastic exact factor model that cantake into account the...

The pricing kernel puzzle is the observation that the pricing kernelmight be increasing in some range of the market returns. This paperanalyzes the pricing kernel in a nancial market equilibrium. If mar-kets are complete and investors are risk-averse and have common andtrue beliefs, the pricing...

We investigate whether bank performance during the credit crisis of 2008 is related to CEOincentives and share ownership before the crisis and whether CEOs reduced their equity stakes intheir banks in anticipation of the crisis. There is no evidence that banks with CEOs whoseincentives were...

Large shareholders may play an important role for firm performance and policies, butidentifying this empirically presents a challenge due to the endogeneity of ownershipstructures. We develop and test an empirical framework which allows us to separateselection from treatment effects of large...

We develop a dynamic model of corporate investment and financing decisions in whichcorporate insiders have superior information about the firm's growth prospects. We show thatrms with positive private information can credibly signal their type to outside investors usingthe timing of corporate...

The study of liquidity in financial markets either invokes the ease with whichfinancial securities can be bought and sold, or addresses the ability to tradewithout triggering important changes in asset prices. More specifically, onecan think of liquidity as an exogenous measure of the added...

In the first three decades of CRSP data, value stocks have higher betas than growth stocks.Later on, the ranking is reversed and the gap in beta widens. What makes growth strategiesnowadays bear more market risk than value strategies? What are the causes of the reversalin the ranking of betas?...

The end of the lockup period of initial public offerings generally constitutes the first time corporateinsiders sell significant numbers of shares on the market. I test the hypothesis that shareholderspressure analysts to support the share price until the end of the lockup period.[...]