Search Results
Working Paper
Concentrated shareholdings and the number of outside analysts
Assuming some fixed cost to information acquisition, diffuse shareholders in publicly held firms have little incentive to produce information that can substitute for the services of financial analysts. However, we argue that concentrated shareholdings, either by outsiders like institutions or by inside managers, reduce the demand for analyst services. The former group finds it worthwhile to produce its own information and avoid any moral hazard problems associated with analyst forecasts, while the concentration of shareholdings by insiders reduces the moral hazard problem associated with ...
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
A survey of blockholders and corporate control
The author surveys the empirical literature on large-percentage shareholders in public corporations, focusing on four key issues: the prevalence of blockholders; the motivation for block ownership; the effect of blockholders on executive compensation, leverage, the incidence of takeovers, and a wide range of corporate decisions; and the effect of blockholders on firm value. A central finding of this study is that there is little reason for policymakers or small investors to fear large-percentage shareholders in general, especially when the blockholders are active in firm management.
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 ...
Conference Paper
Are hostile takeovers different?
Conference Paper
Board interdependence
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.
Journal Article
Transparency, financial accounting information, and corporate governance
Audited financial statements along with supporting disclosures form the foundation of the firm-specific information set available to investors and regulators. In this article, the authors discuss economics-based research focused on the properties of accounting systems and the surrounding institutional environment important to effective governance of firms. They provide a framework for understanding the operation of accounting information in an economy, discuss a broad range of important research findings, present a conceptual framework for characterizing and measuring corporate transparency ...
Report
Are bank shareholders enemies of regulators or a potential source of market discipline?
In moral hazard models, bank shareholders have incentives to transfer wealth from the deposit insurer--that is, maximize put option value--by pursuing riskier strategies. For safe banks with large charter value, however, the risk-taking incentive is outweighed by the possibility of losing charter value. Focusing on the relationship between book value, market value, and a risk measure, this paper develops a semi-parametric model for estimating the critical level of bank risk at which put option value starts to dominate charter value. From these estimates, we infer the extent to which the ...