Search Results
Conference Paper
Board interdependence
Working Paper
Expectations of risk and return among household investors: Are their Sharpe ratios countercyclical?
Data obtained from special questions on the Michigan Survey of Consumer Attitudes over several years are used to analyze stock market beliefs and portfolio choices of household investors. Consistent with other survey results, expected future returns appear to be extrapolated from past realized returns. The data also indicate that expected risk and return are strongly influenced by economic prospects. When investors believe macroeconomic conditions are more expansionary, they tend to expect both higher returns and lower volatility, which implies that household Sharpe ratios are procyclical. ...
Working Paper
Winter blues: a SAD stock market cycle
This paper investigates the role of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) in the seasonal time-variation of stock market returns. SAD is an extensively documented medical condition whereby the shortness of the days in fall and winter leads to depression for many people. Experimental research in psychology and economics indicates that depression, in turn, causes heightened risk aversion. Building on these links between the length of day, depression, and risk aversion, we provide international evidence that stock market returns vary seasonally with the length of the day, a result we call the SAD ...
Working Paper
From the horse's mouth: gauging conditional expected stock returns from investor surveys
We use data obtained from a series of Michigan Surveys of Consumer Attitudes to study stock market beliefs and portfolio choices of individual investors. We find that expected returns over the medium- and long-term horizon appear to be extrapolated from past realized returns. The findings also indicate that a more optimistic assessment of macroeconomic conditions coincides with higher expected returns and lower expected volatility, implying strongly procyclical Sharpe ratios. These results are given added credence by the empirical finding that reported portfolio concentrations in equities ...
Journal Article
Boomer retirement: headwinds for U.S. equity markets?
Historical data indicate a strong relationship between the age distribution of the U.S. population and stock market performance. A key demographic trend is the aging of the baby boom generation. As they reach retirement age, they are likely to shift from buying stocks to selling their equity holdings to finance retirement. Statistical models suggest that this shift could be a factor holding down equity valuations over the next two decades.
Periodic Essay
Japan's cross-shareholding legacy: the financial impact on banks
Japanese banks' financial results for the Fiscal Year Ending (FYE) March 2009 marked their worst performance in recent years. Although soaring loan loss charges contributed to the banks' weak performances, losses on equity securities were also a key driver. These losses have drawn renewed attention to the practice of Japanese banks owning stock in the companies to which they lend through so-called cross-shareholdings, and the market risk resulting from these holdings. This Asia Focus provides a brief background on the development of cross-shareholding. The report also examines some of the ...
Journal Article
Executive equity compensation and incentives: a survey
Stock and option compensation and the level of managerial equity incentives are aspects of corporate governance that are especially controversial to shareholders, institutional activists, and government regulators. Similar to much of the corporate finance and corporate governance literature, research on stock-based compensation and incentives has not only generated useful insights, but also produced many contradictory findings. Not surprisingly, many fundamental questions remain unanswered. In this study, the authors synthesize the broad literature on equity-based compensation and executive ...
Newsletter
Common sense about executive stock options
Journal Article
The corporate governance of banks
The study argues that commercial banks pose unique corporate governance problems for managers and regulators as well as for claimants on the banks' cash flows, such as investors and depositors. The authors support the general principle that fiduciary duties should be owed exclusively to shareholders. However, in the special case of banks, they contend that the scope of the fiduciary duties and obligations of officers and directors should be broadened to include creditors. In particular, the authors call on bank directors to take solvency risk explicitly and systematically into account when ...
Working Paper
Information and voting power in the proxy process
We document shareholder support for wealth-decreasing changes in corporate governance in the form of antitakeover charter amendments. the enactment of these amendments is shown to be related to ownership structure. This gives rise to a sample selection bias that contaminates traditional event-study results and explains the discrepancy between our findings and those reported in previous studies. We also provide evidence that strategic behavior by managers plays a role in the adoption of these amendments.