How public pension plan assets should be invested is an important but unsettled question. Some observers endorse the standard practice of investing heavily in higher yielding but riskier equities, reasoning that the higher average returns will reduce future required tax receipts and also help to...

It is well-documented that stock prices rise significantly prior to an equity issue, and fall upon announcement of the issue. We expand on earlier studies by using a large sample which includes OTC firms, by examining the cross-sectional properties of the price rise, and by using accounting data...

The link between the real and financial decisions of firms has been studied for many years, yet it remains poorly understood. Neoclassical investment theories such as Tobin's q posit a direct, simple link between the market's valuation of the firm and investment decisions: firms invest when the...

This paper develops a formal model of the timing and pricing of new equity issues, assuming that managers are better informed than new investors about the quality of the firm. Firms will prefer to issue equity when the market is most informed about the quality of the firm. This implies that...

Banks know more about the quality of their assets than do outside investors. This informational asymmetry can distort investment decisions if the bank must raise funds from uninformed outsiders, and assets sold will be subject to a lemons discount. Using a three-period equilibrium model we...

We examine asset prices and consumption patterns in a model in which agents face both aggregate and idiosyncratic income shocks, and insurance markets are incomplete. Agents reduce consumption variability by trading in a stock and bond market to offset idiosyncratic shocks, but transactions...

With time-varying adverse selection in the market for new equity issues, firms will prefer to issue equity when the market is most informed about the quality of the firm. This implies that equity issues tend to follow credible information releases. In addition, if the asymmetry in information...

This paper develops a formal model of the effect of time-varying asymmetric information on the timing and pricing of equity issues when managers are better informed than outside investors. We assume that as time passes, the adverse selection problem becomes more severe as more managers receive a...