We study the use of “heartbeat trades” by ETFs in explaining their superior tax efficiency. By relying on the in-kind-redemption exemption rule, authorized participants help ETFs avoid distributing realized capital gains and reduce their tax overhang. In recent years, ETFs end up with 0.92%...

Mergers and acquisitions in the Telecommunications industry have become a distinctive trend of the U.S. economy, with steady consolidation of carriers to head off or take on the competition. While the wealth effects of mergers have been extensively analyzed in prior literature, previous studies...

This paper studies the interaction between governance mechanisms and the effectiveness of shareholder activism by examining shareholder-initiated proposals on poison pills. After contrasting companies along their governance regime, we observe that dictatorship firms, characterized with higher...

The first essay finds that the market betas of value and small stocks have decreased by about 75% in the second half of the twentieth century. The decline in beta can be related to a long-term improvement in economic conditions that made these companies less risky. The failure to account for...

This is the first study to show evidence of liquidity risk in private equity returns.Our data contains cash flows for 4,403 liquidated investments, which are both successfuland unsuccessful, reducing sample selection bias to a minimum. We find that a onestandarddeviation positive shock in...

When risk-factor loadings are time-varying and unobservable, investors are forced to form beliefs about the levels of their loadings. The learning process involved in forming these beliefs has normative implications for asset-pricing tests. This paper develops an equilibrium model of learning...

Private equity has traditionally been thought to provide diversification benefits. However, these benefits may be lower than anticipated as we find that private equity suffers from significant exposure to the same liquidity risk factor as public equity and other alternative asset classes. The...

We provide a rational model of capital allocation to projects with uncertain exposure to a systematic risk factor. We show that signal-to-noise ratios are highest when the factor realization is close to zero. As a result, investors redirect more resources across projects during these times. This...