Publications
Publications
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- All HBS Web
(775)
- Faculty Publications (158)
- September 2008
- Article
Does Innovation Cause Stock Market Runups? Evidence from the Great Crash
By: Tom Nicholas
This article examines the stock market's changing valuation of corporate patentable assets between 1910 and 1939. It shows that the value of knowledge capital increased significantly during the 1920s compared to the 1910s as investors responded to the quality of... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
CEO and CFO Career Penalties to Missing Quarterly Analysts Forecasts
By: Rick Mergenthaler, Shiva Rajgopal and Suraj Srinivasan
We find that missing the quarterly analyst consensus earnings forecast is associated with career penalties in the form of a reduced bonus, smaller equity grants, and a greater chance of forced dismissal for both CEOs and CFOs during the period 1993-2004. These results... View Details
- August 2008
- Article
Economic Links and Predictable Returns
By: Lauren Cohen and Andrea Frazzini
This paper finds evidence of return predictability across economically linked firms. We test the hypothesis that in the presence of investors subject to attention constraints, stock prices do not promptly incorporate news about economically related firms, generating... View Details
- 2008
- Mimeo
Do Hedge Funds Profit from Mutual-Fund Distress?
By: Joseph Chen, Samuel G. Hanson, Harrison Hong and Jeremy C. Stein
This paper explores the question of whether hedge funds engage in frontrunning strategies that exploit the predictable trades of others. One potential opportunity for front-running arises when distressed mutual funds—those suffering large outflows of assets under... View Details
- May 2008
- Article
Excess Comovement of Stock Returns: Evidence from Cross-sectional Variation in Nikkei 225 Weights
By: Robin Greenwood
In the presence of limits to arbitrage, cross-sectional variation in periodic investor demand should be related to the degree of comovement of returns. I exploit the unusual weighting system of the Nikkei 225 index in Japan to identify cross-sectional variation in... View Details
Keywords: Stocks; Investment; Investment Return; Market Transactions; Weight; Performance Expectations; Behavior; Japan
- Second Quarter 2008
- Article
How Does Investor Sentiment Affect the Cross-Section of Returns
By: Malcolm Baker, Johnathan Wang and Jeffrey Wurgler
Broad waves of investor sentiment should have larger impacts on securities that are more difficult to value and to arbitrage. Consistent with this intuition, we find that when an index of investor sentiment takes low values, small, young, high volatility,... View Details
- January 2008
- Background Note
Equity Options
By: Joshua Coval and Erik Stafford
The goal of this simulation is to understand the reliance of option values on volatility. When an investor trades an option, they are essentially trading volatility. Therefore, much of the focus in this lesson is on forecasting volatility. Students are able to use two... View Details
- January 2008 (Revised January 2009)
- Case
The Armstrong Investigation
By: David Moss and Eugene Kintgen
In the early 20th century, public outrage at certain life insurance practices led to an investigation in New York State that threatened to curtail growth in the industry. Charles Evans Hughes guided the four-month-long Armstrong Investigation, which made startling... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
Catering through Nominal Share Prices
By: Malcolm Baker, Robin Greenwood and Jeffrey Wurgler
We propose and test a catering theory of nominal stock prices. The theory predicts that when investors place higher valuation on low-price firms, managers will maintain share prices at lower levels, and vice-versa. Using measures of time-varying catering... View Details
- 2008
- Working Paper
The Small World of Investing: Board Connections and Mutual Fund Returns
By: Lauren Cohen, Andrea Frazzini and Christopher J. Malloy
This paper uses social networks to identify information transfer in security markets. We focus on connections between mutual fund managers and corporate board members via shared education networks. We find that portfolio managers place larger bets on firms they are... View Details
- October 2007
- Article
Supply and Demand Shifts in the Shorting Market
By: Lauren Cohen, Karl B. Diether and Christopher J. Malloy
Using proprietary data on stock loan fees and quantities from a large institutional investor, we examine the link between the shorting market and stock prices. Employing a unique identification strategy, we isolate shifts in the supply and demand for shorting. We find... View Details
- October 2007
- Article
The Effectiveness of Pre-Release Advertising for Motion Pictures: An Empirical Investigation Using a Simulated Market
By: Anita Elberse and Bharat N. Anand
One of the most visible and publicized trends in the movie industry is the escalation in movie advertising expenditures over time. Yet, the returns to movie advertising are poorly understood. The main reason is that disentangling the causal effect of advertising on... View Details
- October 2007
- Article
The Power of Stars: Do Star Actors Drive the Success of Movies?
By: Anita Elberse
Is the involvement of star actors critical to the success of motion pictures? Film studios, which they regularly pay multimillion-dollar fees to star actors, seem driven by that belief. I shed light on the returns on this investment using an event study that considers... View Details
- September – October 2007
- Article
Trading Patterns and Excess Comovement of Stock Returns
By: Robin Greenwood and Nathan Sosner
n April 2000, 30 stocks were replaced in the Nikkei 225 Index. The unusually broad index redefinition allowed for a study of the effects of index-linked trading on the excess comovement of stock returns. A large increase occurred in the correlation of trading volume of... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Hedge Fund Investor Activism and Takeovers
By: Robin Greenwood and Michael Schor
We examine long-horizon stock returns around hedge fund activism in a comprehensive sample of 13D filings by portfolio investors between 1993 and 2006. Abnormal returns surrounding investor activism are high for the subset of targets that are... View Details
- 2007
- Other Unpublished Work
Hedge Fund Investor Activism and Takeovers
By: Robin Greenwood and Michael Schor
We examine long-horizon stock returns around hedge fund activism in a comprehensive sample of 13D filings by portfolio investors between 1993 and 2006. Abnormal returns surrounding investor activism are high for the subset of targets that are acquired ex-post, but not... View Details
- March 2007 (Revised March 2008)
- Case
The Nikkei 225 Reconstitution
By: Robin Greenwood
Taka Haneda, a proprietary trader at the Tokyo office of Goldman Sachs, has just learned that the Nikkei 225 will undergo a significant redefinition over the coming week. He faces several billion dollars of customer orders, as well as the opportunity to commit the... View Details
- Article
Investor Sentiment in the Stock Market
By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler
We examine how investor sentiment affects the cross-section of stock returns. Theory predicts that a broad wave of sentiment will disproportionately affect stocks whose valuations are highly subjective and are difficult to arbitrage. We test this prediction by... View Details
- Article
The Effect of Dividends on Consumption
By: Malcolm Baker, Stefan Nagel and Jeffrey Wurgler
Classical models predict that the division of stock returns into dividends and capital appreciation does not affect investor consumption patterns, while mental accounting and other economic frictions predict that investors have a higher propensity to consume from... View Details
Keywords: Investment; Investment Return; Economics; Stocks; Capital; Business Earnings; Investment Portfolio; Investment Funds; Cost; Saving
- August 2006
- Article
Investor Sentiment and the Cross Section of Stock Returns
By: Malcolm Baker and Jeffrey Wurgler
We examine how investor sentiment affects the cross-section of stock returns. Theory predicts that a broad wave of sentiment will disproportionately affect stocks whose valuations are highly subjective and are difficult to arbitrage. We test this prediction by... View Details