This article proposes a new approach to evaluate contagion in financial markets. Our measure of contagion captures the coincidence of extreme return shocks across countries within a region and across regions. We characterize the extent of contagion, its economic significance, and its...

Firms conduct SEOs to resolve a near-term liquidity squeeze, and not primarily to exploit market timing opportunities. Without the SEO proceeds, 62.6% of issuers would have insufficient cash to implement their chosen operating and non-SEO financing decisions the year after the SEO. Although the...

We investigate whether domestic investors have an edge over foreign investors in trading domestic stocks. Using Korean data, we show that foreign money managers pay more than domestic money managers when they buy and receive less when they sell for medium and large trades. The sample average...

This paper discusses the extent to which derivatives pose threats to firms and to the economy. After reviewing the derivatives markets and putting in perspective the various measures of the size of these markets, the paper shows who uses derivatives and why. The difficulties firms face in...

Despite the dramatic reduction in explicit barriers to international investment activity over the last 60 years, the impact of financial globalization has been surprisingly limited. I argue that country attributes are still critical to financial decision-making because of "twin agency problems"...

Using segment information from Compustat, we find that the investment by a segment of a diversified firm depends on the cash flow of the firm's other segments, but significantly less than it depends on its own cash flow. The investment by segments of highly diversified firms is less sensitive to...

As barriers to international investment fall and technology improves, the cost advantages for a firm's securities to trade publicly in the country in which that firm is located and for that country to have a market for publicly traded securities distinct from the capital markets of other...

This paper examines whether analysts resident in a country make more precise earnings forecasts for firms in that country than non-resident analysts. Using a sample of 32 countries, we find an economically and statistically significant local analyst advantage even after controlling for firm and...

Acquiring-firm shareholders lost 12 cents around acquisition announcements per dollar spent on acquisitions for a total loss of $240 billion from 1998 through 2001, whereas they lost $7 billion in all of the 1980s, or 1.6 cents per dollar spent. The 1998 to 2001 aggregate dollar loss of...