Sudarshan Jayaraman

Exit as Governance: An Empirical Analysis

Recent theory posits a new governance channel available to blockholders: threat of exit. Threat of exit, as opposed to actual exit, is difficult to measure directly. However, a crucial property is that it is weaker when stock liquidity is lower and vice versa. We use natural experiments of financial crises and decimalization as exogenous shocks to stock liquidity. Firms with larger blockholdings experience greater declines (increases) in firm value during the crises (decimalization), particularly if the managers wealth is sensitive to the stock price and thus to exit threats. Additional tests suggest exit threats are distinct from blockholder intervention.

Mark-to-Market Accounting and Information Asymmetry in Banks

We examine the relation between mark-to-market (MTM) accounting for securities and information asymmetry among bank investors. Relative to historical cost, MTM incorporates more timely information in financial statements. The primary effect of more timely disclosure most likely is to reduce information asymmetry. Nevertheless, models in which public information triggers private information acquisition imply some offsetting increase in asymmetry due to differential information production among investors. Incrementally to disclosure effects, recognition (incorporating MTM gains and losses in earnings) can increase information asymmetry through a variety of channels. We document an economically and statistically significant relation between banks’ use of MTM and their bid-ask spreads, analyst following and management forecasting. Introduction of mandatory MTM by SFAS No. 115 reveals a significant increase in spreads for affected banks, no such increase for banks that previously used MTM voluntarily, but similar increases for banks that previously disclosed but did not MTM their gains and losses in earnings. Thus, information asymmetry appears to arise primarily from recognition effects and not from more timely disclosure. These results should not be interpreted as advocating abandoning MTM, but as highlighting the tradeoffs involved in choosing historical cost versus MTM rules.

The Source of Information in Prices and Investment-Price Sensitivity

This paper shows that real decisions depend not only on the total amount of information in prices, but the source of this information—a manager learns from prices when they contain information not possessed by him. We use the staggered enforcement of insider trading laws across 27 countries as a shock to the source of information that leaves total information unchanged: enforcement reduces (increases) managers’ (outsiders’) contribution to the stock price. Consistent with the predictions of our theoretical model, enforcement increases investment-q sensitivity, even when controlling for total price informativeness. The effect is larger in industries where learning is likely to be stronger, and in emerging countries where outsider information acquisition rises most post-enforcement. Enforcement does not increase the sensitivity of investment to cash flow, a non-price measure of investment opportunities. These findings suggest that extant measures of price efficiency should be rethought when evaluating real efficiency. More broadly, our paper provides causal evidence that managers learn from prices, by using a shock to price informativeness.

Who Monitors the Monitor? Bank Capital Structure and Borrower Monitoring

The role that banks play in screening and monitoring their borrowers is well understood. However, these bank activities are costly and unobservable, thus difficult to contract upon. This introduces the possibility of shirking and leads to the question – who monitors the monitor? Financial intermediation theories posit that bank capital structure plays such a role in incentivizing banks to monitor their borrowers. Both bank debt and bank equity have been proposed in various theories as providing the discipline to induce banks to monitor. However, empirical evidence on how bank capital structure influences borrower monitoring is scant. To circumvent identification concerns with regressing (unobservable) bank monitoring on (endogenous) bank capital structure, we use variation in country-level creditor rights to capture banks’ need to monitor their borrowers. We develop a theoretical model in which greater expost protection offered to lenders (i.e., banks) during borrower bankruptcy/renegotiation reduces the bank’s ex-ante incentives to monitor. This is because the greater salvage value of bank loans reduces the bank’s expected loss from not monitoring. Our model also examines how banks alter their capital structures in response to changes in their country’s creditor rights, and shows that the reduced demand for bank monitoring induced by stronger creditor rights induces the bank to shift its capital structure away from the source of financing that induces it to monitor. We find empirically that increases in creditor rights result in banks tilting their capital structures away from equity and towards deposits. We verify (theoretically and empirically) that these demand-based tilts in bank capital structure are not explained by supply-side effects (i.e., creditor rights make it cheaper to supply bank debt), and conclude that bank equity is a stronger source of discipline on banks than bank debt.

The Effect of Economic Integration on Accounting Comparability: Evidence from the Adoption of the Euro

We examine the effect of economic integration on accounting comparability. Using the adoption of the euro as a shock to economic integration, we document two effects. First, we show a direct effect around the adoption of the euro – accounting comparability increases among industries in adopting countries relative to those in non-adopting ones and this effect is driven by increases in arm’s length financing. Second, economic integration also has an interactive effect, by influencing the effect of accounting standards harmonization (proxied by IFRS adoption) on accounting comparability. Specifically, the effect of IFRS adoption on accounting comparability is approximately three times larger for euro members than it is for non-euro members. Our paper highlights the role of economic integration and its interplay with accounting standards harmonization in shaping accounting comparability.

Is Silence Golden? Real Effects of Mandatory Disclosure

Mandatory disclosure provides benefits, but it also entails costs. One cost concerns managerial learning: by discouraging informed trading, disclosure could reduce managers’ ability to glean decision-relevant information from prices. Using mandatory segment reporting in the United States, we uncover a reduction in investment-

Good Buffer, Bad Buffer

q

Capture and Competition

sensitivity, indicating lower investment efficiency after regulation. Consistent with learning, lower sensitivity is concentrated in firms with more informed trading and lower financing constraints. Constrained firms exhibit no change in investment-

Product Market Peers and Relative Performance Evaluation

q

The Effect of Creditor Rights on Bank Monitoring, Capital Structure and Risk-Taking

sensitivity, suggesting that they enjoy countervailing benefits via greater financing and stronger governance. Overall, we document a novel link between mandatory disclosure and real effects. Received October 25, 2017; editorial decision June 20, 2018 by Editor Wei Jiang.