Financial Crisis Fueled by Liquidity-driven Sales of Corporate Bonds Assistant Professor Ayako Yasuda, in collaboration with Professor Alberto Marconi of INSEAD and Professor Massimo Massa of Tilburg University, the Netherlands, has researched the behavior of investors who were significantly exposed to toxic assets during the 2007–2008 financial crisis. Using a novel dataset of institutional investors’ bond holdings, they examined how the crisis moved from the securitized bond market to the corporate bond market via investors’ joint ownership of these bonds. Institutional investors, intoxicated by mortgage-backed and other securitized bonds, experienced greater pressure to liquidate corporate assets and sell them at a lower price following the onset of the crisis. The result: corporate bond prices plummeted. “These institutional investors—in particular, the bond mutual funds—played a critical role in the contagion of the market shock that moved from the subprime market into the broader economy,” said Yasuda. She has presented this research at UC San Diego’s Rady School of Management; University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business; the Financial Crisis conference organized by the National Bureau of Economic Research in New
York City; and at the Western Finance Association Annual Meetings in Victoria, B.C. (Canada). Yasuda’s research with Professor Andrew Metrick of the Yale University School of Management was published in the June issue of Review of Financial Studies. Using a novel dataset, “The Economics of Private Equity Funds” details the differences between the value venture capitalists and buyout fund managers bring to large and small companies. It is among the top 100 most-downloaded research papers in the Social Science Research Network. Yasuda and Metrick’s textbook, Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation (Wiley and Sons, September 2010), includes a web learning tool that has drawn the interest of the Institutional Limited Partners Association, a networking group of more than 230 member organizations worldwide that manage assets of more than $5 trillion.
Assistant Professor Ayako Asuda
>> www.gsm.ucdavis.edu/yasuda
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Davis Conference on Qualitative Research Brings International Focus by Jacqueline Romo
The Graduate School of Management hosted its 10th annual Davis Conference on Qualitative Research in March, attracting top scholars to share their work, brainstorm new ideas and spur future collaborations. This year’s research explored diverse contemporary issues and had an international focus. “There was a paper about corporate museums in Italy, one on the Canadian healthcare system, another on the inception of the Indian fashion industry,” said conference co-organizer Professor Kim Elsbach. Assistant Professor Andrew Nelson from the University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business received a Best Paper award for his work on how knowledge and know-how is diffused and shared in an organization. Assistant Professor Steven Kahl from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business received the second Best Paper award for his co-authored study of how technology innovations and the
The conference inspired imagination and introduced new perspectives that challenged us to deepen our analyses and see our research from divergent perspectives. — Assistant Professor Steven Kahl Booth School of Business, University of Chicago
use of new technologies both reinforce authoritative boundaries among an organization’s work groups, and can be used by subordinate groups to carve out new work and assert their expertise. “These papers weaved empirical data with a strong theoretical base,” said conference co-organizer Associate Professor Beth Bechky. They will be included in the third volume of Qualitative Organization Research, the next compilation of best papers from the Davis Conference on Qualitative Research. Said Kahl, “The conference inspired imagination and introduced new perspectives that challenged us to deepen our analyses and see our research from divergent perspectives.” UC D av i s G r a d u at e S c h o o l o f M a n a g e m e n t • 1 5