Value Uncertainty

We examine how time-series volatility of book-to-market (UNC) is priced in equity returns and the relative contributions of its book volatility (variations in earnings and book value) and market volatility components (shocks in required return). UNC captures valuation risk, so stocks with high valuation risk earn higher return. An investment strategy long in high-UNC and short in low-UNC firms generates 8.5% annual risk-adjusted return. UNC valuation risk premium is driven by outperformance of high-UNC firms facing higher information risk and is not explained by established risk factors and firm characteristics

Convertible bonds: characteristics, pricing and financing

The work focuses on the analysis of convertible bonds from the motivations of the issuance, the pricing problem and the models to appraise the convenience in issuing such assets. In particular after outlining the basic characteristics of convertibles and the main problems in pricing such assets, a comparison model with credit risk is developed in order to help managers and companies to set all the contractual features of the asset and to decide the best financing alternative. The work moreover introduces a cash flow motivation in issuing such assets that can be added to the available literature and tested empirically

Countercyclical Contingent Capital

We analyze the optimal capital structure of a bank issuing countercyclical contingent capital, i.e., notes to be converted in common shares in case of a bad state for the economy. This type of asset reduces the spread of straight debt but is quite expensive. The effect on bankruptcy costs is limited (it is strong when contingent capital is not countercyclical), the asset reduces the asset substitution incentive. Contingent capital is useful for macroprudential regulation, the countercyclical feature is important depending on priorities (moderate the asset substitution incentive or reduce bankruptcy costs)

Real Options, Idiosyncratic Skewness, and Diversification

We show how firm-level real options lead to idiosyncratic skewness in stock returns. We then document empirically that growth option variables are positive and significant determinants of idiosyncratic skewness. The real option impact on skewness is more significant in firms with lottery-type features, small size, high volatility, distressed, low return on assets, and low book-to-market ratio. We also find that expectation on idiosyncratic skewness is associated with lower Sharpe ratios. This suggests investors are willing to sacrifice mean-variance portfolio efficiency for greater skewness deriving from real options. Furthermore, financial flexibility has a positive incremental effect, enhancing the beneficial role of asset flexibility on idiosyncratic skewness

Is bailout insurance and tail risk priced in bank equities?

We present a pricing model of bank bailout insurance guarantees against tail risk and empirical evidence that provides a rational explanation why big bank equities “underperform” relative to small banks during normal times while they “overperform” during crises. A new measure accounting for left-tail risk protection against losses conditional on a crisis explains the “underperformance” of large banks during normal periods. Over the long-term spanning several economic cycles, bank assets are fairly priced regardless of size. Our empirical evidence supports our model’s predicted pattern of excess bank return reversals across economic cycles following Too-Big-To-Fail (TBTF) bailout policy in 1984

US government TARP bailout and bank lottery behavior

Considerable debate surrounds how the US government's TARP bailout intervention has affected the risk-taking and moral hazard behavior of U.S. banks around the global financial crisis. We examine this issue with a focus on lottery behavior introducing MAX/MIN as a new measure of lotteryness in banking to capture the loss protection from bank bailout guarantees. We find that the TARP bailout increased the likelihood of bank lotteryness and risk shifting. Lottery-like bank equities are riskier after TARP and exhibit fatter right to left tails. A consistent pattern of risk taking and lottery behavior extends both before and after the 2008–2009 crisis, engulfing the largest systemic banks (SIFIs). While confirming that lottery-like bank equities have lower short-term return, we find they exhibit better cumulative long-term return performance. Our findings have important policy implications regarding government intervention in banking crises

Growth Options and Related Stock Market Anomalies: Profitability, Distress, Lotteryness, and Volatility

We provide new evidence on the economic role of growth options behind the profitability, distress, lotteryness, and volatility anomalies. We use idiosyncratic skewness to measure growth options and estimate expected idiosyncratic skewness capturing investors’ expectations about the firm’s mix of growth options versus assets-in-place. We find that investors require a positive premium to hold stocks of inflexible firms with low growth options and negative expected skewness and that a newly proposed skewness factor based on growth options explains the aforementioned anomalies. Thus, the new measure of expected idiosyncratic skewness may serve to reduce the number of anomalies in the literature

Asymmetric returns and the economic content of accruals and investment

This study contributes to our understanding of what accruals capture and how they relate to the distribution of future returns. It examines the past and future growth components of accruals and shows that, whereas past growth is negatively associated with idiosyncratic skewness, future growth is positively associated with it. In addition, although both past and future growth are negatively associated with future returns, the association is more pronounced for past growth when volatility is lower, but for future growth when volatility is higher. The study also shows that the association between the future growth component and future returns reverses in the long run, whereas the association between past growth and future returns does not