This paper compares investor sentiment measures based on consumer confidence surveys with measures extracted from the closed-end fund discount (CEFD). Our evidence suggests that these two kinds of sentiment measures do not correlate well with one another. For a short 2 - 4 year period in which...

This paper shows that firms engage in less M&A activity when they have large public pension fund (PPF) owners. For example, the presence of a 5% PPF blockholder reduces the frequency of acquisitions by about 7%. An extra 3% in ownership by the top PPF owner reduces the size of acquisition...

This paper shows that the presence of large public pension fund shareholders particularly reduces acquisitions by cash-rich and low-q firms, and by firms seeking to ``buy growth'', after controlling for ownership endogeneity, firm-level governance structure, and other firm characteristics. When...

Our model assumes that creditors need to expend resources to collect on claims. Consequently, because diffuse creditors suffer from mutual free-riding (Holmstrom (1982)), they fare worse than concentrated creditors (e.g. a house bank). The model predicts that measures of debt concentration...