Michael J. Rebello

Financing and the Demand for Corporate Insurance

In this paper we examine the insurance decision of a firm with private information regarding its cash flows and insurable losses. We show that, even in the absence of bankruptcy costs and information production by insurers, the firms attempts to hedge its information risk can induce it to demand insurance. If higher operating revenues are accompanied by a lower insurance risk, the firm will choose to self-insure. In contrast, if higher operating revenues are accompanied by a higher insurance risk, the firm will demand insurance. In fact, if its insurable losses are relatively small, the firm will fully insure its losses. Further, if there exists considerable uncertainty regarding the firms insurance risk, the level of coverage demanded by the firm is dependent on its private information, with higher levels of coverage signaling favorable information regarding the firms future operations.

Sell-side analyst research and stock comovement

We document that a stocks price around a recommendation or forecast covaries with prices of other stocks the issuing analyst covers. The effect of shared analyst coverage on stock price comovement extends beyond analyst activity days. A stocks daily returns covary with the returns of other stocks with which it shares analyst coverage. These links between stock price comovement and shared analyst coverage are consistent with the coverage-specific information we find in earnings forecasts; analysts who cover both stocks in a pair expect future earnings of the stocks to be more highly correlated than do analysts who cover only one stock from the pair. Collectively, our evidence indicates that analyst research produces coverage-specific spillovers that raise price comovement among stocks that share analyst coverage. The strength of these spillovers is comparable to spillovers from broad industry and market information in analyst research.

Renegotiation, investment horizons, and managerial discretion

In this article, the authors show that the evolution of managerial entrenchment can distort investment horizons. Both myopic and hypermetropic distortions can arise. The direction of these distortions is determined by the locus of control and their pervasiveness by the degree of management entrenchment. Myopic distortions occur when shareholders directly determine investment policy. Hypermetropic distortions occur when management sets investment policy. The inherent hypermetropic bias of managers is mitigated by front-loaded compensation packages and pension plans tied to short-run performance. These distortions in investment horizons may have implications for the allocation of corporate control. Copyright 1997 by University of Chicago Press.

Horses for Courses: Fund Managers and Organizational Structures

This paper considers the team management of mutual funds, fund manager ability, performance, and holdings. We find evidence suggesting there is a positive relation between performance and team management concurrent with a negative relation between managerial ability and the use of team management. Consistent with the notion that the team management suppresses portfolio eccentricity and leads to more generic trading strategies, thereby both increasing returns and making returns less informative of fund manager ability, we also find that team management is associated with less idiosyncratic portfolio holdings and a greater loading on large capitalization, low book-to-market, and momentum stocks.

Private Information and Bargaining Power in Venture Capital Financing

We model the natural evolution of private information over the life of a venture capitalist financed project. In the early stages, the entrepreneur is better informed regarding the project, and when the project matures, the venture capitalist has an informational advantage over the entrepreneur. Within this framework, we examine how the venture capitalists relative bargaining power affects cash flow rights and investment. When the bargaining advantage lies with the entrepreneur, the project may not be screened, and the venture capitalist may acquiesce to excessive initial investment but subsequently terminate the project. Increased venture capitalist bargaining power encourages project screening, attenuates the incentive to overinvest, and reduces the incidence of project termination subsequent to the initial investment. The payoff sensitivity of venture capitalists financing contract also increases as his bargaining power improves.

Reputation and the Market for Distressed Firm Debt

Our analysis explains how vulture investors (vultures) can maintain and exploit their reputations for toughness. Vultures leverage their reputations to extract concessions from stockholders in debt restructurings. To profit from these concessions, vultures must first acquire debt from incumbent bondholders. Buying only the tranches most likely to render them marginal creditors maximizes vulture leverage in debt-purchase negotiations. Vulture profits are proportional to the degree of uncertainty regarding the identity of the marginal debt class.

To Each According to Her Luck and Power: Optimal Corporate Governance and Compensation Policy in a Dynamic World

We model long-run firm performance, management compensation, and corporate governance in a dynamic, nonstationary world. We show that managerial compensation and governance policies, which, in a single-period context, can best be rationalized by self-serving managerial influence over board policy, are shareholder-wealth maximizing in a dynamic setting. For example, shareholder wealth is maximized by governance policies that tie board deference to generous compensation and link the level of current compensation more to luck than performance. Further, under shareholder-wealth maximizing polices, managerial diversion of firm resources for private consumption is likely to accompany stock price declines which immediately follow sustained price increases and lax board oversight. Unless the the likelihood of a control transfer is large, stock-based managerial compensation may not produce as much shareholder value as simple salary contracts.

Learning to bid: The design of auctions under uncertainty and adaptation

We examine auction design in a context where symmetrically informed adaptive agents with common valuations learn to bid for a good. Despite the absence of private valuations, asymmetric information, or risk aversion, bidder strategies do not converge to the Bertrand–Nash equilibrium strategies even in the long run. Deviations from equilibrium strategies depend on uncertainty regarding the value of the good, auction structure, the agentsʼ learning model, and the number of bidders. Although individual agents learn Nash bidding strategies in isolation, the learning of each agent, by flattening the best-reply correspondence of other agents, blocks common learning. These negative externalities are more severe in second-price auctions, auctions with many bidders, and auctions where the good has an uncertain value ex post.

Adverse selection, contract design and investment distortion

We examine the design of compensation contracts and determination of investment policies when a manager has private information regarding the effect of investment on both the firms cash flows and the private benefits she is able to extract from employment. We show that, in general, the optimal mechanism is characterized by a menu of salary and option contracts. When the managers private information relates only to the firms cash flows, the firm overinvests relative to the Pareto optimal level. On the other hand, if the private information relates only to private benefits, the firm will underinvest.

Cash Flows and Debt Maturity

In an asymmetric information framework, a number of authors have demonstrated the existence and uniqueness of short-term debt pooling equilibria in the absence of dissipative costs. We show that short-term debt pooling is robust to a broad range of deviations from stationarity and intertemporal independence. However, with intertemporal dependence, separating equilibria exist in which short-term debt signals favourable information. Non-stationary allows for separating equilibria in which long-term debt signals favourable information. A range of deviations from stationarity and intertemporal independence also support long-term debt pooling equilibria.