Breach of Trust in Hostile Takeovers

The paper questions the common view that share price increases of firms involved in hostile takeovers measure efficiency gains from acquisitions. Even if such gains exist, most of the increase in the combined value of the target and the acquirer is likely to come from stakeholder wealth losses, such as declines in value of subcontractors' firm-specific capital or employees' human capital. The use of event studies to gauge wealth creation in takeovers is unjustified. The paper also suggests a theory of managerial behavior, in which hiring and entrenching trustworthy managers enables shareholders to commit to upholding implicit contracts with stakeholders. Hostile takeovers are an innovation allowing shareholders to renege on such contracts ex post, against managers' will. On this view, shareholder gains are redistributions from stakeholders, and can in the long run result in deterioration of trust necessary for the functioning of the corporation.

Bequests as a Means of Payment

Although recent research suggests that intergenerational transfers play an important role in aggregate capital accumulation, our understanding of bequest motives remains incomplete. We develop a simple model of"exchange-motivated" bequests, in which a testator influences the decisions ofhis beneficiaries by holding wealth in bequeathable forms and by conditioning the division of bequests on the beneficiaries' actions. The model generates falsifiable empirical predictions which are inconsistent with other theories of intergenerational transfers. We present econometric and other evidence which strongly suggests that bequests are often used as a means of payment for services rendered by beneficiaries.

The Economic Consequences of Noise Traders

The claim that financial markets are efficient is backed by an implicit argument that misinformed "noise traders" can have little influence on asset prices in equilibrium. If noise traders' beliefs are sufficiently different from those of rational agents to significantly affect prices, then noise traders will buy high and sell low. They will then lose money relative to rational investors and eventually be eliminated from the market. We present a simple overlapping-generations model of the stock market in which noise traders with erroneous and stochastic beliefs (a) significantly affect prices and (b) earn higher returns than do rational investors. Noise traders earn high returns because they bear a large amount of the market risk which the presence of noise traders creates in the assets that they hold: their presence raises expected returns because sophisticated investors dislike bearing the risk that noise traders may be irrationally pessimistic and push asset prices down in the future. The model we present has many properties that correspond to the "Keynesian" view of financial markets. (i) Stock prices are more volatile than can be justified on the basis of news about underlying fundamentals. (ii) A rational investor concerned about the short run may be better off guessing the guesses of others than choosing an appropriate P portfolio. (iii) Asset prices diverge frequently but not permanently from average values, giving rise to patterns of mean reversion in stock and bond prices similar to those found directly by Fama and French (1987) for the stock market and to the failures of the expectations hypothesis of the term structure. (iv) Since investors in assets bear not only fundamental but also noise trader risk, the average prices of assets will be below fundamental values; one striking example of substantial divergence between market and fundamental values is the persistent discount on closed-end mutual funds, and a second example is Mehra and Prescott's (1986) finding that American equities sell for much less than the consumption capital asset pricing model would predict. (v) The more the market is dominated by short-term traders as opposed to long-term investors, the poorer is its performance as a social capital allocation mechanism. (vi) Dividend policy and capital structure can matter for the value of the firm even abstracting from tax considerations. And (vii) making assets illiquid and thus no longer subject to the whims of the market -- as is done when a firm goes private -- may enhance their value.

The Survival of Noise Traders in Financial Markets

We use the revised estimates of U.S. GNP constructed by Christina Romer (1989) to assess the time-series properties of U.S. output per capita over the past century. We reject at conventional significance levels the null that output is a random walk in favor of the alternative that output is a stationary autoregressive process about a linear deterministic trend. The difference between the lack of persistence of output shocks either before WWII or over the entire century, on the one hand, and the strong signs of persistence of output shocks found by Campbell and Mankiw (1987) and by Nelson and Plosser (1982) for more recent periods is striking. It suggests to us a Keynesian interpretation of the large unit root in post-WWII U.S. output: perhaps post-WWII output shocks appear persistent because automatic stabilizers and other demand-management policies have substantially damped the transitory fluctuations that made up the pre-WWH Bums-Mitchell business cycle.

Positive Feedback Investment Strategies and Destabilizing Rational Speculation

Analyses of the role of rational speculators in financial markets usually presume that such investors dampen price fluctuations by trading against liquidity or noise traders. This conclusion does not necessarily hold when noise traders follow positive-feedback investment strategies buy when prices rise and sell when prices fall. In such cases, it may pay rational speculators to try to jump on the bandwagon early and to purchase ahead of noise trader demand. If rational speculators' attempts to jump on the bandwagon early trigger positive-feedback investment strategies, then an increase in the number of forward-looking rational speculators can lead to increased volatility of prices about fundamentals.

Index revisions, systematic liquidity risk and the cost of equity capital

This study investigates the impact of FTSE100 index revisions on firms' systematic liquidity risk and the cost of equity capital. We show that index membership enhances all aspects of liquidity, whereas stocks that leave the index exhibit no significant liquidity change. We also show that the liquidity risk premium and the cost of equity capital decline significantly after additions, but do not exhibit any significant change following deletions. The control sample analysis indicates that observed decline in liquidity premium and the cost of equity capital is not driven by factors other than index revisions. Our evidence is consistent with Journal of Financial Economics, 1, 17 (1986)'s argument that since liquidity is priced, an increase in liquidity will result in lower expected returns. Furthermore, the asymmetric impact of additions and deletions on stock liquidity and cost of capital is consistent with the view that the benefits of index membership are permanent (see, e.g. Journal of Finance, 59, No. 4 1901-29, August 2004; Journal of Investment Management 4, 23-37, 2006)

Are the Institutions of the Stock Market and the Market for Corporate Control Evolutionary Advances for Developing Countries?

This paper explores the question of whether the institution of the stock market is likely to be helpful to developing countries in promoting their real economy and ensuring fast industrial growth. The case for and against the stock market inevitably involves a discussion of the important related subjects of corporate finance and corporate governance. Contrary to the literature the paper arrives at a negative overall assessment of the institution of the stock market in relation to economic development. It also contributes by its policy proposals concerning the markets for corporate control, which again are in conflict with much of the conventional wisdom on the subject