Hedging decisions with price and output uncertainty

We generally show that the introduction of output uncertainty does not affect the hedging position of the firm.     

Stock price informativeness,cross-listings,and investment decisions

We show that a cross-listing enables firms to obtain, from the stock market, more precise information about the value of their growth opportunities. Thus, cross-listed firms make better investment decisions and trade at a premium. This theory of cross-listings implies that the sensitivity of investment to stock prices is larger for cross-listed firms. Moreover, the cross-listing premium is positively related to the size of growth opportunities and negatively related to the quality of managerial information. The sensitivity of the premium to the size of growth opportunities increases with factors that strengthen the impact of the cross-listing on price informativeness.     

Economic policy uncertainty,corporate investment decisions and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China

We examine the relationship between economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and stock price crash risk via the corporate investment in Chinese listed firms. Results show that higher EPU is associated with lower crash risk. Firms increase financial asset holdings and reduce overinvestment when EPU rises, leading to lower future crash risk. State-owned enterprises (SOEs) and firms with lower management incentives tend to reduce overinvestment, whereas non-SOEs tend to increase financial asset holdings. Thus, firms tend to be cautious in their investments when EPU is high, which reduces crash risk. Our study provides new insights into the validity of the Lucas critique in China.     

Securitization and aggregate investment efficiency

This paper studies the efficiency of competitive equilibria in economies where the expansion of investment is facilitated by securitization. We show that the use of securitization is generally associated with constrained inefficient aggregate investment, thereby potentially justifying regulatory intervention in markets for securitized assets. We examine the effectiveness of two real-world policy instruments to address this inefficiency: ex-ante capital / leverage requirements, as well as skin-in-the game (retention) requirements. We find that leverage/capital restrictions can increase welfare in our environment, but that forcing originators to hold additional skin-in-the game is not welfare improving.     

Organizational forms and investment decisions

This paper analyzes investment rules for various organizational forms that are distinguished by the characteristics of their residual claims. Different restrictions on residual claims lead to different decision rules. The analysis indicates that the investment decisions of open corporations, financial mutuals and non-profits can be modeled by the value maximization rule. However, the decisions of proprietorships, partnerships, and closed corporations cannot in general be modeled by the market value rule.     

The disposition effect in team investment decisions: Experimental evidence

This paper experimentally studies the disposition effects of teams and individuals. The disposition effect describes the phenomenon that investors are reluctant to realize losses, whereas winners are sold too early. Our experiments compare the investments of two-person teams to a setting where investors trade alone. We find that subjects investing jointly exhibit more pronounced disposition effects than individuals. A closer look reveals that investor teams hardly realize losses and predominately sell winners. The data suggest that decision-dependent emotions may explain the differences. That is, teams reporting high levels of regret exhibit significantly higher disposition effects than individuals.     

Altruism and egoism in investment decisions

We provide survey evidence that personal values have an impact on individual investment decisions, in particular preferences for socially responsible investing. Our findings show that there is a positive link between altruistic values and the relative importance of social responsibility. This effect is stronger when individuals believe that they can make a positive social or environmental impact with their investments, or when they feel morally obliged to invest responsibly. If altruistic individuals associate responsible investments with higher returns, it decreases their motivation to invest responsibly. Egoistic values are negatively associated with the decision to invest responsibly, unless individuals associate responsible investing with higher returns.     

Bankruptcy law and corporate investment decisions

Major European countries have recently adopted bankruptcy codes that strengthen entrepreneurs’ power to renegotiate outstanding liabilities. Renegotiation in bankruptcy allows lenders to increase recovery rates, however it also weakens the contract’s ability to solve the moral hazard problem embedded in the production project. Hinging on this trade-off, I show in which circumstances a soft bankruptcy law that resembles Chapter 11 in the balance of lenders’ and entrepreneur’s rights encourages the choice of investments that privilege the achievement of long-term results. However, I also show that, in contrast to the common wisdom, soft bankruptcy can lead to the choice of investments that are biased towards the achievement of short-term outcomes.     

Bank runs and investment decisions revisited

We examine how the possibility of a bank run affects the investment decisions made by a competitive bank. Cooper and Ross [1998. Bank runs: liquidity costs and investment distortions. Journal of Monetary Economics 41, 27-38] have shown that when the probability of a run is small, the bank will offer a contract that admits a bank-run equilibrium. We show that, in this case, the bank will chose to hold an amount of liquid reserves exactly equal to what withdrawal demand will be if a run does not occur; precautionary or “excess” liquidity will not be held. This result allows us to show that when the cost of liquidating investment early is high, an increase in the probability of a run will lead the bank to invest less. However, when liquidation costs are moderate, the level of investment is increasing in the probability of a run.     

The impact of assets-in-place on corporate financing and investment decisions

In a dynamic setting with asymmetric information we consider firms’ debt-equity choice and investment timing. We extend recent research by adding an abandonment option and assets-in-place and we show that these extensions make debt more attractive. This implies, e.g., that mature firms (with larger assets-in-place) mainly use debt financing, whereas young high-growth firms (without assets-in-place) frequently use equity financing and signal their type by early investment. Simulation analyses confirm this and our model is thus able to explain empirical patterns which contradict the static pecking order theory.     

Long run productivity risk and aggregate investment

Long-run productivity risk – shocks to the growth rate of productivity – offers an alternative to microfrictions explanations of aggregate investment non-linearities, in particular the heteroscedasticity of investment rate. Additionally, consistent with the data, these shocks imply that investment rate is history dependent (rising through expansions), its growth is positively autocorrelated, and it is positively correlated with output growth at various leads and lags. A standard model with shocks to the level of productivity either predicts opposite investment behavior or fails to quantitatively capture these features in the data.     

The interrelationship between management control mechanisms and strategy

This paper examines the interrelationship between management control system (MCS) mechanisms and strategy. The traditional view is that the MCS is shaped by organisational strategy. More contemporary viewpoints, however, suggest that there may be a two-way relationship between the two variables. That is, MCS shapes, and is shaped by, strategy.We develop two research questions that describe the interrelationship between MCS and strategy, and test them using a public sector entity that experienced a strategic change. A retrospective longitudinal study, spanning five years and involving archival data, interviews and a questionnaire, was adopted. The analysis confirms the existence of a two-way relationship between MCS and strategy. We find that the interactive use of MCS mechanisms helps to facilitate a change in strategy, and that MCS mechanisms change to match a change in strategy.     

Interactions of corporate financing and investment decisions: The effects of agency conflicts

We examine interactions between flexible financing and investment decisions in a model with stockholder–bondholder conflicts over investment policy. We find that financial flexibility encourages the choice of short-term debt thereby dramatically reducing the agency costs of under- and overinvestment. However, the reduction in agency costs may not encourage the firm to increase leverage, since the firm's initial debt level choice depends on the type of growth options in its investment opportunity set. The model has a number of testable predictions for the joint choice of leverage and maturity, and how these choices interact with a firm's growth opportunities.     

Overconfidence in investment decisions: An experimental approach

Abstract

By experimentally inducing risk aversion, overconfidence in an investment setting is investigated, comparing the evaluation of actual investment decisions with alternative choices. After selecting their own investment, subjects confront three alternative investment choices, including the optimal one, and are asked about their willingness to pay and to substitute their own for alternative choices. Overconfidence is defined as the persistent overevaluation of the own investment decision. Results indicate that overconfidence increases (i) with the absolute deviation from optimal choices, (ii) with task complexity involving the number of risky assets, and (iii) decreases with individual perceived uncertainty.     

Plant-level nonconvex output adjustment and aggregate fluctuations

In most manufacturing industries plant-level output is adjusted along three margins of capacity utilization: shiftwork, weekend work, and closing temporarily down. Due to the discrete and lumpy nature of these margins, only a fraction of plants adjust output in response to shocks. In a business cycle model calibrated to establishment-level observations, these nonconvexities make aggregate output less volatile than when plants can adjust smoothly. Further, the mass of adjusting plants is larger in downturns than in upturns, leading to counter-cyclical volatility of aggregate output and government policy being slightly more effective in recessions than in expansions.     

The wisdom of crowds: Mutual fund investors’ aggregate asset allocation decisions

We find that the aggregate asset allocation decisions of US mutual fund investors depend on economic conditions. Both anticipated economic downturns and periods of turmoil lead investors to direct flow away from risky equity funds and towards lower-risk money market funds. These patterns are markedly stronger for investors in low cost and low turnover funds relative to investors in high cost and high turnover funds, consistent with sophisticated investors being more sensitive to changing conditions. Benchmarked against a buy-and-hold strategy, these asset allocation strategies reduce risk without degrading the risk-return trade-off. Our evidence suggests that individual investors, often dismissed as noise traders, collectively react to economic signals in a sensible manner when determining asset allocations.     

The impact of cost allocation errors on price and product-mix decisions

We use simulations to examine the impact of cost allocation errors on pricing and product-mix decisions. We compare the imperfect cost allocation of cost systems based on heuristics to the ideal cost allocation of a benchmark model. First, we find that more complex cost systems are associated with substantially lower profit errors. Second, we decompose the profit error and find that production quantity errors are larger than product portfolio errors indicating that reducing product portfolio errors is less critical in designing cost systems. We also document that overproduction errors are larger than underproduction errors and errors from keeping unprofitable products are larger than errors from dropping profitable products suggesting that cost systems tend to underestimate full costs. Third, we find that profit errors increase for more complex cost systems as resource sharing levels rise, which is an interesting counter intuitive result.     

The effect of discretionary price control decisions on equity values

The macro literature presents conflicting evidence on the effects of price controls. In this study, the fact that the macro-economic effect of wage and price controls is the aggregation of the micro-economic effects is used to implement a different approach to measure the effects of price controls. The effect of price controls is inferred from examining the impact of discretionary regulatory decisions on the equity values of individual firms during Phase II of Nixon's Economic Stabilization Program. The empirical results indicate that violators of the regulations incurred significant abnormal losses that were unrelated to the explicit penalties. This suggests that implicit penalties were imposed on offending firms. The analysis of price increase decisions provides weak evidence that these Price Commission decisions had an impact on equity values.