Finance
Did the Meme Stock Revolution Actually Change Anything?
Many financial commentators thought that the surge of retail investors participating in the stock market, the most notable of whom boosted “meme stocks” like GameStop, would democratize corporate governance and improve prosocial firm behavior, including the promotion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. In new research, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, and Yoon-Ho Alex Lee find evidence that the exact opposite took place.
CEOs Have Real Incentives To Promote ESG
In new research, Michal Barzuza, Quinn Curtis, and David Webber create a framework explaining why CEOs have powerful incentives to promote ESG, why these incentives are distinct from those of shareholders, why they are powerful despite the lack of governance mechanisms, and why they are at times excessive or skewed.
Evaluating Concerns of Collapsing Commercial Real Estate Prices
There are concerns among bankers and economists that commercial real estate prices are at risk of decreasing substantially. Joseph L. Pagliari, Jr. explains how commercial real estate should be priced based on current and projected inflation and interest rates. A subsequent article will explore if concerns about bank and broader economic vulnerabilities to lower CRE prices.
Decrypting Crypto
The following is an excerpt from Data Money: Inside Cryptocurrencies, Their Communities, Markets, and Blockchains by Koray Caliskan, now out at Columbia University Press.
Bonds Improve Institutional Investors’ Equity Monitoring
Todd Gormley and Manish Jha find that institutional investors holding bonds may experience greater investor attention and more active shareholding voting on their equity positions.
History Shows that Voluntary ESG Standards Lead to a More Focused ESG Disclosure
In recent years, ESG reports have become more common for publicly traded companies. However, critics have found the information they provide to...
Are Sovereign Green Bonds Anything More than a Fad?
It has become fashionable for governments to issue “green” bonds to fund the transition to sustainability. However, sovereign green bonds as currently...
Investors Are Failing To Take into Account the Green Transition
A stock market that has priced in the transition risk away from greenhouse gasses would see higher future returns, the so-called carbon...
Elections Hinder Companies’ Access to Credit
A large body of literature has produced uncertain conclusions about how elections affect firms’ access to credit. In a wide-ranging analysis of...
Why Financial Regulations Might Fail to Produce Their Desired Outcome: The Case of the Capital Conservation Buffer
The capital conservation buffer (CCB) was created after the 2008 financial crisis, instructing banks to retain their dividends in an escrow account and...
LATEST NEWS
Income Inequality
Uninhibited Campaign Donations Risks Creating Oligarchy
In new research, Valentino Larcinese and Alberto Parmigiani find that the 1986 Reagan tax cuts led to greater campaign spending from wealthy individuals, who benefited the most from this policy. The authors argue that a very permissive system of political finance, combined with the erosion of tax progressivity, created the conditions for the mutual reinforcement of economic and political disparities. The result was an inequality spiral hardly compatible with democratic ideals.
ESG, Corporate Governance & Future of the Firm
Did the Meme Stock Revolution Actually Change Anything?
Many financial commentators thought that the surge of retail investors participating in the stock market, the most notable of whom boosted “meme stocks” like GameStop, would democratize corporate governance and improve prosocial firm behavior, including the promotion of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. In new research, Dhruv Aggarwal, Albert H. Choi, and Yoon-Ho Alex Lee find evidence that the exact opposite took place.
Antitrust and Competition
The Kroger-Albertsons Merger Will Not Help Grocery Competition
Kroger and Albertsons say they need to merge to compete with Walmart. Claire Kelloway argues that what they really want is Walmart’s monopsony power, and permitting mergers on these grounds will only harm suppliers, workers, and consumers.
Research
Innovators Respond to Their Presidential Candidate Winning With More Innovation
Does an inventor’s political identity influence their productivity? In a new paper, Joseph Engelberg, Runjing Lu, William Mullins, and Richard Townsend examine the impacts of the 2008 and 2016 United States presidential elections on Democrat and Republican inventors, with a particular focus on the quantity and quality of patents after the country elects a new president.
Antitrust and Competition
Letter to the Editor: Former FTC and DOJ Chief Economists Urge Separation of Economic and Legal Analysis in Merger Guidelines
Seventeen former chief economists of the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice Antitrust Division urge current Agency heads to separate the legal and economic analysis in the draft Merger Guidelines to strengthen the role of the latter in merger review.
