This study examines the effect of corporate liquidity and investor protection on the relation between financial distress and equity returns using a European sample over the 2002-2016 period. The results show that returns are hump-shaped and decreasing for increasing default risk. This can be rationalized by corporate liquidity indicating that higher cash holdings decrease liquidity risk. Moreov...

Empirical evidence suggests that the voting premium in the Korean securities market is strongly related to the structure of corporate ownership. We find that the premium attached to voting stock is positively and significantly associated with the control value of a block of shares held by minority shareholders. We also find that the premium is negatively related to both the fraction of shares t...

We construct a Risk Management Index (RMI) to measure the strength and independence of the risk management function at bank holding companies (BHCs). U.S. BHCs with higher RMI before the onset of the financial crisis have lower tail risk, lower non-performing loans, and better operating and stock return performance during the financial crisis years. Over the period 1995 to 2010, BHCs with a hig...

The article studies how takeover defenses influence managerial incentives with respect to long term investments, excess liquidity and the amount of debt relative to equity. The article conducts a cross-sectional regression based on a sample of Danish listed firms, dealing explicitly with the problem of causation between the variables. Takeover defenses adopted by Danish firms mainly consist of ...

We study how organizational complexity affects managerial behavior, breaking it down into vertical hierarchy and degree of specialization. We exploit a novel dataset on the organizational structure of the US asset management industry. We show that more hierarchical structures reduce the incentive to collect soft information by investing less in closely-located firms. This reduces portfolio conc...

We provide a model for a futures clearinghouse to use for setting optimal levels of clearing margin, capital and price limits, which minimizes the costs to clearing firms and simultaneously protects the clearinghouse from default by clearing firms. We show how to estimate the capital requirement, which supports the clearinghouse s residual default risk that is not covered by the clearing margin...

We propose a measure of systemic risk, ∆CoVaR, defined as the change in the value at risk of the financial system conditional on an institution being under distress relative to its median state. Our estimates show that characteristics such as leverage, size, maturity mismatch, and asset price booms significantly predict ∆CoVaR. We also provide out-of-sample forecasts of a countercyclical, forwa...

This paper offers a model of credit markets with adverse selection and moral hazard. The equilibrium is highly inefficient, and the underlying reason is the zeroprofit condition imposed by competing financial intermediaries which gives very high powered incentives to entrepreneurs. The paper demonstrates that when entrepreneurs can hire a manager to run their projects, the inefficiencies are pr...

We develop an agency model of financial contracting. We derive long-term debt, a line of credit, and equity as optimal securities, capturing the debt coupon and maturity; the interest rate and limits on the credit line; inside versus outside equity; dividend policy; and capital structure dynamics. The optimal debt-equity ratio is history dependent, but debt and credit line terms are independent...

Marital status can both reflect and affect individual preferences. We explore the impact of marriage on corporate CEOs, and find that firms run by single CEOs exhibit higher stock return volatility, pursue more aggressive investment policies, and do not respond to changes in idiosyncratic risk. These effects are weaker for older CEOs. Our findings continue to hold when we use variation in divor...