Though much of the narrative of the financial crisis has focused on the impact of a bank credit supply shock, we show that such a shock cannot explain important features of the financial and investment policies of industrial firms. These features are consistent with a dominant role for the...

In Boyson, Stahel, and Stulz (2010), we investigate whether hedge funds experience worst return contagion-- that is, correlations in extremely poor returns that are over and above those expected from economic fundamentals. We find strong evidence of contagion among hedge funds using eight...

When the transitory component of the stochastic discount factors (SDFs) prices the long-term bond, and the permanent component prices other assets, we develop lower bounds on the variance of the permanent component and the transitory component, and on the variance of the ratio of the permanent...

The disposition effect (greater realization of winners than losers) is often taken as proof that investors have an inherent preference for realizing winners over losers. In contrast, we find that the disposition effect is not primarily driven by realization preference. The probability of selling...

Do macroeconomic conditions affect firms' abilities to raise capital? If so, how do they affect the manner in which the capital is raised? We address these questions using a large sample of publicly-traded debt issues, seasoned equity offers, bank loans and private placements of equity and debt....

We find evidence consistent with the view that $1 CEO salaries are a ruse hiding the rentseeking pursuits of CEOs adopting these pay schemes. CEOs with these arrangements, despite the drastic cuts in salary, have total compensation that is similar to that at other firms, making up lost salary...

During the past two decades, there has been a dramatic change in IPO activity around the world. Though vibrant IPO activity, attributed to better institutions and governance, used to be a strength of the U.S., it no longer is. IPO activity in the U.S. has fallen compared to the rest of the world...

We investigate whether a bank's performance during the 1998 crisis, which was viewed at the time as the most dramatic crisis since the Great Depression, predicts its performance during the recent financial crisis. One hypothesis is that a bank that has an especially poor experience in a crisis...

Large institutional investors own an increasing share of equity markets in the U.S. The implications of this development for financial markets are still unclear. The paper presents novel empirical evidence that ownership by large institutions predicts higher volatility and greater noise in stock...