Conservative financial policies are often criticized as serving the interests of managers rather than the interests of stockholders. We test this argument by examining the operating performance and other characteristics of firms that for a five-year period held more than one-fourth of their assets in cash and cash equivalents. Following the five-year period, operating performance of high cash firms is comparable to or greater than the performance of firms matched by size and industry or by a measure of proclivity to hold substantial cash. In addition, proxies for managerial incentive problems, such as ownership and board characteristics, are not unusual and do not explain differences in operating performance among high cash firms. We find that high cash holdings are accompanied by greater investment, particularly R&D expenditures, and by greater growth in assets. For firms that persistently hold large cash reserves, we conclude that such policies support investment without hindering corporate performance.

This paper evaluates a nonparametric sign test for abnormal security price performance in event studies. The sign test statistic examined here does not require a symmetrical distribution of security excess returns for correct specification. Sign test performance is compared to a parametric t-test and a nonparametric rank test. Simulations with daily security return data show that the sign test is better specified under the null hypothesis and often more powerful under the alternative hypothesis than a t-test. The performance of the sign test is dominated by the performance of a rank test, however, indicating that the rank test is preferable to the sign test in obtaining nonparametric inferences concerning abnormal security price performance in event studies.

International asset pricing models suggest that barriers to portfolio flows and availability of market substitutes affect the degree and time variation of world market integration. We use GARCH-in-mean methodology to assess the evolution in market integration for eight emerging markets over the period 1977–2000. Our results suggest that while local risk is still a relevant factor in explaining time variation of emerging market returns, none of the countries appear to be completely segmented. We find that there are substantial crossmarket differences in the degree of integration. The evolution toward more integrated financial markets is apparent although at times we do observe reversals. In addition, we provide clear evidence on the impropriety of directly using correlations of market-wide index returns as a measure of market integration. Finally, financial market development and financial liberalization policies play important roles in integrating emerging markets.

We demonstrate that personal political preferences of corporate managers influence corporate policies. Specifically, Republican managers who are likely to have conservative personal ideologies adopt and maintain more conservative corporate policies. Those firms have lower levels of corporate debt, lower capital and research and development (R&D) expenditures, less risky investments, but higher profitability. Using the 9/11 terrorist attacks and Sept. 2008 Lehman Brothers bankruptcy as natural experiments, we demonstrate that investment policies of Republican managers became more conservative following these exogenous uncertainty-increasing events. Furthermore, around chief executive officer (CEO) turnovers, including CEO deaths, firm leverage policy becomes more conservative when managerial conservatism increases.

We examine announcement period abnormal returns to acquirers of listed and unlisted targets in 17 Western European countries over the interval 1996–2001. Acquirers of listed targets earn an insignificant average abnormal return of –0.38%, while acquirers of unlisted targets earn a significant average abnormal return of 1.48%. This listing effect in acquirers' returns persists through time and across countries and remains after controlling for the method of payment for the target, the acquirer's size and Tobin's Q, pre-announcement leakage of information about the transaction, whether the acquisition created a blockholder in the acquirer's ownership structure, whether the acquisition was a cross-border deal, and other variables. The fundamental factors that give rise to this listing effect, which has also been documented in U.S. acquisitions, remain elusive.

This paper examines the valuation impacts of outside independent directors in Korea, where a regulation requiring outside directors was instituted after the Asian financial crisis. In contrast to studies of U.S. firms, the effects of independent directors on firm performance are strongly positive. Foreigners also have positive impacts. The effects of indigenous institutions such as chaebol or family control are insignificant or negative. This implies that the effect of outsiders depends on board composition as well as the nature of the market in which the firm operates.

Unlike previous studies, this paper finds a consistent and highly significant relationship between beta and cross-sectional portfolio returns. The key distinction between our tests and previous tests is the recognition that the positive relationship between returns and beta predicted by the Sharpe-Lintner-Black model is based on expected rather than realized returns. In periods where excess market returns are negative, an inverse relationship between beta and portfolio returns should exist. When we adjust for the expectations concerning negative market excess returns, we find a consistent and significant relationship between beta and returns for the entire sample, for subsample periods, and for data divided by months in a year. Separately, we find support for a positive payment for beta risk.

We show that a well-diversified portfolio of randomly chosen stocks must include at least 30 stocks for a borrowing investor and 40 stocks for a lending investor. This contradicts the widely accepted notion that the benefits of diversification are virtually exhausted when a portfolio contains approximately 10 stocks. We also contrast our result with the levels of diversification found in studies of individuals' portfolios.

This paper examines the characteristics and pricing of stocks that are actively traded by speculative retail investors. We find that stocks with high retail trading proportion (RTP) have strong lottery features and they attract retail investors with strong gambling propensity. Furthermore, these stocks tend to be overpriced and earn significantly negative alpha. The average monthly return differential between the extreme RTP quintiles is −0.60%. This negative RTP premium is stronger among stocks that have lottery features or arelocated in regions where people exhibit stronger gambling propensity. Collectively, these results indicate that speculative retail trading affects stock prices.

This paper examines the profitability of momentum strategies implemented on international stock market indices. Our results indicate statiscally significant evidence of momentum profits. The momentum profits arise mainly from time-series predictability in stock market indices—very little profit comes from predictability in the currency markets. We also find higher profits for momentum portfolios implemented on markets with higher volume in the previous period, indicating that return continuation is stronger following an increase in trading volume. This result confirms the informational role of volume and its applicability in technical analysis.

We investigate the relative importance of various factors in explaining the volatility skew observed in the prices of stock options traded on the Chicago Board Options Exchange. The skewness of the risk-neutral density implied by individual stock option prices tends to be more negative for stocks that have larger betas, suggesting that market risk is important in pricing individual stock options. Also, implied skewness tends to be more negative in periods of high market volatility, and when the risk-neutral density for index options is more negatively skewed. Other firm-specific factors, including firm size and trading volume a so help explain cross-sectional variation in skewness. However, we find no robust relationship between skewness and the firm's leverage. Nor do we find evidence that skewness is related to the put/call ratio, which may be viewed as a proxy for trading pressure or market sentiment. Overall, firm-specific factors seem to be more important than systematic factors in explaining the variation in the skew for individual firms.

Corporate risk hedging with forward contracts increases value by reducing incentives to underinvest. This occurs because the hedge decreases the sensitivity of senior claim value to incremental investment, allowing equity holders to capture a larger portion of the incremental benefit from new investment. Hedging also allows the firm to credibly commit to meet obligations in states where it otherwise could not, which improves contract terms the firm can negotiate with customers, creditors, and managers. These benefits cannot be duplicated by individual hedging, and each result holds independent of agents' risk preferences.

This paper compares different approaches to developing arbitrage-free models of the term structure. It presents a numerical procedure that can be used to construct a wide range of one-factor models of the short rate that are both Markov and consistent with the initial term structure of interest rates.

This paper documents significantly negative stock price reactions to shareholder-initiated class action lawsuits. We find that shareholders partially anticipate these lawsuits based on lawsuit filings against other firms in the same industry and capitalize part of these losses prior to a lawsuit filing date. We show that the more likely a firm is to be sued, the larger the partial anticipation effect (shareholder losses capitalized prior to a lawsuit filing date) and the smaller the filing date effect (shareholder losses measured on the lawsuit filing date). Our evidence suggests that previous research that typically focuses on the filing date effect understates the magnitude of shareholder losses, and that such an understatement is greater for firms with a higher likelihood of being sued.

A new asset pricing model that generalizes earlier results in the downside risk literature is developed and empirically tested using a multivariate approach. By specifying risk as deviations below any arbitrary target rate of return, the generalized Mean-Lower Partial Moment (MLPM) model overcomes the limited appeal of earlier formulations, and, moreover, a large class of extant pricing models using alternative risk measures (variance, semivariance, semideviation, probability of loss, etc.) becomes special cases of the new framework. Empirical tests indicate that the new model cannot be rejected against an unspecified alternative for a large set of target rates of return. The traditional CAPM, on the other hand, is rejected as a well-specified alternative. The MLPM target rates inferred from market data appear to be related to equity market mean returns rather than to the riskfree rate, the target rate that is implicit in the CAPM and explicit in earlier downside risk formulations.

Neuroeconomics research shows that brain areas that generate emotional states also process information about risk, rewards, and punishments, suggesting that emotions influence financial decisions in a predictable and parsimonious way. We find that positive emotional states such as excitement induce people to take risks and to be confident in their ability to evaluate investment options, while negative emotions such as anxiety have the opposite effects. Beliefs are updated so as to maintain a positive emotional state by ignoring information that contradicts individuals’ prior choices. Marketplace features or outcomes of past choices may change emotions and thus influence future financial decisions.

An algorithm is described that prices European average options. The algorithm is tested against Monte Carlo estimates and is shown to be accurate. The speed of the algorithm is comparable to the Black-Scholes algorithm. A closed-form solution is derived for European geometric average options.

Financial expertise among independent directors of U.S. banks is positively associated with balance-sheet and market-based measures of risk in the run-up to the 2007–2008 financial crisis. While financial expertise is weakly associated with better performance before the crisis, it is strongly related to lower performance during the crisis. Overall, the results are consistent with independent directors with financial expertise supporting increased risk taking prior to the crisis. Despite being consistent with shareholder value maximization ex ante, these actions become detrimental during the crisis. These results are not driven by powerful chief executive officers who select independent financial experts to rubber stamp strategies that satisfy their risk appetite.

When portfolio optimization is implemented using the historical characteristics of security returns, estimation error can degrade the desirable properties of the investment portfolio that is selected. Given the problem of estimation risk, it is natural to formulate rules of portfolio selection within a Bayesian framework. In this framework, portfolio selection is based on maximization of expected utility conditioned on the predictive distribution of security returns. Most researchers have addressed the problem of estimation risk by asserting a noninformative diffuse prior that reduces the detrimental effect of estimation risk, but does not directly reduce estimation error. Portfolio performance can be improved by specifying an informative prior that reduces estimation error. An informative prior that all securities have identical expected returns, variances, and pairwise correlation coefficients is asserted. This informative prior reduces estimation error by drawing the posterior estimates of each security's expected return, variance, and pairwise correlation coefficients toward the average return, average variance, and average correlation coefficient, respectively, of all the securities in the population. The amount that each of these parameters is drawn toward its grand mean depends upon the degree to which the sample is consistent with the informative prior. This empirical Bayes method is shown to select portfolios whose performance is superior to that achieved, given the assumption of a noninformative prior or by using classical sample estimates.

We present evidence suggesting that chief executive officer (CEO) connections facilitate investments in corporate innovation. We find that firms with better-connected CEOs invest more in research and development and receive more and higher quality patents. Further tests suggest that this effect stems from two characteristics of personal networks that alleviate CEO risk aversion in investment decisions. First, personal connections increase the CEO’s access to relevant network information, which encourages innovation by helping to identify, evaluate, and exploit innovative ideas. Second, personal connections provide the CEO with labor market insurance that facilitates investments in risky innovation by mitigating the career concerns inherent in such investments.