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September 2018
Ingrid Werner – OSU
U.S. Tick Size Pilot Barbara Rindi Bocconi University and IGIER and Baffi-Carefin Ingrid M. Werner The Ohio State University First Draft: May 30, 2017 This Draft: September 22, 2017 Abstract The U.S. equity markets are currently conducting a pilot study of the effects of a larger tick size on market…
Find out more »Laura Starks – UT Austin
Corporate ESG Profiles and Investor Horizons We consider motivations for institutional investors to prefer firms with higher Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) profiles. We find that such preferences depend critically on investor horizons: Investors with longer horizons tend to prefer higher ESG firms significantly more than do short-term investors. Consistent…
Find out more »October 2018
Robert S. Harris – Darden – Brown Bag Series
How Do Financial Expertise and Networks Affect Investing? Evidence from the Governance of University Endowments Abstract Using the unique laboratory of university endowments, we study the effects of expertise and networks on investment performance. Using detailed information on more than 11,000 unique board members for 579 university endowments, we show…
Find out more »Margarita Tsoutsoura – Cornell
“Disclosing the Gender Pay Gap” Morten Bennedsen, University of Copenhagen; Elena Simintzi, University of British Columbia; Margarita Tsoutsoura, Cornell University; Daniel Wolfenzon, Columbia Business School Abstract: We exploit a 2006 legislation change in Denmark that requires firms to provide gender dis-aggregated wage statistics to study the effect of transparency on…
Find out more »Quinn Curtis – UVA Law – Brown Bag Series
COSTS, CROSS-SUBSIDIES, AND COLLEGE SAVINGS: EVALUATING SECTION 529 SAVINGS PLANS ABSTRACT: Americans collectively save hundreds of billions of dollars for their children’s education in Section 529 college savings plans. These plans are sponsored by states and largely exempt from regulations that typically apply to money management. This is the first…
Find out more »Gerard Hoberg – USC (Marshall)
Product Life Cycles in Corporate Finance We develop a novel 10-K text-based model of product life-cycles and examine firm investment policies. Conditioning on the life cycle substantially improves the explanatory power of investment-Q models. The improved models reveal that investment follows a pecking order through the life cycle. Firms initially…
Find out more »Jan Bena – UBC – Brown Bag Series
Teamwork, Technology Combinations, and Value of Innovation ABSTRACT: We examine the role of teamwork in the inventive process. We show that a better ability of an invention team to combine interdependent technologies results in innovations with both higher scientific and private economic value, leads to more breakthroughs in innovations, helps…
Find out more »Jarrad Harford – Foster, U. of Washington
International Trade and the Propagation of Merger Waves Abstract We map the yearly global trade network and compare it to cross-border and domestic merger activity. Trade-weighted merger activity in trading partner countries has significant explanatory power for the likelihood a country will be in a merger wave state, both at…
Find out more »Anton Korinek – Darden/UVa – Brown Bag Series
The Rise of Artificially Intelligent Agents Rapid advances in AI imply that machines increasingly behave like artificially intelligent agents (AIAs). This raises fundamental questions about what an economy with AIAs will look like – questions that stretch from the allocation of resources between humans and non-humans to the potential for…
Find out more »Elisabeth Kempf – Chicago Booth
"Partisan Professionals: Evidence from Credit Rating Analysts" ABSTRACT Partisan bias affects the decisions of financial analysts. Using a novel hand-collected dataset that links credit rating analysts to party affiliations from voter records, we show that analysts who do not support the President’s party are more likely to downgrade firms. Our…
Find out more »Xin Xue – UVa Econ – Brown Bag Series
Lending Platforms’ Information Aggregation under Competition I examine how lending platforms use their information advantage to deter adverse selection in their competition for creditworthy borrowers. Using data from peer-to-peer lending platforms and a platform entry event which exogenously in-duces platform competition for both borrowers and lenders, I find that the…
Find out more »November 2018
Robin Greenwood – HBS
The Impact of Pensions and Insurance on Global Yield Curves Abstract: We document a strong effect of pension and insurance company (P&I) assets on the long end of the yield curve. Using data for 26 countries, the yield spread between 30-year and 10-year government bond yields is negatively related to…
Find out more »Ting Xu – Darden – Brown Bag Series
Multi-Class Shares Around the World: The Role of Institutional Investors Jinhee Kim Pedro Matos* Ting Xu November 2018 Abstract This paper examines multi-class share structures around the world. Using a comprehensive sample of publicly listed firms in 45 countries over the period 2001–2016, we find that institutional investors exhibit strong…
Find out more »UVIC 2018
The 11th annual University of Virginia Investing Conference (UVIC) will take place at UVA’s Darden School of Business, 8-9 November 2018. The conference provides the reflection on the 10th anniversary of the Global Financial Crisis of financial analysts, portfolio managers, economists, and industry executives and speaks to professional investment managers,…
Find out more »Don Bowen – Virginia Tech – Brown Bag Series
Technological Disruptiveness and the Evolution of IPOs and Sell-Outs Donald Bowen, Laurent Fresard, and Gerard Hoberg September 19, 2018 ABSTRACT We show that the recent decline in IPOs in U.S. markets is explained by changes in the technological disruptiveness of startups, which we measure using textual analysis of patents from…
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