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Stigma has negative consequences for quality of life and HIV care outcomes. PositiveLinks is a mobile health intervention that includes a secure anonymous community message board (CMB). We investigated discussion of stigma and changes in stigma scores. Of 77 participants in our pilot, 63% were male, 49% Black, and 72% had incomes below the federal poverty level. Twenty-one percent of CMB posts (394/1834) contained stigma-related content including negative (experiencing stigma) and positive (overcoming stigma) posts addressing intrapersonal and interpersonal stigma. Higher baseline stigma was positively correlated with stress and negatively correlated with HIV care self-efficacy. 12-month data showed a trend toward more improved stigma scores for posters on the CMB versus non-posters (− 4.5 vs − 0.63) and for posters of stigma-related content versus other content (− 5.1 vs − 3.3). Preliminary evidence suggests that a supportive virtual community, accessed through a clinic-affiliated smartphone app, can help people living with HIV to address stigma.

This paper puts forward a capital structure model that incorporates the impacts of dividend policy and personal taxes that are commonly ignored by the existing capital structure models. The results show that paying dividends can reduce the tax benefits from issuing debts, which explains why existing capital structure models commonly overestimate leverage ratios. The results further show that as dividend payout increases, leverage ratios and credit spreads increase too. By incorporating the impacts of dividend policy and personal taxes, the capital structure model established in this paper can generate wide range of leverage ratios and credit spreads, which are consistent with what are observed in the real world.

This paper presents a new approach for estimating default correlation by linking default correlation to equity return correlation while preserving the fundamental relation between default and asset correlations in the structural framework. Our hybrid model thus overcomes a long-standing empirical difficulty that default correlation estimation relies on the unobservable asset process. The empirical analysis shows that our hybrid model demonstrates a considerable improvement over the existing structural model of Zhou (2001) for the sample periods of 1970-1993 and 1990-2010. We also illustrate the difference between the two models in predicting default correlations over the period of the 2008 financial crisis.

This paper examines one of the major problems in credit risk models widely used in the financial industry to forecast future defaults and bankruptcies. We find that even after proper calibration, a representative credit risk model can severely underestimate default correlation. We further find that a likely reason for the underestimation of default correlation is the problematic common practice in the financial industry of using observable equity correlation as a proxy for unobservable asset correlation when the model is applied to predict default correlation. However, our results show that this proxy in common practice is not valid.

This paper incorporates human capital into the well-established portfolio theory by allowing for job security in personal portfolio choice. Our model predicts that young people hold more cash to hedge against risk associated with human capital (layoff risk). As people age, layoff risk decreases, and consequently, they invest in more risky assets – stocks in their portfolios. However, as people approach retirement, their human capital diminishes, and they become more risk averse. Hence, they hold more cash again. Our model provides a plausible explanation for the observed investment behavior of people who reveal humped shape stock holdings over the life cycle. Our results suggest that financial advisors should take into account different levels of job security when giving financial advice to different individuals.

We investigate the relationship between underwriter reputation and earnings management of IPO firms over the period of 1991-2005. We find that IPO firms engage in less earnings management if they are underwritten by prestigious investment bankers. Furthermore, the role of prestigious underwriters in restraining earnings management of IPO issuers do not change during the Internet Bubble period or after the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). The findings support the certification role of underwriters in the IPO process. We also document that firms going public in the post-SOX period engage in less earnings management compared to firms going public in the pre-SOX period. Further findings suggest that the changing objectives of venture capitalists may explain the reduction in the level of earnings management of IPO firms following the passage of SOX.