Quarterly Journal of Finance最新文献

This paper investigates the importance and the determinants of trust in a lending situation using a controlled experiment. We find that communication can facilitate collaboration between lenders and borrowers through three channels of trust: (1) an information channel, (2) a preference channel, and (3) a reciprocity channel. Our results highlight the role of trust in mitigating the moral hazard problem in lending.

We study the stability of non-cognitive skills by comparing experimental data gathered before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a sample of professional traders, we find a significant decrease in Agreeableness and Locus of Control and a moderate decrease in Grit. These patterns are primarily driven by those with more negative experiences of the pandemic. Other skills, such as Trust, Conscientiousness, and Self-Monitoring, are unchanged. We contrast these results with those from a sample of undergraduate students whose non-cognitive skills remain constant (except Conscientiousness). Our findings provide evidence against the stability of some non-cognitive skills, particularly among professional traders.

Using a large sample over the period 1986 to 2017, we show that companies with higher exposure to climate change risk induced by sea-level rise (SLR) tend to acquire firms that are unlikely to be directly affected by SLR. We find that acquirers with higher SLR exposure experience significantly higher announcement-period abnormal stock returns. Analyses using failed merger bids as an exogenous shock show that post-merger, analyst forecasts become more accurate and environmental-related as well as overall ESG scores improve.

In this paper, we show that competitive female role models reduce women’s perceived stereotype threat and increase their willingness to compete. Competitive male role models have the opposite effect: they reduce women’s willingness to compete, and the gender gap in tournament entry increases. Results are strongest for the best performing women who would benefit most from competing. Role models have no impact on low performing women, and on men.

We examine the impact of firm-level political risk on the cash flow sensitivity of cash. Using a large sample of U.S. firms from 2003 to 2018, we find that the cash flow sensitivity of cash decreases in political uncertainty and the impact of political risk is asymmetric to cash flow types (positive versus negative). Intensified political uncertainty induces positive/negative cash flow firms to reduce savings out of cash flows to finance investment opportunities/terminate unprofitable projects to retrieve cash. The results are robust to various model specifications, alternative variable definitions, and the control for non-political risks. In addition, we show that a firm’s financial status moderates the relation between the two, with financially constrained positive/negative cash flow firms saving more out of cash flows/decreasing existing savings as firm-level political risk increases.

We define a synthetic futures contract as a pair consisting of a terminal futures price $J$ (a prespecified random variable) and a zero-value trading strategy whose terminal cumulative cash flow is equal to $J$ to within an additive constant. The construction of synthetic futures contracts is demonstrated for (i) futures on futures, (ii) futures on spot, (iii) quanto futures on futures, (iv) quanto futures on spot and (v) futures on foreign futures and domestic futures. We formulate and derive the Law of One Futures Price, which justifies futures pricing based on such replication.

In this paper, we explore the relations among institutional quality, households’ level of trust, and stock market participation. We find that institutional quality has a significant impact on both trust and participation. The individual level of trust significantly affects participation, but trust plays a small role in the effect of institutional quality on participation. Further, we demonstrate that immigrants are affected by the institutional quality of both their country of residence and their home country, and that education emerges as an important learning factor in immigrants’ adaptation to new institutional environments.

This paper examines the effect on stock market efficiency and potential market manipulation of introducing a random ending time for the call auctions that start and end continuous trading on three equity markets. We find that the probability of a price dislocation at the end of the auction declines, indicating a lower risk of market manipulation. In addition, the variance ratio and market-adjusted return volatility measures decrease, suggesting a more efficient and less volatile price discovery process. We confirm a behavioral change in order submissions by observing the timing of order entry, amendments, and deletions on one of the exchanges for which we have access to order data. Overall, our results indicate that adding a random auction ending time can reduce the risk of stock market manipulation and improve price efficiency.

In this paper, we introduce a conditional measure of skill, the correlation between funds’ residual trades, net of common trading motives, and future news about the stocks traded. Using this measure, we show that the average mutual fund manager in the cross-section has stock-picking skill. This result is robust to different benchmarks and is mainly driven by the manager’s ability to predict a firm’s cash-flow news. This skill has short-term persistence and is distinctly related to traditional measures of performance. Importantly, consistent with Berk and Green [2004, Mutual Fund Flows and Performance in Rational Markets, Journal of Political Economy 112(6), 1269–1295] fund flows are increasing with respect to managerial skill after controlling for fund performance.

We investigate a little-known executive compensation device called dividend equivalents, which are provisions on some options and performance-based equity awards permitting executives to receive dividends on shares not owned and which they may ultimately never own. We find that up to 30% of sample firms have had this policy. While dividend equivalents may appear to exacerbate agency problems, they have a positive impact on cash holdings and help align incentives — firms with dividend equivalent policies tend to pay dividends, and firms that make dividend equivalent payments tend to pay higher dividends and keep lower excess cash.