Myers (1977) described how firms can gamble using asset substitution, which is switching to a less efficient and more volatile project. Gambling using derivatives is a sharper instrument, allowing the owners to gamble just to what is needed, and with negligible efficiency loss. In our model,...

Campbell and Shiller’s “accounting identity” implies that the log dividend-price ratio (LDPR) predicts either returns or dividend growths, but neither is significantly predictable, a well-known puzzle. Existence of the long-term mean LDPR is an important assumption behind the accounting...

We extend Cass and Stiglitz's analysis of preference-based mutual fund separation. We provide a complete characterization of the general K-fund separation. We show that some instances of separation with many funds can be constructed by adding inverse marginal utility functions having separation...

Stephen A. Ross was one of the most influential scholars in the field of financial economics in the late twentieth century. Ross's work was central to several novel domains of economic inquiry. His contributions included the arbitrage pricing theory (APT), the risk-neutral pricing of contingent...

Tobin's q is often used to proxy for firm performance when studying the relation between corporate governance and firm performance. However, our theoretical and empirical analysis demonstrate that Tobin's q does not measure firm performance since underinvestment increases rather than decreases...

Hart proved the difficulty of deriving general comparative statics in portfolio weights. Instead, we derive new comparative statics for the distribution of payoffs: A is less risk averse than B iff A's payoff is always distributed as B's payoff plus a non-negative random variable plus...

Disclosure by firms would seem to reduce the informational asymmetry that is a cause of investment inefficiency in firms. However, the effect of disclosure is subtle, especially when the link between disclosure and firm value is endogenous and depends on incentives within the firm. We analyze...

We build a simple economic model of optimal casualty insurance based on a story about insuring a house. With endogenous repair and a securities market that is complete over states distinguished by security payoffs, we have three main findings in our base model with additively separable...

Retirement flexibility and inability to borrow against future labor income can significantly affect optimal consumption and investment. With voluntary retirement, there exists an optimal wealth-towage ratio threshold for retirement and human capital correlates negatively with the stock market...

The evaluation and compensation of portfolio managers is an important problem for practitioners. Optimal compensation will induce managers to expend effort to generate information and to use it appropriately in an informed portfolio choice. Our general model points the way towards analysis of...

The literature traditionally assumes that a portfolio manager who expends costly effort to generate information makes an unrestricted portfolio choice and is paid according to a sharing rule. However, the revelation principle provides a more efficient institution. If credible communication of...

The evaluation and compensation of portfolio managers is an important problem for practitioners. Optimal compensation will induce managers to expend effort to generate information and to use it appropriately in an informed portfolio choice. Our general model points the way towards analysis of...

The literature traditionally assumes that a portfolio manager who expends costly effort to generate information makes an unrestricted portfolio choice and is paid according to a sharing rule. However, the revelation principle provides a more efficient institution. If credible communication of...

Traditional mean-variance calculations tell us that the return to a well-diversified portfolio of stocks with an average beta of one will be close to the benchmark. This may suggest that an active manager seeking to beat the market cannot succeed with a large diversified portfolio, and that any...

The literature traditionally assumes that a portfolio manager who expends costly effort to generate information makes an unrestricted portfolio choice and is paid according to a sharing rule. However, the revelation principle provides a more efficient institution. If credible communication of...

Which is better for a small firm: debt financing or equity financing? A simple intertemporal model suggests that the two have very different potential incentive problems. With equity financing, the manager (an employee) may expend too little effort, while with debt financing, the manager (the...

Damage measures in securities fraud cases are very imprecise because they are based on security price changes that reflect both the correction of previous misrepresentation and other independent information. Consequently, potential plaintiffs have a valuable quot;free optionquot; to decide...

In this paper we analyze the optimal contract for a portfolio manager who can exert effort to improve the quality of a private signal about future market prices. We assume complete markets over states distinguished by asset payoffs and place no restrictions on the form of the contract. We show...

Many directors are not simply insiders or outsiders. For example, an officer of a supplier is neither independent nor captive of management. We use a spatial model of board decision-making to analyze bargaining among multiple types of directors. Board decisions are modeled using a new solution...

Controversy about the fairness of early transitions from traditional defined-benefit plans to cash-balance plans may have overshadowed the subtleties of funding a cash-balance pension liability. Because crediting rates of cash-balance liabilities float with market rates, the same techniques used...

Analysis of absence of arbitrage normally ignores payoffs in states to which the agent assigns zero probability. We extend the Fundamental Theorem of Asset Pricing to the case of quot;no empty promisesquot; in which the agent cannot promise arbitrarily large payments in some states. There is a...

Analysis of absence of arbitrage normally ignores payoffs in a set of states to which the agent assigns zero probability. However, bankruptcy and limited resources make it impossible for a trader to make large promises in a state the trader believes to be impossible if the market considers that...

In frictionless markets having no arbitrage, the asymptotic zero-coupon rate never falls. The same is true of the long forward rate. The long par-coupon rate can rise and fall due to forward rate movements at short maturities. This paper relates the three types of interest rate and formalizes...

Portfolio turnpike theorems show that if preferences at large wealth levels are similar to power utility, then the investment strategy converges to the power utility strategy as the horizon increases. We state and prove two simple and general portfolio turnpike theorems. Unlike existing...

Von Neumann-Morgenstern preferences over terminal consumption can be inferred from wealth on a single sample path when markets are complete and returns follow a known law in a neoclassical investment problem in either a discrete-time i.i.d. binomial model or a continuous-time diffusion model...