Publications

February 1986 (Revised September 1994)
Case

Travelers Mortgage Securities CMO

Describes a series of collateralized mortgage obligations offered by Travelers Insurance. Provides a general description of the life insurance business and the role of life insurance in the capital markets. Also describes a variety of mortgage related instruments,... View Details

Keywords: Insurance; Capital Markets; Mortgages; Insurance Industry; United States

August 2014 (Revised March 2015)
Case

Molycorp: Issuing the 'Happy Meal' Securities (B)

By: Benjamin C. Esty and E. Scott Mayfield

Molycorp, the Western hemisphere's only producer of rare earth minerals, was in the middle of a $1 billion capital expansion in its effort to become a vertically integrated supplier of rare earth minerals, oxides, and metals. After reporting lower than expected... View Details

Article

Capital Market-Driven Corporate Finance

By: Malcolm Baker

Much of empirical corporate finance focuses on sources of the demand for various forms of capital, not the supply. Recently, this has changed. Supply effects of equity and credit markets can arise from a combination of three ingredients: investor tastes, limited... View Details

Keywords: Behavioral Finance; Limits To Arbitrage; Market Efficiency; Securities Issuance; Supply Effects; Corporate Finance; Investment; Price; Capital Markets; Equity; Financial Services Industry

December 2018 (Revised April 2020)
Case

Fluidity: The Tokenization of Real Estate Assets

By: Marco Di Maggio, David Lane and Susie Ma

In December 2018, the blockchain startup Fluidity was about to participate in its first tokenization deal, which would create digital access to property rights in a 12-unit Manhattan condominium complex. The deal was proof-of-concept for Fluidity, which hoped to... View Details

Keywords: Blockchain; Tokenization; Data Security; Revenue Model; Finance; Technological Innovation; Strategy

2025
Working Paper

How Do Households Suppress the Price of Tail Risk?

By: Laurent Calvet, Claire Célérier, Gordon Liao and Boris Vallée

This paper investigates the effects of the issuance of retail products with non-linear payoffs on option prices. For a given underlying asset, when the outstanding volume of products embedding a short-put position increases, implied volatility at the corresponding... View Details

Keywords: Security Design; Dividend; Options; Structured Products; Market Segmentation; Financial Instruments; Design; Volatility; Markets; Segmentation

January 2003 (Revised July 2003)
Case

Boston Automation Systems, Inc.

By: David F. Hawkins

Daniel Fisher, the CFO of Boston Automation Systems, must review a number of revenue transaction accounting policies following the issuance of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Staff Accounting Bulletin 101, "Revenue Recognition in Financial Statements."... View Details

Keywords: Revenue Recognition; Policy; Financial Statements

June 2013
Article

Are There Too Many Safe Securities? Securitization and the Incentives for Information Production

By: Samuel G. Hanson and Adi Sunderam

We present a model that helps explain several past collapses of securitization markets. Originators issue too many informationally insensitive securities in good times, blunting investor incentives to become informed. The resulting endogenous scarcity of informed... View Details

Keywords: Information; Debt Securities; Financial Crisis

Article

The Economics of Structured Finance

By: Joshua D. Coval, Jakub W. Jurek and Erik Stafford

This paper investigates the spectacular rise and fall of structured finance. The essence of structured finance activities is the pooling of economic assets like loans, bonds, and mortgages, and the subsequent issuance of a prioritized capital structure of claims, known... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Asset Management; Debt Securities; Investment; Risk Management; Behavior

2005
Working Paper

Aggregate Corporate Liquidity and Stock Returns

By: Robin Greenwood

Aggregate investment in cash and liquid assets as a share of total corporate investment is negatively related to subsequent U.S. stock market returns between 1947 and 2003. The share of cash in total investment is a more stable predictor of returns than scaled price... View Details

Keywords: Stocks; Financial Liquidity; Cash; Investment Return; Corporate Finance

12 May 2015
Working Paper Summaries

Financing Payouts

Keywords: by Joan Farre-Mensa, Roni Michaely & Martin C. Schmalz

August 2015
Article

A Comparative-Advantage Approach to Government Debt Maturity

By: Robin Greenwood, Samuel G. Hanson and Jeremy C. Stein

We study optimal government debt maturity in a model where investors derive monetary services from holding riskless short-term securities. In a setting where the government is the only issuer of such riskless paper, it trades off the monetary premium associated with... View Details

Keywords: Sovereign Finance; Debt Securities

March 2011
Article

Institutional Demand Pressure and the Cost of Corporate Loans

By: Victoria Ivashina and Zheng Sun

Between 2001 and 2007, annual institutional funding in highly leveraged loans went up from $32 billion to $426 billion, accounting for nearly 70% of the jump in total syndicated loan issuance over the same period. Did the inflow of institutional funding in the... View Details

Keywords: Leveraged Buyouts; Financial Crisis; Credit; Debt Securities; Financing and Loans; Interest Rates; Investment

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