Hand-collecting credit line drawdowns that firms classify as long-term debt, we first document how long-term drawdowns rise with high investment needs or weak external capital market conditions. Nearly all drawdown proceeds finance long-term investment, including M&A activity. Unrated and lower-rated firms rely more on long-term drawdowns than high or very poorly rated firms. We further find that credit lines have tighter covenants than terms loans. Drawdowns are repaid fairly quickly and often refinanced with other long-term debt. Our findings support the monitored liquidity insurance theory of credit lines and highlight that long-term drawdowns act as a valuable bridge financing mechanism.

In this study, we investigate whether and how trust between board members and the CEO (board–CEO trust) affects the performance of mergers and acquisitions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that firms with higher levels of board–CEO trust exhibit poor M&A performance. High trust is associated with low acquisition announcement returns, long-term stock return performance, and post-deal operating performance. This negative effect of board–CEO trust is more pronounced among acquiring companies prone to agency problems. Our results suggest that, in the institutional setting of corporate boards, high trust can be too much of a good thing.

Using a proprietary data set on international private equity activity, we study the determinants of buyout investments across 61 countries and 19 industries over the period of 1990 to 2017. We find that countries with cyclically strong economies, more active stock and credit markets, and better rule of law experience more buyout activity. Countries also receive more buyout capital following investor protection and contract enforcement reforms. The set of determinants we identify appear somewhat unique to buyout investments, because other forms of investment such as foreign direct investment, gross capital formation, investments in R&D, and M&A activity do not respond similarly to these factors.

Credit default swaps (CDSs) are a major financial innovation related to debt contracting. Because CDS markets facilitate bad news being incorporated into equity prices via cross-market information spillover, CDS availability may curb firms’ information hoarding. We find that CDS trading on a firm’s debt reduces the future stock price crash risk. This effect is stronger in active CDS markets, when the main lenders are CDS market dealers with securities trading subsidiaries, or when managers have more motivation to hoard information. Our findings suggest that debt market financial innovations curtail the negative equity market effects of firms withholding bad news.

By employing a dynamic model with two limit order books, we show that fragmentation is associated with reduced competition among liquidity suppliers and lower picking-off risk of limit orders. Due to these countervailing channels, the impact of fragmentation on liquidity and welfare differs with asset volatility: When volatility is high (low), liquidity and aggregate welfare in a fragmented market are higher (lower) than in a single market. However, fragmentation always shifts welfare away from agents with exogenous trading motives and toward intermediaries. We empirically corroborate our model’s predictions about liquidity. Our model reconciles the mixed results in the empirical literature.

We link equity and treasury bond markets via an informational channel. When macroeconomic state shifts are more probable, informed traders are more likely to have valid signals about fundamentals, so that uninformed traders are less willing to trade against informed ones. This implies low volume and high volatility, that is, a high volatility–volume ratio (VVR). Central banks react to state shifts, but their actions are uncertain. Therefore, a higher state shift likelihood implies larger bond risk premia. These arguments together imply that VVR should positively predict bond excess returns. We empirically test and confirm this prediction, both in- and out-of-sample.

Using a standardized methodology, we empirically evaluate 55 proposed determinants of capital structure in terms of statistical significance, economic significance, and identification. We find that robust and economically important determinants of debt ratios are relatively few in number. Nevertheless, because each determinant relates to one of five market imperfections—taxes, distress costs, information asymmetry, agency costs, or supply frictions—we draw conclusions from the evidence as a whole regarding the explanatory power of different capital structure theories. We find greater support for pecking order theory and supply-related theories, with less support for traditional tradeoff theory and agency theory.

I report evidence that shareholders holding a combined 15% of shares are inattentive or partially inattentive when confronted with the decision to receive cash or stock for their shares in acquisitions. The average cost of such inattention is 2%, and it increases to 6% for the tertile of transactions with the greatest difference between the cash and stock values. Most interestingly, I show that inattention affects stock prices because attentive shareholders bid up the stock price in anticipation of a wealth transfer from inattentive shareholders.

In this paper, we develop a Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) using a mean-lower partial moment framework. We explicitly derive the valuation formulas for the equilibrium value of risky assets and provide a distribution-free testable hypothesis for empirical validation of the new CAPM. We show the invariance of our results to the problem of estimation risk. We also show that when the probability distribution of security rer turns is the normal distribution, the stable Paretian distribution (with the same characteristic exponent between 1 and 2 and the same skewness parameter (not necessarily zero)), or the multivariate t-distribution, our CAPM reduces to the traditional two-parameter CAPM.

In their paper Messrs. Reilly and Slaughter set out two questions, namely:

1. Prior to the introduction of technological advance in the securities market was there any difference in the market making between the NYSE and OTC on a sample of 30 stocks?

2. Following that introduction what was the effect on the market making of these securities listed on the NYSE?

The authors clearly stated the basic economic theory that underlies this exchange of assets and the price setting mechanism, and then concentrated on the empirical study. Their findings are inconsistent with their a priori expectations. This empirical study is well done; the methodology is sound and well presented. However, the authors appear to have overlooked one vital aspect of this type of study, i.e., institutional effects. I shall concentrate upon this area.

Applied economics consists of the application of the general principles of economics to a particular situation in order to provide an explanation of the behavior of economic agents in that situation. However, the degree of specificity of any explanation depends upon the particular uses to which the explanation is to be put. Thus, in applied economics one may wish to explain the behavior of the agents who operate a particular enterprise. Or, one may wish to provide a. broader frame of reference to explain the behavior of agents who operate a. type or class of enterprises. By utilizing the analysis of the general economic theory of the firm one may introduce the additional constraints under which, for example, a public utility operates, and thereby derive a. theory of public utilities. Or, in the same way, one may wish to construct a, theory of transport firms, or a theory of retail firms, or a theory of manufacturing firms.

There are seven academic finance associations in the United States; two are considered to be national and five are identified as regional. The national organizations are the American Finance Association (AFA) and the Financial Management Association (FMA), and the regional associations are the Eastern Finance Association (EFA), Midwest Finance Association (MFA), Southern Finance Association (SFA), Southwestern Finance Association (SWFA), and the Western Finance Association (WFA).

Considerable attention has been focused in the past two decades on the substitutability of the liabilities of private nonmonetary financial intermediaries for money, narrowly defined as the sum of currency and demand deposits adjusted. Discussion concerning this topic related to the United States, and most of the empirical work has been confined to that country. The essential folklore of that discussion crossed the border into Canada and is now even reflected in its textbooks on Canadian money and banking. However, very little empirical work has been done in Canada to examine this lore.

Economists have long been creating models by which to describe optimum behavior for firms to maximize profits. The rigor and inclusiveness of such models have increased steadily in recent years. In the field of commercial banking, however, this has not generally been the case. Concerning the topic of asset management, the typical analyst discusses the decisions to be faced by the bank manager, the reasons for the problems involved, and considerations to include in the solution of such problems. Often, specific rules-of-thumb for the handling of individual asset accounts are advocated.

Models of security markets invariably assume that market participants act intelligently since any other assumption generally leads to absurd results. Schaefer's Comment makes the incorrect assumption that one market participant, namely the government, acts unintelligently by allowing investors to reap tax arbitrage profits. Consequently, the conclusions in the Comment are erroneous. As I will show below, a government can (and the U.S. Government does) prevent tax arbitrage and any resulting disequilibrium in the bond market through two simple tax rules. My earlier paper [1] primarily showed that bond price must be a linear function of coupon for any maturity under the assumption of constant tax brackets for all investors, and then suggested that a linear relationship will also hold with investors in different tax brackets. I will prove this last result below.

The substantial growth of the mutual fund industry during the last few years has attracted the attention of students of finance, economics, and public policy alike. Net assets managed by such funds have grown from approximately $450 million in 1940 to more than $38 billion by June of 1966. During 1965 the mutual fund industry funneled some $5. billion of new (primarily equity) funds into the capital markets; more than twice the $2. billion in new equity raised by all non-financial United States corporations during the year. Growth of the industry has not been uniform, however, but has been concentrated among a relatively small number of highly successful funds.

This paper utilizes a two-parameter model of segmented securities markets to develop equilibrium implications concerning the impact of statutory investment restrictions upon the market prices and allocation of risky securities. The distinguishing feature of the model is the existence of a subset of securities common to the opportunities of all investors and therefore said to “span” the investor population. These common opportunities are shown to permit intersubset security transactions which integrate the various market segments and lead to the following theorem and tendency concerning equilibrium prices and portfolios:

Theorem: In the absence of active barriers against short positions, the equilibrium expected return for any security spanning the investor population is an exact linear function of its contribution to total market risk, irrespective of the number of distinct investor segments that may exist.

Tendency: The economic characteristics of the equilibrium risky portfolio for any investor, irrespective of the market segment to which he or she may belong, will approximate the characteristics of the market portfolio of all risky assets in the economy in all relevant risk dimensions.

A student of financial theory must always assume that managers will follow a course of action that will lead to a higher value of the firm rather than a lower value, given a choice between two courses of action. Yet, Lewellen and Racette (hereafter LR) in a recent paper [1] comparing the sale of convertible debentures with the sale of straight debt assumed that managers will behave in a way that will lead to submaximal firm value. The purpose of this paper is to correct the LR error.