Family ownership was rapidly diluted in the twentieth century in Britain. Issuance of equity in the process of acquisitions was the main cause. In the first half of the century, it occurred in the absence of minority investor protection and relied on directors of target firms protecting the...

We study the real effects of credit market sentiment on corporate investment and financing for a comprehensive panel of U.S. public and private firms over 1963-2016. In the short term, we find that high credit market sentiment in year t correlates with high corporate investment and debt issuance...

Family ownership was rapidly diluted in the twentieth century in Britain. The main cause was equity issued in the process of making acquisitions. In the first half of the century, it occurred in the absence of minority investor protection and relied on directors of target firms protecting the...

We investigate economic and political theories of financial reform to analyze state-level adoption of municipal bankruptcy laws (Chapter 9). Using a dynamic Cox hazard model, we find that interest group factors related to the relative strength of potential losers (labor unions) and winners (bond...

Contrary to signaling models' central predictions, changes in the level of cash flows do not empirically follow changes in dividends. We use the Campbell (1991) decomposition to construct cash-flow and discount-rate news from returns and find the following: (1) Both dividend changes and...

We present a model where quantitative trading − trading strategies based on the quantitative analysis of prices, volumes, and other asset and market characteristics − is systematically profitable for sophisticated traders whose only source of private information is knowing better than other...

We analyze holdings of public bonds by over 20,000 banks in 191 countries, and the role of these bonds in 20 sovereign defaults over 1998-2012. Banks hold many public bonds (on average 9% of their assets), particularly in less financially-developed countries. During sovereign defaults, banks...

Contrary to signaling models' central predictions, changes in the level of cash flows do not empirically follow changes in dividends. We use the Campbell (1991) decomposition to construct cash-flow and discount-rate news from returns and find the following: (1) Both dividend changes and...

Contrary to the central prediction of signaling models, changes in profits do not empirically follow changes in dividends. We show both theoretically and empirically that dividends signal safer, rather than higher, future profits. Using the Campbell (1991) decomposition, we are able to estimate...

Contrary to signaling models' central predictions, changes in profits do not empirically follow changes in dividends, and firms with the least need to signal pay the bulk of dividends. We show both theoretically and empirically that dividends signal safer, rather than higher, future profits....