Robin Greenwood
Robin Greenwood
Associate Professor of Business Administration
| Unit | Finance |
|---|---|
| Contact | (617) 495-6979 Send E-Mail |
| Interests | asset pricing, behavioral finance, capital structure, corporate finance, market efficiency, more > |
| Overview | Biography | Publications & Course Materials | Current Research | Areas of Interest |
Robin Greenwood has been on the faculty since 2003. His research investigates the effects of investor demand on asset prices and risk, as well as its implications for corporate financing patterns. His recent research on investor activism the subject of his testimony at a US Congress Subcommittee Hearings in March 2008. Professor Greenwood received a Ph.D. from Harvard in Economics in 2003, and holds B.S. degrees in Economics and Mathematics from MIT. He has taught in both years of the MBA finance curriculum and various executive education programs. Since Spring 2009, he has been teaching a course on behavioral and value investing.
Featured Work
Agency Costs, Mispricing, and Ownership Structure
Sergey Chernenko, Fritz Foley, and Robin Greenwood. Working Paper November 2009.
Standard agency theory in corporate finance assumes that because markets are efficient, insiders bear the costs of diverting resources from outside investors. We show that if equity is overvalued, however, the controlling shareholder lists more equity, and in equilibrium diverts more from outside investors. We offer supporting evidence from publicly listed subsidiaries in Japan.
Price Pressure in the Government Bond Market
Robin Greenwood and Dimitri Vayanos. Working Paper November 2009.
We present two episodes that strongly support the preferred habitat view of the term structure. We discuss implications for recent monetary policy.
Stock Price Fragility
Robin Greenwood and David Thesmar. Working Paper October 2009.
We investigate the relationship between ownership structure of financial assets and non-fundamental risk. An asset can be fragile because of concentrated ownership, or because its owners face correlated liquidity shocks, ie., they must buy or sell at the same time.
Catering to Characteristics
Robin Greenwood and Samuel Hanson. Working Paper June 2009.
When investors overvalue a particular firm characteristic, corporations endowed with that characteristic can absorb some of the demand by issuing equity. We use time-series variation in differences between the attributes of stock issuers and repurchasers to shed light on characteristic-related mispricing. Our approach helps forecast returns to portfolios based on book-tomarket (HML), size (SMB), price, distress, payout policy, profitability, and industry.
(Case Study) Citigroup's Exchange Offer
A case study of Citigroup's preferred for common stock swap in mid-2009.
Instructors please email me for teaching materials.
(Case Study) Washington Mutual's Covered Bonds
Robin Greenwood and Daniel Bergstresser. Case Study 2009.
Washington Mutual issued 6 billion Euro of covered bonds in 2006 and is now facing distress during the financial crisis. The objective of the case is to ask whether the covered bonds are mispriced in late 2008. Instructors please email me for teaching materials.