Asset Management

Having invested multiple billion dollars of pension assets, and now teaching "Institutional Investing; Alternatives in Pension Plans," I approach this question with theoretical and empirical knowledge, and more than a modicum of trepidation.

This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of mortgage delinquency between 2004 and 2008 using a unique loan-level dataset from a major national mortgage bank. Our analysis highlights two major problems underlying the mortgage crisis: a heavy reliance on mortgage brokers who tend to originate lower quality loans, and a high prevalence of low-documentation loans—known in the industry as "liars' loans"—which results in information falsification by borrowers.

We structurally estimate a model in which agents' information processing biases can cause predictability in firms' asset returns and investment inefficiencies. We generalize the neoclassical investment model by allowing for two biases — overconfidence and over-extrapolation of trends — that distort agents' expectations of firm productivity. Our model's predictions closely match empirical data on asset pricing and firm behavior. The estimated bias parameters are well-identified and exhibit plausible magnitudes.

We analyze a model of optimal capital structure and liquidity choice based on a dynamic tradeoff theory for financially constrained firms. In addition to the classical tradeoff between the expected tax advantages of debt and bankruptcy costs, we introduce a cost of external financing for the firm, which generates a precautionary demand for liquidity and an optimal liquidity management policy for the firm.

We provide conditions under which contingent claim and asset demands are consistent with state independent Expected Utility maximization. The paper focuses on the case of a single commodity and demands are allowed to be functions of probabilities and not just prices and income.

Risk free asset demand in the classic portfolio problem is shown to decrease with income if and only if the consumer's uncertainty preferences over assets satisfy the preference condition that the risk free asset is more readily substituted for the risky asset as the quantity of the latter increases. In this case, the risky asset is said to be "urgently needed" following the terminology of the classic certainty analysis of Johnson (1913). The urgently needed property tends to be more readily satisfied in uncertainty versus certainty settings.

Historical cost accounting deals with uncertainty by deferring the recognition of earnings until the uncertainty has largely been resolved. Such accounting affects both earnings and book value and produces expected earnings growth deemed to be at risk. This paper shows that the earnings-to-price and book-to-price ratios that are the product of this accounting forecast both earnings growth and the risk to that growth.

What is a good banker? What is the economic value added of banks? The economics literature on financial intermediation focuses on the role of banks as deposit-taking institutions and as delegated monitors of borrowers. But this description barely begins to represent what banks do in a modern economy. Besides commercial lending, large banks are engaged in a number of other activities ranging from cash management, trade credit, swaps and derivatives trading and underwriting of securities.

This paper presents a framework for addressing normative accounting issues for reporting to shareholders. The framework is an alternative to the emerging Conceptual Framework of the International Accounting Standards Board and the Financial Accounting Standards Board. The framework can be broadly characterized as a utilitarian approach to accounting standard setting. It has two main features. First, accounting is linked to valuation models under which shareholders use accounting information to values their stakes.