dividend changes abnormal returns and intra lndustry firm valuations previous empirical research has established that dividend changes are associated with sig nificant abnormal returns this association is rationalized on the basis that the dividend announcement acts as a signal of future earnings another body of research has documented the existence of intra industry transfers of information where news about one firm is extrapolated to other companies in the same industry earnings information transfers have been found to be positive in nature with good news about one company leading to stock price increases for rival firms linking dividend signaling and information transfer tests were constructed to ascertain whether the dividend change of one firm is associated with the stock price performance of other companies in the same industry the results indicate there is some small positive information transfer the magnitude of information transfer is related to the degree of the dividend surprise the recent dividend history of the other companies and correlations in stock returns between the dividend announcer and the other companies information transfer is found to affect earnings and earnings growth estimates of the other firms and this leads to revisions in their stock prices

information transmission in informationally linked markets evidence from us and chinese commodity futures markets abstract this paper investigates information transmission and price discovery in informationally linked markets within the multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity and information share frameworks based on both synchronous and non synchronous trading information from chinese futures spot markets the new york mercantile exchange nymex chicago board of trade cbot and cme globex futures markets for copper and soybeans we show that there is a bidirectional relationship in terms of price and volatility spillovers between us and chinese markets with a stronger effect from us to chinese markets than the other way around additionally the nymex and cbot play a more important role than the cme globex in the flow of information from us to chinese markets moreover we find that chinese copper market adjusts more quickly than the nymex copper market to correct the disparity between both markets however the converse is true in the case of soybeans finally our results highlight the remarkable role of chinese futures markets in the price formation process though nymex and cbot futures markets are the main driving force in price discovery

models of stock returns a comparison in this paper a discrete mixture of normal distributions is proposed to explain the observed significant kurtosis fat tails and significant positive skewness in the distribution of daily rates of returns for a sample of common stocks and indexes stationarity tests on the parameter estimates of this discrete mixture of normal distributions model revealed significant differences in the mean estimates that can explain the observed skewness and significant differences in the variance estimates that can explain the observed kurtosis an alternative explanation for the observed fat tails is the symmetric student model the result of a comparison between the models is that the discrete mixture of normal distributions model has substantially more descriptive validity than the student model for many years both financial economists and statisticians have been concerned with the description of stock market returns the form of the distribution of stock returns is a crucial assumption for mean variance portfolio theory theoretical models of capital asset prices and the prices of contingent claims for example understanding the behavior of the variance is essential to option pricing models empirical tests of asset pricing models and the efficient markets hypothesis draw statistical inferences that are also conditional on distributional assumptions the most convenient assumption for financial theory and empirical methods is that the distribution of security rates of return be multivariate normal with parameters that are stationary over time since the normal distribution is stable under addition any arbitrary portfolio of stocks will also be normally distributed with the additional assumption of risk aversion mean variance theory follows furthermore the assumptions of normality and parameter stationarity are required for most of the econometric techniques typically used in empirical research tests of the normality hypothesis on the daily returns of the dow jones industrial stocks by fama 121 revealed more kurtosis fatter tails than that predicted from a sample of independent and identically distributed normal variates fama concluded from this evidence that the distribution of price changes conforms better to the stable paretian distribution with characteristic exponent

nonlinear income effects in random utility models random utility models rums are used in the literature to model consumer choices from among a discrete set of alternatives and they typically impose a constant marginal utility of income on individual preferences this assumption is driven partially by the difficulty of constructing welfare estimates in models with nonlinear income effects recently mcfadden 1995 developed an algorithm for computing these welfare impacts using a monte carlo markov chain simulator for generalized extreme value variates this paper investigates the empirical consequences of nonlinear rums in the case of sportfishing modal choice while refining and contrasting the available methods for welfare estimation

spatial boundaries and choice set definition in a random utility model of recreation demand we are concerned with the definition of choice set used in random utility models of recreation demand in particular we are concerned with the spatial boundaries used to define choice sets in this paper using a model of day trip fishing in maine we examine the sensitivity of parameter and welfare estimates to changes in the spatial boundary we find that there exists some threshold distance beyond which adding more sites to the choice set has negligible effects on the estimation results

consistent estimation of cross sectional models in event studies event studies often include cross sectional regressions of announcement effects on exogenous variables if the event is voluntary and investors are rational then standard ols and gls estimators are inconsistent consistent ml estimators are constructed for a cross sectional model of horizontal mergers relating announcement effects to exgeneous characteristics of firms and industries the ols and ml estimates differ dramatically for bidders but not for targets the evidence suggests that managers of bidders but not targets have valuable private information about the potential synergies from proposed mergers article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

economics and politics the case of sugar tariff reform we study congressional voting on sugar tariff reform in 1912 to investigate theories of constituent influence on trade policy in this setting consumer interests enjoyed substantial political efficacy moreover since a variety of producer interests competed in the political marketplace we can evaluate which producer interests were most effective we explore these issues by integrating two techniques drawn from economics and political science overcoming some common problems encountered in political economy research we first conduct an event study to ascertain the relative incidence and importance of legislative events we then conduct a roll call regression on congressional votes to determine legislator responsiveness to different interest groups we find that wealthy and concentrated groups especially shareholders were not influential large unconcentrated groups in particular beet sugar laborers and sugar beet and sugarcane farmers were the most influential producer groups strikingly these la

equilibrium pricing and portfolio composition in the presence of uncertain parameters abstract we analyze the effect of parameter uncertainty on equilibrium asset prices for the symmetric case when the amount of estimation risk is the same for all securities the existing literature argues that parameter uncertainty is largely irrelevant for equilibrium our results differ we find that symmetric estimation risk affects equilibrium values of relative asset prices expected returns market weights and betas

measurement error in recreation demand models the joint estimation of participation site choice and site characteristics abstract in the demand for recreational fishing sites an important explanatory variable differentiating sites is the unobserved expected catch rate since the observed catch rate is subject to sampling variability using the average of a site s observed catch rates causes the parameter estimator on catch to be biased downward we develop and demonstrate a solution to this errors in variables problem when there are repeated measurements on the catch rate consistent and efficient estimates of both the demand parameters and the expected catch rates are obtained by simultaneously estimating them by maximum likelihood an empirical example demonstrates the importance of simultaneous estimation

a direct test of roll s conjecture on the firm size effect empirical research indicates that small firms earn higher average rates of return than large firms even after accounting for beta risk roll conjectured that the small firm effect might be attributed to improper estimation of security betas the evidence shows that while the direction of the bias in beta estimation is consistent with roll s conjecture the magnitude of the bias appears to be too small to explain the firm size effect

gradual incorporation of information pharmaceutical stocks and the evolution of president clinton s health care reform abstract we examine the effect of the evolution of president clinton s health care reform proposal over january 1992 october 1993 on pharmaceutical stock prices we identify a 52 3 percent decline in market adjusted prices which we then associate with health care reform applying a new technique isotonic regression we find most of the decline occurred gradually much of the decline occurred as the clinton plan adopted strategies to contain health care costs including managed competition and implicit regulation indirect evidence suggests that the wealth lost by pharmaceutical companies may have been largely an anticipated transfer our results are relevant to understanding the likely effects of the clinton plan and more recent proposals many other policy changes are marked by gradual public revelation of information which may not be completely observable by a researcher our approach may uncover information about the anticipated effects of policies unavailable from a traditional event study

valuation effects of greenmail prohibitions greenmail payments are widely viewed as actions designed by managers to perpetuate their tenure in offiee this view which suggests that greenmail prohibitions would enhance shareholder wealth receives mixed empirical support in this paper the average market reaction to charter amendments prohibiting greenmail payments is weakly nega tive suggesting there is a value to maintaining managerial flexibility nonlinear maxi mum likelihood estimation however reveals a strong positive correlation between the market reaction and the firm s abnormal stock price runup over the three months just prior to the proxy mailing date for the subsample of firms with a relatively large prior runup the precommitment not to pay greenmail is value enhancing if the prior runup reflects takeover rumors then this evidence is consistent with the proposition that greenmail pay ments amidst takeover speculations are value decreasing

estimating the effects of information surprises and trading on stock returns using a mixed jump diffusion model i present a methodology that uses the mixed jump diffusion model for stock returns to estimate the separate effects of information surprises and strategic trading around corporate events using simulation techniques i show that for events with multiple announcements spread over a long time the estimators derived from the mixed jump diffusion model are more powerful compared to the traditional cumulative abnormal return estimators the new methodology is used to study the separate effects of information surprises and strategic trading associated with blockholdings and subsequent targeted repurchases i find that for more than 93 percent of the firms in our sample the mixed jump diffusion model is statistically superior to the pure diffusion model in describing stock returns more important i find a statistically significant negative effect due to trading while the average effect around announcements is statistically insignificant in contrast the standard cumulative abnormal return is not statistically different from zero article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

investigating security price performance in the presence of event date uncertainty abstract this paper introduces an event study method that incorporates the possibility of a random event date consistent with empirical evidence we assume an event may affect not only the conditional mean of a security s return but also its conditional variance we compare the statistical power and efficiency of our maximum likelihood method with the standard application of traditional event study methods to multiday security returns assuming a two day event period our empirical results provide evidence that the multiday approach is robust we use our maximum likelihood method to investigate the valuation effects of stock splits and stock dividends

market rationality and dividend announcements abstract we investigate stock market rationality by examining the timeliness and unbiasedness of the market s response to dividend announcements our initial findings for market timeliness show a sluggish market reaction to dividend announcements however when the ex dividend effect is controlled for we find no evidence of a sluggish market reaction we examine the unbiasedness of the market s response by testing whether the net announcement effect across a sample that is devoid of ex post selection bias sums to zero we observe a significant positive net announcement effect and examine several plausible conjectures for this puzzling phenomenon but none provides a satisfactory explanation

estimating the short run poverty impacts of the 2010 11 surge in food prices global food prices have increased substantially since mid 2010 as have prices in many developing countries in this study we assess the poverty impact of the price changes between june and december 2010 in twenty eight low and middle income countries this is done by gathering detailed information on individual households food production and consumption levels for thirty eight agricultural and food commodities to assess the impacts on household welfare this study estimates that this sudden food price surge increased the number of poor people globally but with considerably different impacts in different countries the heterogeneity of these impacts is partly related to the wide variation in the transmission of global prices to local prices and partly to differences in households patterns of production and consumption on balance the adverse welfare impact on net buyers outweighs the benefits to net sellers resulting in an increase in the number of poor and in the depth of poverty we estimate that the average poverty change was 1 1 percentage points in low income countries and 0 7 percentage points in middle income countries with a net increase of 44 million people falling below the 1 25 per day extreme poverty line

an efficiency approach to choice set formation theory and application to recreational destination choice an unresolved debate in behavioural choice research surrounds specifying individual choice sets to overcome the limitations of deterministic and probabilistic approaches in a framework consistent with individual optimizing behaviour this study develops an efficient frontiers approach to the choice set problem in the context of revealed preference destination choice stochastic frontier models relating costly inputs to utility generating outputs are estimated to measure the efficiency of sites choice sets are then formed by retaining sites that exceed alternative efficiency thresholds choice set composition site choice efficiency and probability of selection and consumer surplus are evaluated in the case of fishery site choice in maine

volatility transmission in emerging european foreign exchange markets abstract this paper studies the dynamics of volatility transmission between central european ce currencies and the eur usd foreign exchange using model free estimates of daily exchange rate volatility based on intraday data we formulate a flexible yet parsimonious parametric model in which the daily realized volatility of a given exchange rate depends both on its own lags as well as on the lagged realized volatilities of the other exchange rates we find evidence of statistically significant intra regional volatility spillovers among the ce foreign exchange markets with the exception of the czech and prior to the recent turbulent economic events polish currencies we find no significant spillovers running from the eur usd to the ce foreign exchange markets to measure the overall magnitude and evolution of volatility transmission over time we construct a dynamic version of the diebold yilmaz volatility spillover index and show that volatility spillovers tend to increase in periods characterized by market uncertainty

dynamics of volatility transmission between the u s and the chinese agricultural futures markets the u s and china are two of the biggest players in the world agricultural market the literature documents that volatility in the u s agricultural futures market spills over significantly to that of china this article provides further insights into the spillovers from china to the u s as well as the time horizon and dynamics of the bidirectional spillovers through the application of a multivariate extension of the heterogeneous autoregressive model in relation to four commodities soybean wheat corn and sugar the results confirm the existence of significant spillovers from the u s to china for four commodities which are primarily generated by the shorter term volatility components in the u s and provide evidence for the increasing pricing power of the chinese market the findings are robust against various specifications and have important investment and policy implications

risk aversion uncertain information and market efficiency abstract this paper develops and tests the uncertain information hypothesis as a means of explaining the response of rational risk averse investors to the arrival of unanticipated information the theory predicts that following news of a dramatic financial event both the risk and expected return of the affected companies increase systematically and that prices react more strongly to bad news than good an empirical investigation of over 9000 marketwide and firm specific events produces results consistent with these predictions we conclude that the market reacts to uncertain information in an efficient if not instantaneous manner

realized volatility transmission between crude oil and equity futures markets a multivariate har approach this paper differs from extant literature because it studies volatility co movements with a multivariate orthogonalized har model a flexible specification for the time series of realized volatility which is able to identify short mid and long term spillover effects we examine volatility transmission mechanisms using high frequency data of the stock index futures on s p 500 nikkei 225 ftse 100 and the futures on the west texas intermediate crude oil during the period from september 2002 to september 2012 considering the full sample the short term volatility of the equity futures contains information about future oil volatility incremental to the information inherent in the time series of oil volatility on the other hand weekly and monthly volatilities do not exhibit a significant spillover effect breaking the whole sample into three subsamples no significant granger causalities are observed in the pre crisis period while in the crisis time and its aftermath we document that the us and uk equity market volatilities to granger cause the oil futures volatility which itself leads the japanese market in terms of magnitude we observe an increase in the short term volatility spillover over time studying the residuals of the har transmission models within a ccc dcc garch framework reveals increasing instantaneous correlation between the energy and equity volatilities in the course of time

differential interpretation of public signals and trade in speculative markets most models of trade in speculative markets assume that agents interpret public information identically we provide empirical evidence on the relation between the volume of trade and stock returns around public announcements and we argue that the evidence is inconsistent with this assumption we then develop a model of trade around public announcements that incorporates differential interpretations and is consistent with the observed volume return relation then we test the standard model of belief revision underlying most models of trade using stock brokerage research analysts earnings forecasts the hypthesis of identical interpretations seems inconsistent with the forecast revisions in these data

valuing air quality with hedonic and discrete choice models environmental economists have been using property values in attempts to measure the value residents place on air quality as far back as the 1960s however in the years since then we have learned a great deal about how complex valuing nonmarginal changes in air quality is rosen presented a hedonic model that is still extremely influential today but the estimation strategy he outlined in that paper had some shortcomings many of these identification and endogeneity issues were corrected subsequently in papers such as palmquist 1984 parsons and bartik but none of these papers concentrated on environmental issues a central issue in estimating the demand or marginal willingness to pay functions for characteristics of housing is the identification of those behavioral functions as distinct from

the impact of ceo turnover on equity volatility this study investigates the effect on stock price volatility of a significant event in the life of the firm a change in its ceo we find significant long lived increases in volatility following ceo turnover after controlling for firm characteristics and marketwide volatility these increases are larger after forced departures and outside successions following voluntary departures stock prices also respond more strongly to earnings announcements following turnovers these results are consistent with more informative signals of value driving the increased volatility helping resolve two sources of uncertainty possible changes in the firm s strategy and doubt about the successor ceo s ability

effects of regulations on expected catch expected harvest and site choice of recreational anglers the use of public lands and waterways is often subject to environmental regulations designed to limit the depletion of resource stocks such regulations may influence expectations of quality destination choice and consumer surplus this paper examines the effects of environmental regulations on recreational anglers the empirical application develops a joint model of expected catch and expected harvest in conjunction with a random utility model of site choice findings for maine anglers indicate that regulations have sizable effects on catch and harvest site choice and welfare

the lead lag relationship between canadian and u s wheat prices in 1966 mccalla asserted that the international wheat market was a duopoly dominated by canada and the united states he argued that canada was a price leader and united states was a price follower in 1970 mccalla abandoned this model arguing that growing export supply in australia and france also made them able to affect the world wheat price he argued that the united kingdom the european economic community eec japan and mainland china imported enough wheat to enable each to affect the world price thus mccalla asserted the international wheat market was an oligopoly on the selling side and an oligopsony on the buying side in 1978 alaouze watson and sturgess extended mccalla s original duopoly model to a triopoly with australia as the third major exporter and canada as the price leader their model was assumed to hold until 1972 when high unstable prices and low carryover stocks suggested that the market was operating essentially competitively they further suggested prices had begun to fall and stocks were increasing indicating that some form of stable oligopoly was returning in 1979 carter and schmitz asserted that the international wheat market was an oligopsony with japan and the eec as the major importers they argued that it was irrelevant whether or not the major exporters behaved as oligopolists the major importers held the dominant influence on prices lack of agreement about the structure of the international wheat market is not surprising it probably reflects structural change in the market over time a duopoly with canada as the price leader might have been appropriate for some years but a triopoly or oligopsony might have been more accurate for other periods changing structure creates major difficulties for empirical analysis for estimating behavioral relationships with historical data rojko suggested that where structural change occurred one should split the time series estimating separate equations for each sub period however the problem is to determine when a significant structural change occurs in the market this is important for splitting time periods ten or fifteen years ago where we have historical perspective and it is also important in recent periods if we wish to make useful policy analyses or forecasts ideally we would like an objective indicator of market structure this study does not achieve such an indicator although it may be a modest step in this direction it is difficult or impossible to make definitive statements about market structure based on empirical observations however we use the concept of granger causality to test for the existence of price leadership between u s and canadian wheat prices significant price leadership is consistent with oligopolistic market behavior

predictable events and excess returns the case of dividend announcements abstract this paper hypothesizes that the risk per unit of time and the required rate of return are higher than normal during an event period whose timing can be predicted consistent with this hypothesis this paper presents empirical evidence indicating that the unconditional mean rate of return the variance of stock returns and their systematic risk are higher than usual during dividend announcement periods however the documented increases in the systematic risk are not large enough to fully explain the excess returns this finding is puzzling and hard to reconcile with existing theory

accounting for choice set endogeneity in random utility models of recreation demand abstract modeling the choice among a discrete set of recreation alternatives is driven by the possible patterns of substitution among sites researchers typically assume that the individual s choice set is the same as the set of alternatives included in the recreation survey instrument our endogenous choice set model is a generalization of the standard multinomial logit random utility model which allows for the possibility of heterogeneous choice sets that are endogenously determined in the model using two examples we show that parameter and compensating variation estimates differ greatly between the endogenous choice set model and the traditional logit model

estimating the structure of market reaction to news information events and lumber futures prices we develop a new event study technique the distributional event response model derm appropriate to relatively slowly evolving information events we apply the model to twelve years of daily lumber futures prices and analyze the effects of three different types of information releases a monthly housing starts estimates b aperiodic administrative and judicial announcements about u s canada trade disputes and c novel and unprecedented court decisions related to the endangered species act esa the information releases are different in ways that predict their relative speeds of impoundment in prices we find that housing start events are absorbed more quickly than trade events which are absorbed more quickly than esa events

does accounting for preference heterogeneity improve the forecasting of a random utility model a case study abstract this paper examines the out of sample forecasting performance of several random utility models of recreation behavior the application is salmon fishing on lake michigan in 1996 and 1997 with the quality of fishing as measured by catch rates better in 1997 than in 1996 the models examined are a logit model two random parameters logit rpl models and a latent class logit lcl model results indicate that the rpl and lcl models forecast equally well and by at least one measure the logit model outperforms them both results also raise the possibility that recreational fishing decisions have a dynamic component

combining farrell frontier and hedonic travel cost models for valuing estuarine quality a 1992 survey of tennessee anglers was used to determine who is fishing and how often the species they fish for and how anglers perceive the regulatory structure the results are based on telephone interviews with 450 active licensed an glers nearly 81 of the anglers visited a tennessee reservoir in 1992 while 41 fished warm water streams 28 farm ponds and 22 trout streams over 60 pre ferred separate regulations for reservoirs active reservoir fishermen were more likely to support individual regulations the participants were evenly split on whether a proposed regulation which has public support should be imposed even if the manage ment agency does not feel the fishery would benefit eighty percent of the anglers indicated that existing fishing regulations were not complicated proc annu conf southeast assoc fish and wildl agencies 47 767 774 proper administration of fishery resources requires management authorities to have knowledge of the angler population served by the management agency specifically authorities should be aware of the type and intensity of angler activi ties and understand angler preferences concerning existing and proposed management alternatives to the degree that certain types of fishermen are less likely to support management policies authorities should target educational pro grams specifically at non supportiv e anglers to gain greater public support for biologically viable management strategies this study uses data gathered from a survey of tennessee anglers to deter mine who is fishing and how often the species they are targeting and how anglers perceive the regulatory structure we report the demographic factors of anglers which exhibit statistically significant relationships to angler support for the current

event studies in management research theoretical and empirical issues we examined the use of event studies in management research and found that there was inadequate attention paid to theoretical and research design issues this lack of attention may lead to false in

volatility spillover between oil and agricultural commodity markets abstract this study examines volatility transmission between oil and selected agricultural commodity prices wheat corn soybeans and sugar we apply the newly developed causality in variance test and impulse response functions to daily data from 01 january 1986 to 21 march 2011 in order to identify the impact of the food price crisis the data are divided into two sub periods the pre crisis period 01 january 1986 to 31 december 2005 and the post crisis period 01 january 2006 21 march 2011 the variance causality test shows that while there is no risk transmission between oil and agricultural commodity markets in the pre crisis period oil market volatility spills on the agricultural markets with the exception of sugar in the post crisis period the impulse response analysis also indicates that a shock to oil price volatility is transmitted to agricultural markets only in the post crisis period this paper thereby shows that the dynamics of volatility transmission changes significantly following the food price crisis after the crisis risk transmission emerges as another dimension of the dynamic interrelationships between energy and agricultural markets

the extent of information its relevance for random utility models this paper examines the effect of the researcher s definition of a recreator s choice set on the parameter and welfare estimates from standard random utility models three choice set definitions are compared choice sets based on all alternatives within the survey those alternatives within a specified distance from the respondents home and alternatives familiar to the individual we show that parameter and welfare estimates are sensitive to the definition of the choice set welfare measures of site closures differ in varying ways depending on the familiarity level of the sites in question

event studies in economics and finance the event study is an important research tool in economics and finance the goal of an event study is to measure the effects of an economic event on the value of firms event study methods exploit the fact that given rationality in the marketplace the effects of an event will be reflected immediately in security prices thus the impact can be measured by examining security prices surrounding the event in this paper event study methods are described including some of the potential complications an example is included to illustrate the approach

trading behavior and the unbiasedness of the market reaction to dividend announcements this article examines the price formation process during dividend announcement day using daily closing prices and transactions data we find that the unconditional positive excess returns first documented by kalay and loewenstein 1985 are higher for small firm and low priced stocks price volatility and trading volume also increase during this period examination of trade prices relative to the bid ask spread and volume of trades at bid and asked prices shows that the excess returns cannot be attributed to measurement errors or to spillover effects of tax related ex day trading rather the price behavior is related to the absorption of dividend information

modelling choice and switching behaviour between scottish ski centres the paper identifies the need to model the skier s choice of centre and the basic ideas underlying discrete choice models and their estimation it then identifies data requirements and sources the final choice of specification and the estimated parameters of the resultant nested multinomial logit model the results indicate two quite distinct markets for day trippers snow cover cost and to a lesser extent the journey length were the critical factors for those staying overnight the key determinant in this market seems to be accommodation interestingly centres which for the day tripper are competitors become for the overnight customer complementary

narrow choice sets in a random utility model of recreation demand we consider the implications of narrow choice sets on welfare estimation in a random utility model of recreation demand we hypothesize that careful formulation of the choice set focusing on the sites of policy interest and their closest substitutes will give reasonably accurate welfare estimates we use nearby sites as close substitutes and treat more distant sites as aggregate alternatives in our application to fishing in maine we find that the welfare estimates are rather sensitive to narrowing choice sets in this manner the sensitivity largely tracts variation in the estimated travel cost coefficient across the different models considered