Corporate Finance

Using the staggered adoption of universal demand (UD) laws in the United States, we study the effect of shareholder litigation risk on corporate disclosure. We find that disclosure significantly increases after UD laws make it more difficult to file derivative lawsuits. Specifically, firms issue more earnings forecasts and voluntary 8-K filings, and increase the length of management discussion and analysis (MD&A) in their 10-K filings. We further assess the direct and indirect channels through which UD laws affect firms' disclosure policies.

We find that voters who associate themselves with the "winning team" in election, i.e., Leave voters in the 2016 UK Brexit vote and Trump voters in 2016 US presidential election, substantially increase their expectations for the stock market, but change their expectations of their household economic wellbeing only modestly. Respondents who associate themselves with the "losing team" are more varied in their responses, but the overall impact of the election outcome on this group is more muted.

In “The Intelligent Investor in an Era of Autonomous Learning”, Jeffrey Tarrant delineated the concept of Autonomous Learning Investment Strategies (ALIS), the new AI and data-driven strategies he argued would disrupt today’s fundamental and quantitative managers.  This was followed by an article I wrote, “What a long strange trip it’s been...on ALIS”, which explained the best and worst traits of ALIS managers.  This brief article is called “Think Twice, It Ain’t Alright...ALIS Clarified”, repurposing the title of Bob Dylan’s 1963 song, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright”. 

We examine the effects of financial reporting regulation on firms' banking. Exploiting discontinuous public disclosure and auditing requirements assigned to otherwise similar small and medium-sized private firms, we document that financial reporting regulation reduces firms' reliance on concentrated and local bank relationships and increases banks' reliance on firms' financial reporting, consistent with a shift in firms' banking from relationship toward transactional approaches.

As technology disrupts industry after industry, it is logical to expect the hedge fund industry will be similarly disrupted. We pose the question: How will that disruption happen and where will it come from?

Originally published in 1992 this book charts the global restructuring of telecommunications industries away from the monopoly structures of the past towards increased competition, deregulation and privatization. The book's authors are international policy-makers and scholars, who examine the regulatory environment within a theoretical and historical context. The book looks at the roots of regulatory and legislative changes by discussing individually the countries at the forefront of the revolution: the UK, France, Germany, Japan and the United States.

How do different bankruptcy approaches affect the local economy? Using U.S. Census microdata, we explore the spillover effects of reorganization and liquidation on geographically proximate firms. We exploit the random assignment of bankruptcy judges as a source of exogenous variation in the probability of liquidation. We find that employment declines substantially in the immediate neighborhood of the liquidated establishments, relative to reorganized establishments.

The paper draws on Mohanty and Sundaresan (2018) to explore the effects of bankruptcy laws on the ex ante incentive for firms to hedge FX exposures. We use a simple model in which the bankruptcy code may result in deadweight losses, and may allow equity holders a share of residual value of the firm's assets in the bankruptcy proceedings. The paper predicts that, while value-maximising firms promise to hedge a higher fraction of the value of their FX exposure when the debt is issued, they may renege subsequently and take on some FX exposures at the expense of foreign creditors.

We have titled this paper with an ode to a compilation album by a band that was founded in Palo Alto and developed a counter-culture.  Though the title espouses a new state of mind, it is investment, not consumption driven, as this is 2017 and not 1965.