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The book-to-market effect is often interpreted as evidence of high expected returns on stocks of \"distressed\" firms with poor past performance. We dispute this interpretation. We find that while a stock's future return is unrelated to the firm's past accounting-based performance, it is strongly negatively related to the \"intangible\" return, the component of its past return that is orthogonal to the firm's past performance. Indeed, the book-to-market ratio forecasts returns because it is a good proxy for the intangible return. Also, a composite equity issuance measure, which is related to intangible returns, independently forecasts returns.

We find that a firm's investment is highly sensitive to the investments of other firms headquartered nearby, even those in very different industries. A firm's investment also responds to fluctuations in the cash flows and stock prices (q) of local firms outside its sector. These patterns do not appear to reflect exogenous area shocks such as local shocks to labor or real estate values, but rather suggest that local agglomeration economies are important determinants of firm investment and growth.

This paper provides evidence of informed trading by individual investors around earnings announcements using a unique data set of NYSE stocks. We show that intense aggregate individual investor buying (selling) predicts large positive (negative) abnormal returns on and after earnings announcement dates. We decompose abnormal returns following the event into information and liquidity provision components, and show that about half of the returns can be attributed to private information. We also find that individuals trade in both return-contrarian and news-contrarian manners after earnings announcements. The latter behavior has the potential to slow the adjustment of prices to earnings news.

This paper investigates the dynamic relation between net individual investor trading and short-horizon returns for a large cross-section of NYSE stocks. The evidence indicates that individuals tend to buy stocks following declines in the previous month and sell following price increases. We document positive excess returns in the month following intense buying by individuals and negative excess returns after individuals sell, which we show is distinct from the previously shown past return or volume effects. The patterns we document are consistent with the notion that risk-averse individuals provide liquidity to meet institutional demand for immediacy.

This address explores the link between financial market shocks, investment choices, and various externalities that can arise from these choices. My analysis, which emphasizes differences between shocks to debt and equity markets, provides insights about some stylized facts from the macro finance literature. These insights are illustrated with a discussion of the technology boom and bust in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the housing boom and bust in the mid-2000s.

This study examines how the institutional environment influences capital structure and debt maturity choices of firms in 39 developed and developing countries. We find that a country’s legal and tax system, corruption, and the preferences of capital suppliers explain a significant portion of the variation in leverage and debt maturity ratios. Specifically, firms in more corrupt countries and those with weaker laws tend to use more debt, especially short-term debt; explicit bankruptcy codes and deposit insurance are associated with higher leverage and more long-term debt. More debt is used in countries where there is a greater tax gain from leverage.

This paper evaluates various explanations for the profitability of momentum strategies documented in Jegadeesh and Titman (1993). The evidence indicates that momentum profits have continued in the 1990s, suggesting that the original results were not a product of data snooping bias. The paper also examines the predictions of recent behavioral models that propose that momentum profits are due to delayed overreactions that are eventually reversed. Our evidence provides support for the behavioral models, but this support should be tempered with caution.

This paper investigates the relation between firms' locations and their corporate finance decisions. We develop a model where being located within an industry cluster increases opportunities to make acquisitions, and to facilitate those acquisitions, firms within clusters maintain more financial slack. Consistent with our model we find that firms located within industry clusters make more acquisitions, and have lower debt ratios and larger cash balances than their industry peers located outside clusters. We also document that firms in high-tech cities and growing cities maintain more financial slack. Overall, the evidence suggests that growth opportunities influence firms' financial decisions.

Firms that substantially increase capital investments subsequently achieve negative benchmark-adjusted returns. The negative abnormal capital investment/return relation is shown to be stronger for firms that have greater investment discretion, i.e., firms with higher cash flows and lower debt ratios, and is shown to be significant only in time periods when hostile takeovers were less prevalent. These observations are consistent with the hypothesis that investors tend to underreact to the empire building implications of increased investment expenditures. Although firms that increase capital investments tend to have high past returns and often issue equity, the negative abnormal capital investment/return relation is independent of the previously documented long-term return reversal and secondary equity issue anomalies.

There is substantial evidence that indicates that stocks that perform the best (worst) over a three- to 12-month period tend to continue to perform well (poorly) over the subsequent three to 12 months. Until recently, trading strategies that exploit this phenomenon were consistently profitable in the United States and in most developed markets. Similarly, stocks with high earnings momentum outperform stocks with low earnings momentum. This article reviews the momentum literature and discusses some of the explanations for this phenomenon.