Matching Items (6)
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- All Subjects: Finance
- All Subjects: family wealth
- Genre: Academic theses
- Creators: Bharath, Sreedhar
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Description
This paper examines dealers' inventory holding periods and the associated price markups on corporate bonds from 2003 to 2010. Changes in these measures explain a large part of the time series variation in aggregate corporate bond prices. In the cross-section, holding periods and markups overshadow extant liquidity measures and have significant explanatory power for individual bond prices. Both measures shed light on the credit spread puzzle: changes in credit spread are positively correlated with changes in holding periods and markups, and a large portion of credit spread changes is explained by them. The economic effects of holding periods and markups are particularly sharp during crisis periods.
ContributorsQian, Zhiyi (Author) / Wahal, Sunil (Thesis advisor) / Bharath, Sreedhar (Committee member) / Coles, Jeffrey (Committee member) / Mehra, Rajnish (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Mutual monitoring in a well-structured authority system can mitigate the agency problem. I empirically examine whether the number 2 executive in a firm, if given authority, incentive, and channels for communication and influence, is able to monitor and constrain the potentially self-interested CEO. I find strong evidence that: (1) measures of the presence and extent of mutual monitoring from the No. 2 executive are positively related to future firm value (Tobin's Q); (2) the beneficial effect is more pronounced for firms with weaker corporate governance or CEO incentive alignment, with stronger incentives for the No. 2 executives to monitor, and with higher information asymmetry between the boards and the CEOs; (3) such mutual monitoring reduces the CEO's ability to pursue the "quiet life" but has no effect on "empire building;" and (4) mutual monitoring is a substitute for other governance mechanisms. The results suggest that mutual monitoring by a No. 2 executive provides checks and balances on CEO power.
ContributorsLi, Zhichuan (Author) / Coles, Jeffrey (Thesis advisor) / Hertzel, Michael (Committee member) / Bharath, Sreedhar (Committee member) / Babenko, Ilona (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This paper examines how equity analysts' roles as information intermediaries and monitors affect corporate liquidity policy and its associated value of cash, providing new evidence that analysts have a direct impact on corporate liquidity policy. Greater analyst coverage (1) reduces information asymmetry between a firm and outside shareholders and (2) enhances the monitoring process. Consistent with these arguments, analyst coverage increases the value of cash, thereby allowing firms to hold more cash. The cash-to-assets ratio increases by 5.2 percentage points when moving from the bottom analyst-coverage decile to the top decile. The marginal value of $1 of corporate cash holdings is $0.93 for the bottom analyst-coverage decile and $1.83 for the top decile. The positive effects remain robust after a battery of endogeneity checks. I also perform tests employing a unique dataset that consists of public and private firms, as well as a dataset that consists of public firms that have gone private. A public firm with analyst coverage can hold approximately 8% more cash than its private counterpart. These findings constitute new evidence on the real effect of analyst coverage.
ContributorsChang, Ching-Hung (Author) / Bates, Thomas (Thesis advisor) / Bharath, Sreedhar (Committee member) / Lindsey, Laura (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
By matching a CEO's place of residence in his or her formative years with U.S. Census survey data, I obtain an estimate of the CEO's family wealth and study the link between the CEO's endowed social status and firm performance. I find that, on average, CEOs born into poor families outperform those born into wealthy families, as measured by a variety of proxies for firm performance. There is no evidence of higher risk-taking by the CEOs from low social status backgrounds. Further, CEOs from less privileged families perform better in firms with high R&D spending but they underperform CEOs from wealthy families when firms operate in a more uncertain environment. Taken together, my results show that endowed family wealth of a CEO is useful in identifying his or her managerial ability.
ContributorsDu, Fangfang (Author) / Babenko, Ilona (Thesis advisor) / Bates, Thomas (Thesis advisor) / Tserlukevich, Yuri (Committee member) / Wang, Jessie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Firms reduce investment when facing downward wage rigidity (DWR), the inability or unwillingness to adjust wages downward. I construct DWR measures and exploit staggered state-level changes in minimum wage laws as an exogenous variation in DWR to document this fact. Following a minimum wage increase, firms reduce their investment rate by 1.17 percentage points. Surprisingly, this labor market friction enhances firm value and production efficiency when firms are subject to other frictions causing overinvestment, consistent with the theory of second best. Finally, I identify increased operating leverage and aggravation of debt overhang as mechanisms by which DWR impedes investment.
ContributorsCho, DuckKi (Author) / Bharath, Sreedhar (Thesis advisor) / Hertzel, Michael (Thesis advisor) / Bessembinder, Hendrik (Committee member) / Wang, Jiaxu (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2017
Description
This dissertation consists of two essays. The first, titled “Market Timing in Corporate Finance Decisions: Evidence from Stock Market Anomalies” revisits the question of market timing in corporate finance by using a new mispricing measure based on stock return anomalies. Using this mispricing measure, I show that U.S. firms are 59% more likely to issue equity when overvalued and 28% more likely to repurchase shares when undervalued. Moreover, this market timing behavior is more pronounced as executives gain more personal benefits from these strategies. Executives use market timing strategies in acquisitions as well. I document that executives are more likely to use equity as currency in acquisitions when overvalued and use cash when undervalued. I find consistent evidence using an international dataset that includes 33 countries. These findings provide new evidence about market timing and support the market timing hypothesis. The second essay, titled “Monetary Policy Uncertainty and Asset Price Bubbles” examines the impact of monetary policy uncertainty (MPU) in predicting future asset price bubbles. Using US data from 1926-2019, this paper shows that greater monetary policy uncertainty leads to a greater likelihood of bubbles in industry-level returns. The result is robust to criticisms on the ex-ante identification of bubbles. This paper also documents that including MPU in machine learning models improves the models’ ability to predict bubbles in real-time.
ContributorsAlkan, Ulas (Author) / Aragon, George (Thesis advisor) / Bharath, Sreedhar (Committee member) / Tserlukevich, Yuri (Committee member) / Jiaxu Wang, Jessie (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023