We extend our prior work on how both supply (including the emergence of OTC equity derivatives and growth in share lending) and demand (including the growth of hedge funds) factors now facilitate the large-scale, low-cost decoupling of shareholder voting rights from shareholder economic...

We test the widely held assumption that longer restructurings are more costly. In contrast to earlier studies, we use instrumental variables to control for the endogeneity of restructuring time and creditor return. Instrumenting proves critical to our finding that creditor recovery rates...

We examine the efficacy of the I-squared incomplete information credit model in a broad context that is relevant to fund and asset managers.Using a rigorous statistical analysis, we show that I-squared is a powerful forecaster of the following events:- Rating agency downgrades- Investment grade...

Using a hazard model, we examine secular changes in the ability of financial statement data to predict bankruptcy over a forty-year period. We identify three trends in financial reporting that could influence predictive ability with respect to bankruptcy: the increase in FASB standards, many of...

We examine 1,098 Nasdaq firms delisted in 1999-2002 that subsequently traded in the OTC Bulletin Board and/or the Pink Sheets. Market quality deteriorates significantly after delisting: share volume declines by two-thirds; quoted spreads almost triple from 12.1 to 33.9 percent; and effective...

In much of the literature, rating agencies are seen as institutions providing informational services to the market. Our paper contributes to this literature by looking closely at the watchlist period, a particularly well-defined monitoring event. We are interested in the evolution of default...

This paper investigates whether going-concern value or abandonment option value dominates in troubled debt restructuring (TDR) firms,in an attempt to explain the positive excess returns observed in a few studies on TDR samples. Basing the analysis on the shareholders' call and put options on the...

The effectively mandatory provision of management earnings forecasts (MEF) is an unique feature of Japan's financial disclosure system. The first objective of this study is to identify the determinants of systematic bias in MEF using a sample of nearly 25,000 one-year-ahead earnings forecasts...

Using Treasury and corporate bond market data, I examine the propagation of firm-specific shocks as well as market-wide shocks between 1995-2003, testing the implications of previously proposed channels of contagion. I find little support for the economic fundamental hypothesis. Consistent with...

This study assesses the validity of widespread criticisms of the large, nationally recognized credit rating agencies (CRAs). The criticisms focus on these CRAs' (1) disclosure practices (such as related to the assumptions underlying their ratings decisions); (2) potential conflicts of interest;...