Handbook of the Economics of Finance

The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 414 pages, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012.I LOVE THESE GUYS''(Joseph Stiglitz) is an insanely great economist,'' so writes Paul R. Krugman, who should know. These two like to write books for the populace at large on the topic of macroeconomics. Krugman also likes to spout offon Sunday news shows like ''Meet the Press,'' and on all the cable news programs. You can see Krugman arguing with Bill O'Reilly on Meet the Press. From YouTube: ''Don't call me a liar, pal, that's what you do all the time,'' says O'Reilly; ''This is not your show, so you can't cut offmy mic,'' says Krugman. Judging by their expressions, I was glad Tim Russert (6- 3-) was there in the studio at the time to protect Krugman (5- 7-) (O'Reilly stands 6- 4-). Conservative pundits dislike both economists, but pretty much leave Stiglitz alone.Krugman makes it a point to stay out of government affairs. Stiglitz does just the opposite, and he sometimes gets burned. Stiglitz was part of Bill Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers and was Chief Economist for the World Bank. After much criticism of the way the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conducted lending to developing countries, he was pretty much fired from the World Bank. Comparing the two, you would have to say that Stiglitz is more the bleeding heart, while Krugman says that what he dislikes most is the dishonesty he sees in political-economic discourse. Both are champions of the common man.Since Stiglitz can make the very valid claim for being ''an insanely great economist,'' most everything he says in his books should be taken seriously. There are some real gems in this book. I especially like the perspective he lends to some of the more peculiar things that happened before, during, and after the financial crisis. People hear about these things in the news from some announcer who makes them sound like just more news-bites, but they are, after all, unprecedented (and largely absurd). Take ''robo-signing'' for instance (page 198).WHAT GOES FOR NEWSRobo-signing was part of what happened during the foreclosure process after the massive numbers of defaults of subprime mortgages. Big banks intentionally did not follow mandated law. Apart from ignoring debtors' rights, an ensuing mess followed. Robo-signing was nothing less than a blatant attempt at rewriting property law, and resulted in lying to the courts about the state of each property's title, literally hundreds of times. No bank officer was charged with a crime. By contrast, the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s led to 829 individual convictions and 650 prison sentences. Nowadays the big banks just pay fines as part of settlements where they admit no guilt, and it's just part of doing business.Take algorithmic or ''flash'' trading in the stock exchanges (page 164). These are buys and sales made in nanoseconds on the basis of extracting information from the patterns of prices and trades. Nothing like real information gathered through market research on an industry, or on a firm in a certain industry, backs up these trades. But traders swear that ''price discovery'' is happening this way, and that all this backs up the efficient markets model. So on May 6, 2010 stock prices plummeted to a point where the Dow Jones temporarily lost 10% of its value. There are reasons to believe that these trades ''make markets not just more volatile but also less 'informative' '' (page 166). Still, the talk on the street is all about efficient markets (echoing Alan Greenspan's failures at the Federal Reserve).Take failed privatizations. When electric power in California was liberalized and Enron manipulated prices and public power to its advantage, this was a story about the company's accounting practices, not about privatizing something that had no business being privatized. …

The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future

The theory of the growth of the firm

https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5961&context=lkcsb_research

Socially responsible firms

Globalization, Corporate Finance, and the Cost of Capital

This paper shows that corporate cash holdings is a key driver of product market performance. In particular, I provide evidence that larger relative-to-rivals cash reserves lead to systematic future market-share gains at the expense of industry rivals. Importantly, this “competitive” effect of cash turns out to be magnified when rivals face tighter financing constraints and when the amount of strategic interactions between competitors is substantial. Overall, the results suggest that corporate cash policy comprises a substantial strategic dimension.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1463372_code489967.pdf?abstractid=1090156&rulid=4764465&mirid=1

Financial Strength and Product Market Behavior: The Real Effects of Corporate Cash Holdings

This paper shows that large cash reserves lead to systematic future market share gains at the expense of industry rivals. Using shifts in import tariffs to identify exogenous intensification of competition, difference-in-difference estimations support the causal impact of cash on product market performance. Moreover, the analysis reveals that the "competitive" effect of cash is markedly distinct from the strategic effect of debt on product market outcomes. This effect is stronger when rivals face tighter financing constraints and when the number of interactions between competitors is large. Overall, the results suggest that cash policy encompasses a substantial strategic dimension.

Learning from peers' stock prices and corporate investment.

We examine whether and, if so, how a U.S. cross-listing mitigates the risk that managers will squander corporate cash holdings. We find strong evidence that the value investors attach to excess cash reserves is substantially larger for foreign firms listed on U.S. exchanges and over the counter than for their domestic peers. Further, we show that this excess-cash premium stems not only from the strength of U.S. legal rules and disclosure requirements designed to safeguard investors’ money, but also from increased monitoring by financial analysts and large investors. Overall, since investors’ valuation of excess cash mirrors how they expect the cash to be used, our analysis shows that a U.S. listing constrains managers’ inefficient allocation of corporate cash reserves significantly.

The value of excess cash and corporate governance: evidence from u.s. cross-listings

Peers' valuation matters for firms' investment: a one standard deviation increase in peers' valuation is associated with a 5.9% increase in corporate investment. This association is stronger when a firm's stock price informativeness is lower or when its managers appear less informed. Also, the sensitivity of a firm's investment to its stock price is lower when its peers' stock prices informativeness is higher or when demands for its products and its peers' products are more correlated. Furthermore the sensitivity of firms' investment to their peers' valuation drops significantly after going public. These findings are uniquely predicted by a model in which managers learn information from their peers' valuation.

Laurent Frésard

Papers

Financial Strength and Product Market Behavior: The Real Effects of Corporate Cash Holdings

Financial Strength and Product Market Behavior: The Real Effects of Corporate Cash Holdings

Learning from peers' stock prices and corporate investment.

The value of excess cash and corporate governance: evidence from u.s. cross-listings

Learning from Peers' Stock Prices and Corporate Investment