Suchergebnisse

"We measure the impact of individual managerial beliefs on corporate financing. First, managers who believe that their firm is undervalued view external financing as overpriced, especially equity. We show that such overconfident managers use less external finance and, conditional on accessing risky capital, issue less equity than their peers. Second, CEOs with Depression experience have less faith in capital markets and lean excessively on internal financing. Third, CEOs with military experience pursue more aggressive policies, including heightened leverage. CEOs' press portrayals confirm these differences in beliefs. Overall, measurable managerial characteristics have significant explanatory power beyond traditional capital-structure determinants"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

"Compensation, status, and press coverage of managers in the U.S. follow a highly skewed distribution: a small number of 'superstars' enjoy the bulk of the rewards. We evaluate the impact of CEOs achieving superstar status on the performance of their firms, using prestigious business awards to measure shocks to CEO status. We find that award-winning CEOs subsequently underperform, both relative to their prior performance and relative to a matched sample of non-winning CEOs. At the same time, they extract more compensation following the award, both in absolute amounts and relative to other top executives in their firms. They also spend more time on public and private activities outside their companies, such as assuming board seats or writing books. The incidence of earnings management increases after winning awards. The effects are strongest in firms with weak governance, even though the frequency of obtaining superstar status is independent of corporate governance. Our results suggest that the ex-post consequences of media-induced superstar status for shareholders are negative"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

Why do analysts display overoptimism about the stocks they cover? According to the selection hypothesis, analysts pick their favorite stocks and are truly too optimistic. According to the conflict-of-interest hypothesis, analysts distort their view to maximize profits via commissions and underwriting business, in particular if affiliated with an underwriting bank. We analyze the concurrent issuance of recommendations and earnings forecasts to assess the relative importance of both explanations for affiliated and for unaffiliated analysts. First, we show that recommendations and forecasts reach different audiences. Small traders follow recommendations but not forecast updates; large traders discount recommendations and follow earnings forecasts. As a result, analysts may choose to distort recommendations but prove their analyst quality in their forecasts. The selection hypothesis implies, instead, a positive correlation between recommendation and forecast overoptimism. We find that, while affiliated analysts issue more optimistic recommendations than unaffiliated analysts, their earnings forecasts are more pessimistic. Moreover, forecast optimism is negatively correlated with recommendation optimism for affiliated analysts but positively for unaffiliated analysts. Similar discrepancies between the timing of recommendations and forecasts confirm that active distortion is a major explanation for the recommendation optimism of affiliated analysts.

An important unresolved issue in the search literature is the question to what extent suboptimal search reflects "traditional search frictions," and to what extent it reflects behavioral biases. The distinction is important for assessing welfare, predicting firm behavior, and making policy choices. In order to make progress on this question, we need a precise theoretical distinction and micro data. I argue that Schneider's (2016) analysis and data confirm and complement the main findings in Malmendier and Lee (2011), but neither his nor our data permit us to quantitatively assess the relative importance of these determinants. I propose several feasible identification strategies. (JEL D12, D44)