We estimate the debt capacity of a firm as the critical debt ratio that causes a downgrade in creditworthiness. Unused debt capacities depict the temporal access to external debt funds and measure a firm's financial flexibility. Firms with high unused debt capacities realize a larger fraction of...

We study the effect of the business cycle on optimal capital structure choice and the benefit to leverage. We propose a regime switching model with a state-dependent cash flow process to capture macroeconomic risk in a firm's cash flow. Our model is parsimonious but still realistic and allows...

Bayesian learning provides the core concept of processing noisy information. In standard Bayesian frameworks, assessing the price impact of information requires perfect knowledge of news' precision. In practice, however, precision is rarely dis- closed. Therefore, we extend standard Bayesian...

Reliable estimates of variances and covariances are crucial for portfolio management and risk controlling. This paper investigates alternative methods to estimate time varying variance-covariance matrices: ordinary estimates and exponentially weighted moving averages in comparison to Markov...

We study the impact of the arrival of macroeconomic news on the informational and noise-driven components in high-frequency quote processes and their conditional variances. Bid and ask returns are decomposed into a common ('efficient return') factor and two market-side-specific components...

We document that investors can actually profit from the contemporaneous link between earnings accuracy and recommendation profitability (Loh and Mian (2006)). Differentiating between 'able' and 'lucky' analysts we suggest an implementable, i.e. look-ahead bias free, trading strategy that yields...

Several studies indicate that stock option plans are becoming more and more a substantial part of compensation schemes in U.S. companies. This paper shows the tax implications and accounting rules for stock option plans. By comparison of the tax and accounting rules for different compensation...

This paper delineates the simultaneous impact of non-anticipated information on first and second moments of the intraday price process by including appropriate variables accounting for the news flow into both the mean and the variance function. This allows us to differentiate between the...

Residual income valuation is based on the assumption that the clean surplus relation holds. As pointed out by Ohlson (2000), among others, the standard clean surplus relation is frequently violated. Moreover, standard residual income valuation models rest on the implicit assumption that future...

It is well known that information arrival has an impact on prices volatility, and trading volume in financial markets (see e.g., Goodhart and O?Hara 1997). Scheduled macroeconomic announcements, such as monthly employment figures, consumer prices, or building permits, stand out from the steady...