type="main" <title type="main">ABSTRACT</title> <p>We offer the first empirical evidence on the adverse effect of credit default swap (CDS) coverage on subprime mortgage defaults. Using a large database of privately securitized mortgages, we find that higher defaults concentrate in mortgage pools with concurrent CDS...</p>

Evidence indicates that people fear change and the unknown. We model this behavior as familiarity bias in which individuals focus on adverse scenarios in evaluating defections from the status quo. The model explains portfolio underdiversification, home and local biases. More importantly,...

This paper offers a rational explanation for the puzzling empirical fact that stock returns decrease with an increase in the volatility of liquidity. We model liquidity as a stochastic price impact process and define the liquidity premium as the additional return necessary to compensate a...

We show that firms with the least elastic demand for equity capital should benefit the most from reductions in shareholder taxes. Consistent with this prediction, we find that, following 1997 and 2003 cuts in U.S. individual shareholder taxes, financially constrained firms, and particularly...

We examine how financial theory and economic principles offer guidance and predictions about the organization of investments and asset allocation decisions given the structure of taxes in estate--planning situations. We provide insight about many of the conventional approaches to estate planning...

In this study, we assess practice changes made in response to the threat of tort liability in the field of obstetrics, which has one of the highest levels of premiums, claim frequency, and mean dollar value of paid claims. There is much "conventional wisdom" about effects of tort liability risk...