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RCFS News

Paper Spotlight: Crisis Poison Pills

The stock market stress caused by the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak generated an ideal situation for cash-rich activists to buy strategic equity positions in target firms. Distinguishing low stock valuations due to bad management decisions, potentially necessitating an activist campaign, from the systematic blow due to the pandemic’s economic impact, may have been too difficult under the circumstances we observed in the early months. Some of these activist campaigns… Read More »Paper Spotlight: Crisis Poison Pills

Forthcoming Paper

“Skilled Labor Risk and Corporate Policies” by Yue Qiu and Tracy Yue Wang

Paper Spotlight: Efficient Programs to Support Businesses During and After Lockdowns

The scale and scope of various government interventions around the globe in the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak have been nothing short of staggering. Programs have come in different forms: guaranteed loans, equity injections, bank loans to SMEs that can be transformed into government-financed grants, etc. The actions taken in the initial stages of the outbreak, necessary to fight the economic fallout, are bound to generate major spillovers going forward.… Read More »Paper Spotlight: Efficient Programs to Support Businesses During and After Lockdowns

Editor’s Choice 10(1)

The Editor’s Choice paper for issue 10(1) is “Institutional Investors and Hedge Fund Activism” by Simi Kedia, Laura T. Starks, and Xianjue Wang. You can read the paper free online.

Paper Spotlight: Information Bias in the Proxy Advisory Market

Investors increasingly rely on proxy advisors such as ISS in deciding how to vote in corporate elections. In the paper “Information Bias in the Proxy Advisory Market,” Shichao Ma and Yan Xiong construct a theoretical model to examine the biases that can arise when the proxy advisor is a profit-maximizer. An intuitive finding is that a conflicted proxy advisor provides biased recommendations. More interestingly, if shareholders have either distorted preferences… Read More »Paper Spotlight: Information Bias in the Proxy Advisory Market

RCFS Keynote Speaker

RCFS is pleased to announce that Amir Sufi (The University of Chicago Booth School of Business) will be the RCFS Keynote Speaker at Cavalcade North America 2021. The keynote will take Tuesday, May 25, 2021, from 3:45-4:30pm.

Paper Spotlight: How are Bankers Paid?

            There is widespread recognition among policymakers and regulators that bank behavior, especially risk-taking, is influenced by the type of compensation paid to bank executives. Academic literature, however, is still grappling with this question, and it is not unfair to say that there is a dearth of evidence even about basic facts about how executive compensation has changed after the 2008 financial crisis as new… Read More »Paper Spotlight: How are Bankers Paid?

Call for Papers: 10th MoFiR Workshop on Banking

The 10th MoFiR Workshop on Banking is now accepting submissions. Please see the Call for Papers. The workshop, which features a dual submission option with RCFS, will take place virtually June 21-22, 2021. The RCFS sponsoring editor is Andrew Ellul. The submission deadline is 6pm (GMT), Sunday March 21, 2021.