Journal of Financial Research最新文献

I construct a CEO pay complexity index based on grant-level compensation data to test whether compensation complexity is consistent with optimal contracts or agency problems. Complexity may represent board efforts to contract optimally or a means by which the CEO camouflages agency issues and rent extraction. I find evidence supporting the agency view by showing how complexity is negatively related to firm value, profitability, and CEO turnover–performance sensitivity. I also examine the relation between complexity and CEO investment behavior and find mixed results. Overall, the findings relate to shareholders' dissatisfaction with the increased complexity of CEO compensation.

We examine how firm life cycle affects ratings and costs of debt for public offers. We find that ratings for issuers in the introduction and decline stages are lower than those for growth and mature issuers. A similar U-shaped relation between life stage and yield spread, after controlling for credit rating, indicates that life stage affects cost of debt through multiple channels. Costs of debt are lower for growth and mature issuers than for introduction and decline issuers. Analyses of high-yield bonds and term to maturity suggest that the adverse effect on costs of debt for introduction and decline firms is associated with their elevated riskiness and greater information asymmetry.

We find weak evidence suggesting that cities’ credit ratings reflect their climate risk exposure. Using a large sample of US cities, we test whether cities with higher exposure to physical or transition risks of climate change have lower credit ratings. We also compare the ratings of coastal and similar noncoastal cities, and run difference-in-differences tests around events that raise climate change awareness. Moreover, we study the climate risk effect within cities and at the bond level. We observe a negative association only between the Hallegatte et al. (2013) sea-level-rise measure and ratings, and this association is solely driven by New Orleans, which had already experienced a significant climate event.

We examine how forming cross-border alliances with US firms influences the corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of their foreign partner firms. Analyzing a sample across 39 countries between 2002 and 2018, we find that these foreign firms experience higher future CSR performance, with a notable 6.46% increase compared with those without such alliances. Moreover, this effect is stronger in foreign firms from countries with weaker governance institutions, lower social norms, and worse economic conditions. Also, foreign firms with lower governance quality, higher market competition, and weaker innovation capacity show a pronounced improvement in CSR performance after alliances. The improved CSR performance also leads to higher firm value and better earnings quality in these foreign firms. Overall, we highlight the role of cross-border alliances in facilitating the attainment of broader economic and sustainable governance objectives.

We examine whether CEO extraversion, an important personality trait associated with leadership, is associated with firms' expected cost of equity capital. We measure CEO extraversion using CEOs' speech patterns during the unscripted portion of conference calls. After controlling for multiple CEO and firm-specific variables, we find a strong positive incremental association between CEO extraversion and firms' expected cost of capital. Moreover, cost of equity increases when a more extraverted CEO replaces a less extraverted CEO. In addition, we find that firms with relatively extraverted CEOs take more risk and exhibit lower credit ratings, which is associated with higher cost of equity capital. These results are statistically and economically meaningful and do not appear to be driven by reverse causality, endogenous matching, look-ahead bias, or bias in analysts' earnings forecast.

We revisit the tax-loss selling hypothesis as an explanation for the January effect. We expand on prior empirical evidence from municipal bond closed-end funds (CEFs) by extending the sample period by 19 years and adding exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Our sample covers the introduction and rapid growth of municipal bond ETFs, significant changes to municipal bond market structure, and the modernization of tax-loss selling practices. The January effect in municipal bond CEFs has become stronger in recent years and is consistent with the tax-loss hypothesis. The January effect in municipal bond ETFs is smaller and cannot be explained by tax-loss selling.

We examine whether and how community social capital influences the information uncertainty of a private firm's going-public process. We find that high social capital of the US counties in which IPO firms are headquartered significantly reduces underpricing and post-IPO stock volatility. This relation is stronger under lessened disclosure requirements and less reputable underwriting. Further findings suggest that high social capital constrains IPO issuers from practicing opportunistic financial reporting. We document that high social capital is associated with a more readable prospectus, less financial misconduct, more readable annual reports, and better long-run stock return performance in the years following the IPOs.

Using daily equity transactions, we create a hedge fund informed trading measure (ITM) that separates concentrated information-related trades from liquidity-driven basket trades. We find that stocks with higher ITM are associated with higher future stock performance. The long–short portfolio delivers 4% annual alpha after controlling for size, value, momentum, and illiquidity factors. We attribute informed trading to hedge funds' ability to identify and correct stock underpricing. The results are robust to several ways of constructing and sorting the measure, and we do not find a return reversal in four quarters, indicating that the measure is information related.

We examine whether the different fee structures on equity exchanges, maker-taker or taker-maker, affects the frequency with which security prices cluster on round increments. We find higher price clustering on traditional maker-taker venues relative to inverted taker-maker venues. These results generally hold at the individual exchange level and across transaction- and quotation-level clustering measures. Furthermore, we document that quoted depth, both inside and outside the best prices, is significantly greater on maker-taker venues than on taker-maker venues. We show that liquidity supply is the main economic driver behind the difference in price clustering between market structures. Our findings indicate that fees and rebates alter order-routing strategies, which affect the precision of asset prices.

In this article, we examine reputation building by activist hedge funds and provide two new findings regarding hostile activism. First, we find evidence of a permanent reputation effect to hostile activism. Activist hedge funds that have engaged in hostile tactics receive on average a 3% higher cumulative abnormal return (CAR) [−10, +10] on their subsequent nonhostile campaigns compared to hedge funds that have not engaged in hostile tactics. This abnormal return is positively related to the level of the hostile reputation of the activist hedge fund. Second, we find that activist hedge funds with higher hostile reputations modify their nonhostile activism style to engage hostile-like targets and pursue hostile-like objectives but withhold the use of explicitly hostile tactics. These findings imply that (1) hedge funds can build a hostile reputation using their past engagement tactics and (2) market participants perceive and value such reputation as evidenced by the higher announcement return observed in subsequent targets.