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Working Paper
Initial public offerings in hot and cold markets
The literature on IPOs offers a wide variety of explanations to justify the dramatic swings in the volume of IPOs observed in the market. Many theories predict that hot IPO markets are characterized by clusters of firms in particular industries for which a technological innovation has occurred, suggesting that hot and cold market IPO firms will differ in quality, prospects, or types of business. Others suggest hot market IPOs are firms that take advantage of irrational investors. We compare firms that go public in a number of hot and cold markets during 1975- 2000, examining them at the time ...
Journal Article
Understanding aggregate default rates of high yield bonds
The New York-New Jersey region's hard-earned recovery in employment is being overshadowed by ongoing job losses in certain sectors and the prospect of moderating growth in the United States as a whole. Fortunately, several positive trends are bolstering the region's employment picture. Strength in the services sector, a falloff in restructuring, and gains in income point to continuing--though modest--regional job growth in 1996.
Report
Stock market valuation indicators: is this time different?
Record low dividend yields and record high market-to-book ratios in recent months have led many market watchers to conclude that these indicators now behave differently from how they have in the past. This paper examines the relationship between traditional market indicators and stock performance, and then addresses two popular claims that the meaning of these indicators has changed in recent years. The first is that dividend yields are permanently lower now than in the past because firms have increased their use of share repurchases as a tax-advantaged substitute for dividends. The second ...
Working Paper
Sectoral shifts and interindustry wage differentials
Report
The slope of the credit yield curve for speculative-grade issuers
Many theoretical bond pricing models predict that the slope of the credit yield curve facing highly leveraged firms is negative. Previous empirical research by Sarig and Warga (1989) and Fons (1994) confirms this view of high yield bonds. We show that these results largely owe to sample selection bias associated with the debt maturity choice. When the credit quality of the issuer is held constant, as in the case of matched bond samples, the typical credit yield curve facing speculative-grade issuers is upward-sloping.
Working Paper
How long do junk bonds spend in default?