The lead article in Volume 23, Issue 6 of the Review of Finance is Governance Under the Gun: Spillover Effects of Hedge Fund Activism by Nickolay Gantchev, Oleg Gredil and Chotibhak Jotikasthira.  This paper finds that the threat of hedge fund activism spurs non-targeted companies to improve profitability and valuations, increase payout, and reduce capital expenditure and cash holdings. … Read more...

The lead article in Volume 23, Issue 5 of the Review of Finance is Credit Market Competition and Liquidity Crises by Elena Carletti and Agnese Leonello.  This paper finds that – contrary to common concerns – greater competition in the banking industry can reduce the risk of financial crises. … Read more...

The lead article in Volume 23, Issue 4 of the Review of Finance is Are US Industries Becoming More Concentrated? by Gustavo Grullon, Yelena Larkin, and Roni Michaely. This paper finds that industry concentration has increased substantially in the US over the last two decades.… Read more...

The lead article in Volume 23, Issue 3 of the Review of Finance is Do Credit Default Swaps Mitigate the Impact of Credit Downgrades? by Sudheer Chava, Rohan Ganduri, and Chayawat Ornthanalai.  When a firm’s debt is downgraded, its stock price falls, it subsequently raises less debt, and its cost of debt increases. … Read more...

The lead article in Volume 23, Issue 2 of the Review of Finance is Labor and Capital Dynamics under Financing Frictions by Ryan Michaels, Beau Page, and Toni Whited. This paper uses a new quarterly panel dataset to examine how financing frictions affect firms’ investment and hiring decisions. … Read more...

(This post is thanks to Editor Amiyatosh Purnanandam)

The lead article in Volume 22, Issue 6 of the Review of Finance is Complex Mortgages by Gene Amromin, Jennifer Huang, Clemens Sialm, and Edward Zhong. 

The Changing Nature of Mortgages

Mortgage products were extremely simple in the twentieth century.… Read more...

(This post is thanks to Editor Amit Goyal)

The lead article in Volume 23, Issue 1 of the Review of Finance is “Which Factors?” by Kewei Hou, Haitao Mo, Chen Xue, and Lu Zhang.

A factor model proposes why different stocks have different returns.… Read more...

The lead article in Volume 22, Issue 5 of the Review of Finance is A Theory of Costly Sequential Bidding by Kent Daniel and David Hirshleifer.  This paper explains why, in many real-life auctions such as M&A, bidders may engage in “jump-bids” – bid much more than needed to stay in the auction – when it might seem more prudent to bid the minimum possible increment

How to Bid in an Auction?… Read more...

(This post is thanks to Advisory Editor Andrew Ellul)

The lead article in Volume 22, Issue 4, of the Review of Finance is Labor Representation in Governance as an Insurance Mechanism by E. Han Kim, Ernst Maug and Christoph Schneider. This paper provides evidence that labor participation in firms’ governance enables risk sharing between employees and employers.… Read more...

The lead article in Volume 22, Issue 3 of the Review of Finance is The Cost of Political Connections by Marianne Bertrand, Francis Kramarz, Antoinette Schoar, and David Thesmar. This paper shows that CEOs with a background in politics don’t shut down potentially underperforming plants, and open plants that they might not have otherwise, to boost employment in the run-up to a local election.… Read more...

The lead article in Volume 22, Issue 2 of the Review of Finance is Corporate Credit Risk Premia by Antje Berndt, Rohan Douglas, Darrell Duffie and Mark Ferguson. This paper shows that corporate credit risk premia vary substantially both over time and between bonds.… Read more...

(This post is thanks to Editor Thorsten Beck)

The lead article in Volume 22, issue 1 of the Review of Finance is “ECB Policies Involving Government Bond Purchases: Impact and Channels” by Arvind Krishnamurthy, Stefan Nagel and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen.… Read more...

(This post is thanks to Editor Thorsten Beck)

The lead article in Volume 21, issue 6 of the Review of Finance is “Bank Exposures and Sovereign Stress Transmission” by Carlo Altavilla, Marco Pagano and Saverio Simonelli. The link between sovereign and bank distress has been at the core of the Eurozone crisis, and several papers have addressed the causes of banks’ concentration on domestic sovereign bonds and the repercussions of this concentration for banks’ lending activity and for the real economy.… Read more...

The lead article in Volume 21, Issue 5 of the Review of Finance is “How Important Are Risk-Taking Incentives in Executive Compensation?” by Ingolf Dittmann of Erasmus University Rotterdam, Ko-Chia Yu of National Chung Cheng University, and Dan Zhang of BI Norwegian Business School.… Read more...

The lead article in Volume 21, Issue 4 of the Review of Finance is “What Are the Best Liquidity Proxies for Global Research?” by Kingsley Fong of the University of New South Wales and Craig Holden and Charles Trzcinka of Indiana University.… Read more...

The lead article in Volume 21, Issue 3 of the Review of Finance is “Macro-Finance” by John Cochrane of Stanford. This is an excellent review of recent advances and future research directions on a major asset pricing topic – macro-finance – written in a clear way accessible to those outside the asset pricing literature (such as me).… Read more...

The lead article in Volume 21, Issue 2 of the Review of Finance is “Credit Ratings Across Asset Classes: A Long-Term Perspective” by Jess Cornaggia and Kimberly Cornaggia of Penn State, and John Hund of Georgia.

Credit ratings are a critical feature of bond markets.… Read more...

This post launches the Managing Editors’ blog, where we summarize the lead article of each issue in a non-technical manner. The intended audience for this blog is not just non-academics, but also academics outside the particular literature to which the paper contributes.… Read more...