Comovement and Predictability Relationships Between Bonds and the Cross-Section of Stocks

In contrast to the well-known unstable relationship between the returns on government bonds and stock indices, we find that bonds are robustly related to the cross-section of stock returns in both comovement and predictability patterns. Government bonds comove more strongly with bond-like stocks: stocks of large, mature, low-volatility, profitable, dividend-paying firms that are neither high growth nor distressed. Time-series variables already known to predict returns on bonds also predict returns on bond-like stocks, and vice-versa. These relationships remain in place even when bonds and stocks become “decoupled” at the index level. They are likely driven by a combination of effects including correlations between real cash flows on bonds and bond-like stocks, correlations between their risk-based return premia, and periodic flights to quality

Financial Spillovers to Emerging Markets during the Global Financial Crisis

Using data from the recent crisis, the authors analyze financial linkages between market liquidity and bank solvency measures in advanced economies and emerging market bond and stock markets. A multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity model is estimated to gauge the extent of co-movements of these financial variables across markets. The findings indicate that the notion of possible decoupling of financial markets had been misplaced. In fact, interlinkages between funding stress and equity markets in advanced economies and emerging market financial indicators were highly correlated, and have seen sharp increases during specific crisis moments.emerging markets, subprime crisis, liquidity, solvency, GARCHemerging markets, subprime crisis, liquidity, solvency, GARCH

Securities Intermediaries and the Separation of Ownership from Control

The Modern Corporation and Private Property highlighted the evolving separation of ownership and control in the public corporation and the effects of that separation on the allocation of power within the corporation. This essay explores the implications of intermediation for those themes. The article observes that intermediation, by decoupling economic ownership and decision-making authority within the shareholder, creates a second layer of agency issues beyond those identified by Berle and Means. These agency issues are an important consideration in the current debate over shareholder empowerment. The article concludes by considering the hypothetical shareholder construct implicit in the Berle and Means paradigm and in proposals to increase shareholder empowerment. Intermediation challenges the validity of this construct and raises questions about whether corporate law can rely on shareholders to constrain managerial power appropriately

The Essential Unity of Shareholders and the Myth of Investor Short-Termism

The separation of ownership and control publicized by Berle and Means in 1932 persists today. Domination of public companies by self-serving and ineffective executives costs America billions of dollars every year and contributed to the current economic meltdown. Repeated efforts to solve this problem--including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, expanded disclosure duties, and more stringent requirements for director independence--have had little benefit and have sometimes made matters worse. The flaws in our corporate governance system are a growing problem for America’s economy as disillusioned investors increasingly place their capital in other countries. Nonetheless, proposals for greater shareholder power have encountered criticisms: various shareholders have conflicting goals; shareholders favor a short-term perspective at the expense of the long-term health of companies; and shareholders lack the knowledge needed to play a positive leading role in corporate governance

The Agency Costs of Agency Capitalism: Activist Investors and the Revaluation of Governance Rights

Equity ownership in the United States no longer reflects the dispersed share ownership of the canonical Berle-Means firm. Instead, we observe the reconcentration of ownership in the hands of institutional investment intermediaries, which gives rise to what we call “the agency costs of agency capitalism.” This ownership change has occurred because of (i) political decisions to privatize the provision of retirement savings and to require funding of such provision and (ii) capital market developments that favor investment intermediaries offering low cost diversified investment vehicles. A new set of agency costs arise because in addition to divergence between the interests of record owners and the firm’s managers, there is divergence between the interests of record owners – the institutional investors – and the beneficial owners of those institutional stakes. The business model of key investment intermediaries like mutual funds, which focus on increasing assets under management through superior relative performance, undermines their incentive and competence to engage in active monitoring of portfolio company performance. Such investors will be “rationally reticent” – willing to respond to governance proposals but not to propose them. We posit that shareholder activists should be seen as playing a specialized capital market role of setting up intervention proposals for resolution by institutional investors. The effect is to potentiate institutional investor voice, to increase the value of the vote, and thereby to reduce the agency costs we have identified. We therefore argue against recent proposed regulatory changes that would undercut shareholder activists’ economic incentives by making it harder to assemble a meaningful toe-hold position in a potential target