1,720,984 research outputs found

    Bondholder concentration and credit risk: evidence from a natural experiment

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    We exploit the impact of hurricane Katrina on insurance companies to study the relationship between bondholder concentration and credit risk. Redemption-driven sales by property and casualty (re)insurance companies exposed to hurricane Katrina are associated with a large drop in bondholder concentration faced by corporate bond issuers. Exploiting this shock to capture exogenous variation in bondholder concentration, we find that greater bondholder concentration is associated with higher bond yield spreads, as well as with firm characteristics associated with credit risk

    Are buybacks good for long-term shareholder value? evidence from buybacks around the world

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    Using a sample of over 9,000 buyback announcements from 31 non-U.S. countries, we find support for the results of studies based on U.S. data: on average, share repurchases are associated with significant positive short-term and long-term excess returns. However, excess returns depend on the likelihood of undervaluation, the efficiency and liquidity of equity markets, and the popularity of stock option compensation. In contrast to findings in U.S. markets, we do not find that these long-term excess returns are simply a compensation for takeover risk or have become less significant in recent years

    A servant to many masters: Competing shareholders preferences and limits to catering

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    We study what determines catering through the payout policy and how catering affects firm value. We create a catering index, measuring how the firm caters to its investors’ payout preferences. The index is based on the revealed payout preferences of mutual funds holding the firm’s stocks. Catering is constrained by market segmentation and dispersion in investor payout preferences. It is also associated with positive value effects: Firms increasing their catering index also experience an increase in value. Furthermore, greater catering ability is associated with a more positive market reaction to corporate announcements of equity issues and dividend payouts

    The value of financial intermediation: evidence from online debt crowdfunding

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    Most online marketplaces are peer-to-peer. Credit ones, however, are not and they have resurrected many features of traditional financial intermediaries. To understand why, we use online credit as a laboratory to investigate the value of financial intermediation. We develop a structural model of online debt crowdfunding and estimate it on a novel database. We find that abandoning the peer-to-peer paradigm raises lender surplus, platform profits, and credit provision, but exposes investors to liquidity risk. A counterfactual where the platform resembles a bank by bearing liquidity risk can generate larger lender surplus and credit provision when liquidity is low and lenders are risk averse

    The Informational Role of Corporate Hedging

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    We study the informational role of corporate hedging, comparing two hypotheses. Under the "opacity" hypothesis, corporate hedging makes earnings less informative, renders the firm opaque, and increases informed traders' profitability. Under the "transparency" hypothesis, hedging reduces uncertainty and erodes the informed traders' information advantage and profitability. Our tests support the transparency hypothesis. Hedging is associated with lower uncertainty (lower implied volatility and analyst forecast dispersion, and greater breadth of ownership). It is also associated with a lower informed trading intensity, in particular for short selling. Short selling profits are more than twice lower on the stocks of firms engaging in corporate hedging

    Cross-border alliances and risk management

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    We study U.S. firms' foreign expansion choices, and investigate alliances as risk management devices used to mitigate partner risk. Firms venturing abroad are constrained by the availability of potential partners. One set of partners are foreign companies the firm shares the venture with (direct partners). The second set of partners is the institutions/government of the host country (indirect partners). Firms are more likely to choose alliances (over M&As) when indirect (direct) partner risk is high (low). The sensitivity to direct partner risk varies in the cross-section, and is weakened by financial constraints and greater ease of monitoring foreign partners

    Household credit and regulatory arbitrage: evidence from online marketplace lending

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    We study the relationship between new intermediaries and regulatory arbitrage, analyzing marketplace credit around a tightening of mortgage loan-to-value (LTV) caps in several cities in China in 2013. Using novel data covering over 20\% of Chinese marketplace credit as well as the universe of loans and loan applications at a leading online lending platform, we provide evidence consistent with home buyers borrowing online to bypass the tighter LTV cap. Our findings point to new, lightly regulated financial intermediaries as a driver of household leverage, suggesting that they can open nonnegligible regulatory arbitrage channels.This paper was accepted by Victoria Ivashina, finance

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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