Research Lab

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?

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.

Recent evidence suggests that investors are inattentive to their portfolios and hire expensive portfolio managers. This paper develops a life-cycle portfolio-choice model in which the investor experiences loss-averse utility over news and can ignore his portfolio. In such a model, the investor prefers to ignore and not rebalance his portfolio most of the time because he dislikes bad news more than he likes good news such that expected news cause a first-order decrease in utility.

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.

We provide a framework for identifying accounting numbers that indicate risk and expected return. Under specified accounting conditions for measuring earnings and book value, book-to-price (B/P) indicates expected returns, providing justification for B/P in asset pricing models. However, the framework also points to earnings-to-price (E/P) as a risk characteristic. Indeed, E/P, rather than B/P, is the relevant characteristic when there is no expected earnings growth, but the weight shifts to B/P with growth.

We investigate the effectiveness of regulatory oversight exercised by the SEC against auditors over the years 1996–2009. The evidence suggests that the SEC is significantly less likely to name a Big N auditor as a defendant, after controlling for both the severity of the violation and for the characteristics of companies more likely to be audited by Big N auditors. Further, when the SEC does charge Big N auditors, the SEC (i) is less likely to impose harsher penalties on the Big N; and (ii) is less likely to name a Big N audit firm relative to individual Big N partners.

We investigate the implementation of a 2014 Government of India mandate that requires companies to at least spend 2% of their profits on corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities. Firms that voluntarily engaged in CSR before the mandate reduce their spending significantly down to the suggested 2% level. Firms that did not actively engage in CSR before the mandate increase their spending marginally. CSR spending post mandate is highly sensitive to negative shocks to firm profits, but not to positive profit shocks.

This study develops a timely and unbiased measure of expected credit losses. The expected rate of credit losses (ExpectedRCL) is a linear combination of various non-discretionary credit risk-related measures disclosed by banks. ExpectedRCL performs substantially better than net charge-offs, realized credit losses, and fair value of loans in predicting credit losses, and reflects all the explanatory power of the credit loss-related information in these variables.

We examine the cost-effectiveness, from the shareholders' perspective, of the accounting standards issued by the FASB during 1973-2009. We evaluate (i) the stock market reactions of firms affected by the standards surrounding events that changed the standard's probability of issuance; and (ii) whether the market reactions are related, in the cross-section, to agency problems, information asymmetry, proprietary costs, contracting costs, and changes in estimation risk.