RCFS News

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

            Regulators around the world often react to financial crises by restricting short sales of bank stocks to maintain financial stability. Then, a natural question to ask is whether these short-selling restrictions end up alleviating unwarranted price drops for banks and hence protect vulnerable financial institutions. In a forthcoming RCFS paper, “Short-Selling Bans and Bank Stability,” Alessandro Beber, Daniela Fabbri, Marco Pagano, and Saverio Simonelli… Read More »Paper Spotlight: Short-Selling Bans and Bank Stability

“The Effect of Taxation on Corporate Financing and Investment” by Hong Chen and Murray Frank “How are Bankers Paid?” by Benjamin Bennett, Radhakrishnan Gopalan, and Anjan V. Thakor

It is not just managers that can have a short-term orientation—the forthcoming theoretical paper “Competition for Flow and Short-Termism in Activism,” by Mike Burkart and Amil Dasgupta, shows that activist funds too can focus on the short term. In the model, activists add value by preventing wastage by the manager. To signal their type to their own investors, they take a short-term action such as boosting leverage to make a… Read More »Paper Spotlight: Competition for Flow and Short-Termism in Activism

RCFS has a submission option for papers that were previously reviewed by other journals. The goal of such review process is to help the editors arrive at a quick and informed decision on a paper based on feedback received by the authors from previous submissions. A paper is eligible for this optional review process if it was previously submitted to a few select journals; please see Prior Review Policy for… Read More »Prior Review Process

Are managers too myopic, relative to what shareholders would want? In a forthcoming RCFS paper, “Short-termism, Managerial Talent, and Firm Value,” Richard Thakor provides a theoretical model in which the answer is “no,” with a surprising twist: In the model, managers prefer long-term projects, because it allows talented managers to earn higher rents. However, to reduce managerial rents, the firm may induce a manager to invest in a short-term project,… Read More »Paper Spotlight: Short-termism, Managerial Talent, and Firm Value

We are living through a pandemic-induced recession that has slashed many firms’ cash flows with a consequent negative impact on both employment and wage levels. Firms, fighting for survival, will be pressed to cut costs, and wages are an important budget line for the vast majority of firms. At the same time, workers are important assets for firms’ survival and prosperity. What are the effects of paying higher wages on… Read More »Paper Spotlight: Wages and Firm Performance: Evidence from the 2008 Financial Crisis