bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Does the Bond Market Predict Bankruptcy Settlements?
Authors: EBERHART ALLAN C. , SWEENEY RICHARD J.
Published: April 2012

This study shows the extent to which deviations from the absolute priority rule increase or decrease the bankruptcy emergence payoff to traded (i.e., usually junior claimants) bondholders. The data indicate that, on average, bondholders benefit, albeit slightly, from absolute priority rule (APR) violations. This paper also examines the degree to which the bond market, in the bankruptcy filing month, anticipates departures from the APR and other influences on the payoff to bondholders. In other words, we investigate the informational efficiency of the market for bankrupt bonds. Overall, despite the complex and lengthy nature of bankruptcy proceedings, the results support efficiency.
The Reaction of Investors and Stock Prices to Insider Trading
Authors: CORNELL BRADFORD , SIRRI ERIK R.
Published: April 2012

Trading by corporate insiders and their tippees is analyzed in Anheuser‐Busch's 1982 tender offer for Campbell Taggart. Court records that identify insider transactions are used to disentangle the individual insider trades from liquidity trades. Consistent with previous studies, insider trading was found to have had a significant impact on the price' of Campbell Taggart. However, the impact of informed trading on the market is complicated. Trading volume net of insider purchases rose. Contrary to the broad implications of adverse selection models, Campbell Taggart's liquidity improved when the insiders were active in the market, and the insiders received superior execution for their orders.
Can Capital Income Taxes Survive in Open Economies?
Authors: GORDON ROGER H.
Published: April 2012

Optimal‐tax theory forecasts that small open economies should not tax capital income. Yet, countries do tax capital income. Why the inconsistency? This paper shows that use of the double‐taxation convention, whereby governments credit taxes paid abroad against domestic taxes, helps explain this inconsistency. In particular, capital income will be taxed if a dominant capital exporter acts as a Stackelberg leader when setting its tax policy. Due to the convention, other countries will then tax capital imports, making it attractive for the dominant capital exporter to tax capital income. Without a dominant capital exporter, however, the model still forecasts no capital‐income taxes.
Tests of Analysts' Overreaction/Underreaction to Earnings Information as an Explanation for Anomalous Stock Price Behavior
Authors: ABARBANELL JEFFERY S. , BERNARD VICTOR L.
Published: April 2012

This study examines whether security analysts underreact or overreact to prior earnings information, and whether any such behavior could explain previously documented anomalous stock price movements. We present evidence that analysts' forecasts underreact to recent earnings. This feature of the forecasts is consistent with certain properties of the naive seasonal random walk forecast that Bernard and Thomas (1990) hypothesize underlie the well‐known anomalous post‐earnings‐announcement drift. However, the underreactions in analysts' forecasts are at most only about half as large as necessary to explain the magnitude of the drift. We also document that the “extreme” analysts' forecasts studied by DeBondt and Thaler (1990) cannot be viewed as overreactions to earnings, and are not clearly linked to the stock price overreactions discussed in DeBondt and Thaler (1985, 1987) and Chopra, Lakonishok, and Ritter (Forthcoming). We conclude that security analysts' behavior is at best only a partial explanation for stock price underreaction to earnings, and may be unrelated to stock price overreactions.
Characterizing Predictable Components in Excess Returns on Equity and Foreign Exchange Markets
Authors: BEKAERT GEERT , HODRICK ROBERT J.
Published: April 2012

The paper first characterizes the predictable components in excess rates of returns on major equity and foreign exchange markets using lagged excess returns, dividend yields, and forward premiums as instruments. Vector autoregressions (VARs) demonstrate one‐step‐ahead predictability and facilitate calculations of implied long‐horizon statistics, such as variance ratios. Estimation of latent variable models then subjects the VARs to constraints derived from dynamic asset pricing theories. Examination of volatility bounds on intertemporal marginal rates of substitution provides summary statistics that quantify the challenge facing dynamic asset pricing models.
Trading Mechanisms in Securities Markets
Authors: MADHAVAN ANANTH
Published: April 2012

This paper analyzes price formation under two trading mechanisms: a continuous quote‐driven system where dealers post prices before order submission and an order‐driven system where traders submit orders before prices are determined. The order‐driven system operates either as a continuous auction, with immediate order execution, or as a periodic auction, where orders are stored for simultaneous execution. With free entry into market making, the continuous systems are equivalent. While a periodic auction offers greater price efficiency and can function where continuous mechanisms fail, traders must sacrifice continuity and bear higher information costs.
Sequential Sales, Learning, and Cascades
Authors: WELCH IVO
Published: April 2012

When IPO shares are sold sequentially, later potential investors can learn from the purchasing decisions of earlier investors. This can lead rapidly to “cascades” in which subsequent investors optimally ignore their private information and imitate earlier investors. Although rationing in this situation gives rise to a winner's curse, it is irrelevant. The model predicts that: (1) Offerings succeed or fail rapidly. (2) Demand can be so elastic that even risk‐neutral issuers underprice to completely avoid failure. (3) Issuers with good inside information can price their shares so high that they sometimes fail. (4) An underwriter may want to reduce the communication among investors by spreading the selling effort over a more segmented market.
An Analysis of Intraday Patterns in Bid/Ask Spreads for NYSE Stocks
Authors: MCINISH THOMAS H. , WOOD ROBERT A.
Published: April 2012

The behavior of time‐weighted bid–ask spreads over the trading day are examined. The plot of minute‐by‐minute spreads versus time of day has a crude reverse J‐shaped pattern. Schwartz identifies four determinants of spreads: activity, risk, information, and competition. Using a linear regression model, a significant relationship between these same factors and intraday spreads is demonstrated, but dummy variables for time of day have a reverse J‐shape. For given values of the activity, risk, information and competition measures, spreads are higher at the beginning and end of the day relative to the interior period.
The Pricing of Best Efforts New Issues
Authors: SHERMAN ANN GUENTHER
Published: April 2012

This paper offers an explanation for the underpricing of best efforts new issues and demonstrates that best efforts contracts allow issuers to use information from the market. If investors obtain information which indicates that a project will not be profitable, their demand will be low and the offering will be withdrawn. If this information is costly, investors will have to be compensated for its purchase through a lower offering price, which means that issuers will have to underprice. This result is consistent with the empirical observation that underpricing is considerably greater for best efforts than for firm commitment contracts.
Liquidation Values and Debt Capacity: A Market Equilibrium Approach
Authors: SHLEIFER ANDREI , VISHNY ROBERT W.
Published: April 2012

We explore the determinants of liquidation values of assets, particularly focusing on the potential buyers of assets. When a firm in financial distress needs to sell assets, its industry peers are likely to be experiencing problems themselves, leading to asset sales at prices below value in best use. Such illiquidity makes assets cheap in bad times, and so ex ante is a significant private cost of leverage. We use this focus on asset buyers to explain variation in debt capacity across industries and over the business cycle, as well as the rise in U.S. corporate leverage in the 1980s.
Insiders and Outsiders: The Choice between Informed and Arm's‐Length Debt
Authors: RAJAN RAGHURAM G.
Published: April 2012

While the benefits of bank financing are relatively well understood, the costs are not. This paper argues that while informed banks make flexible financial decisions which prevent a firm's projects from going awry, the cost of this credit is that banks have bargaining power over the firm's profits, once projects have begun. The firm's portfolio choice of borrowing source and the choice of priority for its debt claims attempt to optimally circumscribe the powers of banks.
Futures Manipulation with “Cash Settlement”
Authors: Kumar Praveen , SEPPI DUANE J.
Published: April 2012

This paper investigates the susceptibility of futures markets to price manipulation in a two‐period model with asymmetric information and “cash settlement” futures contracts. Without “physical delivery,” strategies based on “corners” or “squeezes” are infeasible. However, uninformed investors still earn positive expected profits by establishing a futures position and then trading in the spot market to manipulate the spot price used to compute the cash settlement at delivery. We also show that as the number of manipulators grows, profits from manipulation fall to zero. However, even in the limit, manipulation still has a nontrivial impact on market liquidity. More broadly, we interpret manipulation as a form of endogenous “noise trading” which can arise in multiperiod security markets.
Common Stock Offerings and Earnings Expectations: A Test of the Release of Unfavorable Information
Authors: BROUS PETER ALAN
Published: April 2012

This paper examines the revisions of analysts' forecasts of future earnings around announcements of common stock offerings. The forecasts of the current year earnings are, on average, decreased when firms announce plans to issue additional common stock. The size of the decrease is significantly related to announcement period abnormal stock returns. In contrast, forecasts of the five‐year growth rate of earnings are, on average, unchanged. We interpret these results as being consistent with the claim that equity offering announcements convey unfavorable information regarding the firm's short‐term but not its long‐term earnings prospects.
The Current State of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory
Authors: SHANKEN JAY
Published: April 2012

This paper provides a simple proof of a recent theorem presented by Reisman (1992), concerning the use of proxies for the factors in the return‐generating process of the arbitrage pricing theory (APT). In the single‐factor case, the theorem asserts that any variable correlated with the factor can serve as the benchmark in an approximate APT expected return relation. The significance of this result is considered and a new direction for empirical work on “arbitrage pricing” is outlined.
Relationship‐Specific Assets and the Pricing of Underwriter Services
Authors: JAMES CHRISTOPHER
Published: April 2012

This paper investigates the effect of setup costs on the pricing of investment banking services. The existence of setup costs is predicted to result in lower underwriter spreads in IPOs for firms that are expected to issue again. Consistent with this prediction, I find significantly lower spreads for firms that make subsequent issues. I also find that a firm's likelihood of changing underwriters in a subsequent offer is related to the time between offerings and the underwriter's pricing performance in the IPO. These results suggest that the deviations from optimal IPO pricing carry a penalty for the underwriter.
The Intra‐Industry Transfer of Information Inferred from Announcements of Corporate Security Offerings
Authors: SZEWCZYK SAMUEL H.
Published: April 2012

This study investigates the extent to which information inferred by investors from initial announcements of corporate security offerings affects share prices in the capital markets. The empirical tests measure the response in the common stock prices of both firms announcing a security offering and non‐announcing firms operating in the same industry. Small but significantly negative abnormal returns are shown by industry shares upon initial announcements of common stock, convertible debt, and straight debt public offerings. Such an industry response indicates that share prices incorporate an inside assessment of factors relevant to the valuation of an industry subset of firms.
The Persistence of Mutual Fund Performance
Authors: GRINBLATT MARK , TITMAN SHERIDAN
Published: April 2012

This paper analyzes how mutual fund performance relates to past performance. These tests are based on a multiple portfolio benchmark that was formed on the basis of securities characteristics. We find evidence that differences in performance between funds persist over time and that this persistence is consistent with the ability of fund managers to earn abnormal returns.
Seasonalities in NYSE Bid‐Ask Spreads and Stock Returns in January
Authors: CLARK ROBERT A. , McCONNELL JOHN J. , SINGH MANOJ
Published: April 2012

Using end‐of‐month bid‐ask spreads for 540 NYSE stocks over the period 1982–1987, we document a seasonal pattern in which both relative and absolute spreads decline from the end of December to the end of the following January. Cross‐sectional regressions do not, however, provide evidence of a significant correlation between changes in spreads at the turn of the year and January stock returns. Either there is no cause and effect relation between the coincidental seasonals in bid‐ask spreads and January returns for NYSE stocks or the data are too “noisy” to reveal any relation.
More Powerful Portfolio Approaches to Regressing Abnormal Returns on Firm‐Specific Variables for Cross‐Sectional Studies
Authors: CHANDRA RAMESH , BALACHANDRAN BALA V.
Published: April 2012

OLS regression ignores both heteroscedasticity and cross‐correlations of abnormal returns; therefore, tests of regression coefficients are weak and biased. A Portfolio OLS (POLS) regression accounts for correlations and ensures unbiasedness of tests, but does not improve their power. We propose Portfolio Weighted Least Squares (PWLS) and Portfolio Constant Correlation Model (PCCM) regressions to improve the power. Both utilize the heteroscedasticity of abnormal returns in estimating the coefficients; PWLS ignores the correlations, while PCCM uses intra‐and inter‐industry correlations. Simulation results show that both lead to more powerful tests of regression coefficients than POLS.
Market Integration and Price Execution for NYSE‐Listed Securities
Authors: LEE CHARLES M. C.
Published: April 2012

For New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) listed securities, the price execution of seemingly comparable orders differs systematically by location. In general, executions at the Cincinnati, Midwest, and New York stock exchanges are most favorable to trade initiators, while executions at the National Association of Security Dealers (NASD) are least favorable. These intermarket price differences depend on trade size, with the smallest trades exhibiting the biggest per share price difference. Collectively, these results raise questions about the adequacy of the existing intermarket quote system (ITS), the broker's fiduciary responsibility for “best execution,” and the propriety of order flow inducements.
The Investment Performance of U.S. Equity Pension Fund Managers: An Empirical Investigation
Authors: COGGIN T. DANIEL , FABOZZI FRANK J. , RAHMAN SHAFIQUR
Published: April 2012

This paper presents an empirical examination of the selectivity and market timing performance of a sample of U.S. equity pension fund managers. Regardless of the choice of benchmark portfolio or estimation model, the average selectivity measure is positive and the average timing measure is negative. However both selectivity and timing appear to be somewhat sensitive to the choice of a benchmark when managers are classified by investment style. Meta‐analysis revealed some real variation around the mean values for each measure. The 80 percent probability intervals for selectivity revealed that the best managers produced substantial risk‐adjusted excess returns. We also found a negative correlation between selectivity and timing, but we argue that the observed negative correlation in our data is largely an artifact of negatively correlated sampling errors for the two estimates.
What Moves the Stock and Bond Markets? A Variance Decomposition for Long‐Term Asset Returns
Authors: CAMPBELL JOHN Y. , AMMER JOHN
Published: April 2012

This paper uses a vector autoregressive model to decompose excess stock and 10‐year bond returns into changes in expectations of future stock dividends, inflation, short‐term real interest rates, and excess stock and bond returns. In monthly postwar U.S. data, stock and bond returns are driven largely by news about future excess stock returns and inflation, respectively. Real interest rates have little impact on returns, although they do affect the short‐term nominal interest rate and the slope of the term structure. These findings help to explain the low correlation between excess stock and bond returns.
Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency
Authors: JEGADEESH NARASIMHAN , TITMAN SHERIDAN
Published: April 2012

This paper documents that strategies which buy stocks that have performed well in the past and sell stocks that have performed poorly in the past generate significant positive returns over 3‐to 12‐month holding periods. We find that the profitability of these strategies are not due to their systematic risk or to delayed stock price reactions to common factors. However, part of the abnormal returns generated in the first year after portfolio formation dissipates in the following two years. A similar pattern of returns around the earnings announcements of past winners and losers is also documented.
Hot Hands in Mutual Funds: Short‐Run Persistence of Relative Performance, 1974–1988
Authors: HENDRICKS DARRYLL , PATEL JAYENDU , ZECKHAUSER RICHARD
Published: April 2012

The relative performance of no‐load, growth‐oriented mutual funds persists in the near term, with the strongest evidence for a one‐year evaluation horizon. Portfolios of recent poor performers do significantly worse than standard benchmarks; those of recent top performers do better, though not significantly so. The difference in risk‐adjusted performance between the top and bottom octile portfolios is six to eight percent per year. These results are not attributable to known anomalies or survivorship bias. Investigations with a different (previously used) data set and with some post‐1988 data confirm the finding of persistence.
The Pricing of Initial Public Offerings: A Dynamic Model with Information Production
Authors: CHEMMANUR THOMAS J.
Published: April 2012

This paper presents an information‐theoretic model of IPO pricing in which insiders sell stock in both the IPO and the secondary market, have private information about their firm's prospects, and outsiders may engage in costly information production about the firm. High‐value firms, knowing they are going to pool with low‐value firms, induce outsiders to engage in information production by underpricing, which compensates outsiders for the cost of producing information. The information is reflected in the secondary market price of equity, giving a higher expected stock price for high‐value firms.
Liquidity, Reconstitution, and the Value of U.S. Treasury Strips
Authors: DAVES PHILLIP R. , EHRHARDT MICHAEL C.
Published: April 2012

An apparent pricing anomaly exists in the market for U.S. Treasury strips: zero‐coupon strips created from principal payments typically trade at significantly higher prices than otherwise identical zero‐coupon strips created from coupon payments. In addition to documenting this phenomenon, this study demonstrates that differences in liquidity and differences in reconstitution characteristics explain much of this price variation.
Incentive Conflicts, Bundling Claims, and the Interaction among Financial Claimants
Authors: SPATT CHESTER S. , STERBENZ FREDERIC P.
Published: April 2012

We show that for certain capital structures equity has an incentive to buy out another claim and alter the firm's investment strategy so as to maximize the combined value of equity and the acquired claim. This restructuring may reintroduce agency problems into capital structures which appear to avoid agency conflicts. By bundling claims, it is possible to avoid this agency problem. The agency problem is also eliminated by dispersed ownership of the claims.
Tax‐Induced Trading and the Turn‐of‐the‐Year Anomaly: An Intraday Study
Authors: GRIFFITHS MARK D. , WHITE ROBERT W.
Published: April 2012

This study tests the tax‐induced trading hypothesis as an explanation of the turn‐of‐the‐year anomaly using Canadian and U.S. intraday data. Since the Canadian tax year‐end precedes the calendar year‐end by five business days, tax effects may be isolated. We find the anomaly is related to the degree of seller‐and buyer‐initiated trading and depends upon the incidence of the taxation year‐end. Seller‐initiated transactions (at bid prices) dominate until the tax year‐end after which buyer‐initiated trades (at ask prices) dominate. The anomaly is a function of bid‐ask prices.
Do Short‐Term Objectives Lead to Under‐ or Overinvestment in Long‐Term Projects?
Authors: BEBCHUK LUCIAN ARYE , STOLE LARS A.
Published: April 2012

We examine managerial investment decisions in the presence of imperfect information and short‐term managerial objectives. Prior research has argued that such an environment induces managers to underinvest in long‐run projects. We show that short‐term objectives and imperfect information may also lead to overinvestment, and we identify how the direction of the distortion depends upon the type of informational imperfection present. When investors cannot observe the level of investment in the long‐run project, suboptimal investment will be induced. When investors can observe investment but not its productivity, however, overinvestment will occur.
The Strategic Role of Debt in Takeover Contests
Authors: CHOWDHRY BHAGWAN , NANDA VIKRAM
Published: April 2012

In a takeover contest, the presence of bidders' existing debtholders, if they can be expropriated by issuing new debt with equal or senior priority, allows bidders to commit to bid more than their valuation of the target. Such commitment can be beneficial because it deters potential entry by subsequent bidders and may allow a first bidder to acquire the target at a bargain price. The cost is that if entry by subsequent bidders does nevertheless take place, because the first bidder has committed himself to bid high premia, a bidding war ensues resulting in offers that may involve excessive premia, i.e., bids that are larger than the bidders' valuation of the target.
Disagreements among Shareholders over a Firm's Disclosure Policy
Authors: KIM OLIVER
Published: April 2012

This paper examines the issue of voluntary disclosure of information by firms with heterogeneous shareholders. It shows that in a rational expectations setting, better informed shareholders prefer less disclosure than less well‐informed shareholders. This is due to differences in the adverse risk‐sharing effect and the beneficial cost‐saving effect of disclosure among shareholders with different risk tolerances and information acquisition cost functions. The presence of individual liquidity shocks is shown to reduce shareholder disagreements regarding a firm's disclosure policy.
Spanning with Short‐Selling Restrictions
Authors: RAAB MARTIN , SCHWAGER ROBERT
Published: April 2012

In principle, the set of attainable payoff vectors is reduced if assets cannot be sold short. However, we show that the original space of payoff vectors is spanned despite short sale restrictions if there is one additional asset whose payoff is a positively weighted sum of the payoffs of the original assets. For example, this condition is automatically fulfilled if the original assets are stocks and the additional asset is an index future consisting of these stocks.
How Markets Process Information: News Releases and Volatility
Authors: EDERINGTON LOUIS H. , LEE JAE HA
Published: April 2012

We examine the impact of scheduled macroeconomic news announcements on interest rate and foreign exchange futures markets. We find these announcements are responsible for most of the observed time‐of‐day and day‐of‐the‐week volatility patterns in these markets. While the bulk of the price adjustment to a major announcement occurs within the first minute, volatility remains substantially higher than normal for roughly fifteen minutes and slightly elevated for several hours. Nonetheless, these subsequent price adjustments are basically independent of the first minute's return. We identify those announcements with the greatest impact on these markets.
Fundamentals or Noise? Evidence from the Professional Basketball Betting Market
Authors: BROWN WILLIAM O. , SAUER RAYMOND D.
Published: April 2012

This paper uses the betting market for professional basketball games to address the issue of unexplained asset price volatility. A pricing model is presented which identifies two components in point spreads for professional basketball games. Both components—the market's estimate of relative team abilities and an idiosyncratic factor—are essentially unobserved, but can be identified ex post. The structure of this market enables tests of competing hypotheses about point spread variation. The tests reject the hypothesis that variation in the two components represents irrelevant noise. The hypothesis that unobserved fundamentals account for this variation is consistent with the data.
Imperfect Information and Cross‐Autocorrelation among Stock Prices
Authors: CHAN KALOK
Published: April 2012

I develop a model to explain why stock returns are positively cross‐autocorrelated. When market makers observe noisy signals about the value of their stocks but cannot instantaneously condition prices on the signals of other stocks, which contain marketwide information, the pricing error of one stock is correlated with the other signals. As market makers adjust prices after observing true values or previous price changes of other stocks, stock returns become positively cross‐autocorrelated. If the signal quality differs among stocks, the cross‐autocorrelation pattern is asymmetric. I show that both own‐ and cross‐autocorrelations are higher when market movements are larger.
No Arbitrage and Arbitrage Pricing: A New Approach
Authors: BANSAL RAVI , VISWANATHAN S.
Published: April 2012

We argue that arbitrage‐pricing theories (APT) imply the existence of a low‐dimensional nonnegative nonlinear pricing kernel. In contrast to standard constructs of the APT, we do not assume a linear factor structure on the payoffs. This allows us to price both primitive and derivative securities. Semi‐nonparametric techniques are used to estimate the pricing kernel and test the theory. Empirical results using size‐based portfolio returns and yields on bonds reject the nested capital asset‐pricing model and linear APT and support the nonlinear APT. Diagnostics show that the nonlinear model is more capable of explaining variations in small firm returns.
Ownership Concentration, Corporate Control Activity, and Firm Value: Evidence from the Death of Inside Blockholders
Authors: SLOVIN MYRON B. , SUSHKA MARIE E.
Published: April 2012

We analyze how ownership concentration affects firm value and control of public companies by examining effects of deaths of inside blockholders. We find shareholder wealth increases, ownership concentration falls, and extensive corporate control activity ensues. Share price responses are related to the deceased's equity stake. Control group holdings fall for two‐thirds of the firms due to either the estate's dispersal or inheritors selling stock. A majority of firms become targets of control bids: three‐quarters of bids are successful; one‐third are hostile. Our evidence is broadly consistent with Stulz's (1988) model of the relationship between ownership concentration and firm value.
Brokerage Commission Schedules
Authors: BRENNAN MICHAEL J. , CHORDIA TARUN
Published: April 2012

It is generally optimal for risk‐sharing reasons to base a charge for information on the signal realization. When this is not possible, a charge based on the amount of trading, a brokerage commission, may be a good alternative. The optimal brokerage commission schedule is derived for a risk‐neutral information seller faced with risk‐averse purchasers who may differ in their risk aversion. Revenues from the brokerage commission are compared with those from a fixed charge for information and the optimal mutual fund management fee.
An Incentive Approach to Banking Regulation
Authors: GIAMMARINO RONALD M. , LEWIS TRACY R. , SAPPINGTON DAVID E. M.
Published: April 2012

We examine the optimal design of a risk‐adjusted deposit insurance scheme when the regulator has less information than the bank about the inherent risk of the bank's assets (adverse selection), and when the regulator is unable to monitor the extent to which bank resources are being directed away from normal operations toward activities that lower asset quality (moral hazard). Under a socially optimal insurance scheme: (1) asset quality is below the first‐best level, (2) higher‐quality banks have larger asset bases and face lower capital adequacy requirements than lower‐quality banks, and (3) the probability of failure is equated across banks.
An Analysis of Changes in Specialist Inventories and Quotations
Authors: MADHAVAN ANANTH , SMIDT SEYMOUR
Published: April 2012

We develop a dynamic model of market making incorporating inventory and information effects. The market maker is both a dealer and an investor, quoting prices that induce mean reversion in inventory toward targets determined by portfolio considerations. We test the model with inventory data from a New York Stock Exchange specialist. Specialist inventories exhibit slow mean reversion, with a half‐life of over 49 days, suggesting weak inventory effects. However, after controlling for shifts in desired inventories, the half‐life falls to 7.3 days. Further, quote revisions are negatively related to specialist trades and are positively related to the information conveyed by order imbalances.
A New Approach to International Arbitrage Pricing
Authors: BANSAL RAVI , HSIEH DAVID A. , VISWANATHAN S.
Published: April 2012

This paper uses a nonlinear arbitrage‐pricing model, a conditional linear model, and an unconditional linear model to price international equities, bonds, and forward currency contracts. Unlike linear models, the nonlinear arbitrage‐pricing model requires no restrictions on the payoff space, allowing it to price payoffs of options, forward contracts, and other derivative securities. Only the nonlinear arbitrage‐pricing model does an adequate job of explaining the time series behavior of a cross section of international returns.
Measuring and Testing the Impact of News on Volatility
Authors: ENGLE ROBERT F. , NG VICTOR K.
Published: April 2012

This paper defines the news impact curve which measures how new information is incorporated into volatility estimates. Various new and existing ARCH models including a partially nonparametric one are compared and estimated with daily Japanese stock return data. New diagnostic tests are presented which emphasize the asymmetry of the volatility response to news. Our results suggest that the model by Glosten, Jagannathan, and Runkle is the best parametric model. The EGARCH also can capture most of the asymmetry; however, there is evidence that the variability of the conditional variance implied by the EGARCH is too high.
Asset‐pricing Puzzles and Incomplete Markets
Authors: TELMER CHRIS I.
Published: April 2012

The representative agent theory of asset pricing is modified to incorporate heterogeneous agents and incomplete markets. The model features two types of agents who differ up to a nontradable, idiosyncratic component in their endowment processes. Numerical solutions indicate that individuals are able to diversify a substantial portion of their idiosyncratic income risk through riskless borrowing and lending alone. Restrictions on the variability of intertemporal marginal rates of substitution (Hansen and Jagannathan (1991)) are used to argue that incomplete markets, as modeled here, cannot account for the properties of asset returns that are anomalous from the perspective of representative agent theory.
Stock Market Crashes and the Performance of Circuit Breakers: Empirical Evidence
Authors: LAUTERBACH BENI , BEN‐ZION URI
Published: April 2012

This study examines the behavior of a small stock market with circuit breakers and with a one‐hour preauction order imbalance disclosure, during the October 1987 crash. The crash and its aftershocks lasted for a week and selling pressure was concentrated in higher beta, larger capitalization, and lower leverage firm stocks. Circuit breakers when implemented reduced the next‐day opening order imbalance and the initial price loss; however, they had no effect on the long‐run response. Some price overreaction and reversal phenomena also are documented.
Asset‐pricing Tests under Alternative Distributions
Authors: ZHOU GUOFU
Published: April 2012

Given the normality assumption, we reject the mean‐variance efficiency of the Center for Research in Security Prices value‐weighted stock index for three of the six consecutive ten‐year subperiods from 1926 to 1986. However, the normality assumption is strongly rejected by the data. Under plausible alternative distributional assumptions of the elliptical class, the efficiency can no longer be rejected. When the normality assumption is violated but the ellipticity assumption is maintained, many tests tend to be biased toward overrejection and both the accuracy of estimated beta and are usually overstated.
Arbitrage Chains
Authors: DOW JAMES , GORTON GARY
Published: April 2012

A privately informed trader will engage in costly arbitrage, that is, trade on his knowledge that the price of an asset is different from the fundamental value if: (1) his order does not move the price immediately to reflect the information; and (2) he can hold the asset until the date when the information is reflected in the price. We study a general equilibrium model in which all agents optimize. In each period, there may be a trader with a limited horizon who has private information about a distant event. Whether he acts on his information, and whether subsequent informed traders act, is shown to depend on the possibility of a sequence or chain of future informed traders spanning the event date. An arbitrageur who receives good news will buy only if it is likely that, at the end of his trading horizon, a subsequent arbitrageur's buying will have pushed up the expected price. We show that limited trading horizons result in inefficient prices, because informed traders do not act on their information until the event date is sufficiently close. We also show that limited horizons can arise because of the cost‐carry associated with holding an arbitrage portfolio over an extended period of time.
Executive Careers and Compensation Surrounding Takeover Bids
Authors: AGRAWAL ANUP , WALKLING RALPH A.
Published: April 2012

This article examines the impact of a takeover bid on the careers and compensation of chief executives of target firms. We find that acquisition attempts occur more frequently in industries where chief executive officers (CEO) have positive abnormal compensation. Target CEOs are more likely to be replaced when a bid succeeds, than when it fails. CEOs of target firms who lose their jobs generally fail to find another senior executive position in any public corporation within three years after the bid. Consistent with Fama's (1980) notion of “ex post settling up”, postbid compensation changes of managers retained after an acquisition attempt are negatively related to several measures of their prebid abnormal compensation. This result is robust to a variety of specifications and does not seem to be caused by mean reversion or selection bias. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that a takeover bid generates additional information that is used by labor markets to discipline managers.
Financial Distress and Corporate Performance
Authors: OPLER TIM C. , TITMAN SHERIDAN
Published: April 2012

This study finds that highly leveraged firms lose substantial market share to their more conservatively financed competitors in industry downturns. Specifically, firms in the top leverage decile in industries that experience output contractions see their sales decline by 26 percent more than do firms in the bottom leverage decile. A similar decline takes place in the market value of equity. These findings are consistent with the view that the indirect costs of financial distress are significant and positive. Consistent with the theory that firms with specialized products are especially vulnerable to financial distress, we find that highly leveraged firms that engage in research and development suffer the most in economically distressed periods. We also find that the adverse consequences of leverage are more pronounced in concentrated industries.
Is the Electronic Open Limit Order Book Inevitable?
Authors: GLOSTEN LAWRENCE R.
Published: April 2012

Under fairly general conditions, the article derives the equilibrium price schedule determined by the bids and offers in an open limit order book. The analysis shows: (1) the order book has a small‐trade positive bid‐ask spread, and limit orders profit from small trades; (2) the electronic exchange provides as much liquidity as possible in extreme situations; (3) the limit order book does not invite competition from third market dealers, while other trading institutions do; (4) If an entering exchange earns nonnegative trading profits, the consolidated price schedule matches the limit order book price schedule.
Corporate Debt Value, Bond Covenants, and Optimal Capital Structure
Authors: LELAND HAYNE E.
Published: April 2012

This article examines corporate debt values and capital structure in a unified analytical framework. It derives closed‐form results for the value of long‐term risky debt and yield spreads, and for optimal capital structure, when firm asset value follows a diffusion process with constant volatility. Debt values and optimal leverage are explicitly linked to firm risk, taxes, bankruptcy costs, risk‐free interest rates, payout rates, and bond covenants. The results elucidate the different behavior of junk bonds versus investment‐grade bonds, and aspects of asset substitution, debt repurchase, and debt renegotiation.
Volume and Autocovariances in Short‐Horizon Individual Security Returns
Authors: CONRAD JENNIFER S. , HAMEED ALLAUDEEN , NIDEN CATHY
Published: April 2012

This article tests for the relations between trading volume and subsequent returns patterns in individual securities' short‐horizon returns that are suggested by such articles as Blume, Easley, and O'Hara (1994) and Campbell, Grossman, and Wang (1993). Using a variant of Lehmann's (1990) contrarian trading strategy, we find strong evidence of a relation between trading activity and subsequent autocovariances in weekly returns. Specifically, high‐transaction securities experience price reversals, while the returns of low‐transactions securities are positively autocovarying. Overall, information on trading activity appears to be an important predictor of the returns of individual securities.
Investment Bank Reputation, Information Production, and Financial Intermediation
Authors: CHEMMANUR THOMAS J. , FULGHIERI PAOLO
Published: April 2012

We model reputation acquisition by investment banks in the equity market. Entrepreneurs sell shares in an asymmetrically informed equity market, either directly, or using an investment bank. Investment banks, who interact repeatedly with the equity market, evaluate entrepreneurs' projects and report to investors, in return for a fee. Setting strict evaluation standards (unobservable to investors) is costly for investment banks, inducing moral hazard. Investment banks' credibility therefore depends on their equity‐marketing history. Investment banks' evaluation standards, their reputations, underwriter compensation, the market value of equity sold, and entrepreneurs' choice between underwritten and nonunderwritten equity issues emerge endogenously.
Volume, Volatility, and New York Stock Exchange Trading Halts
Authors: LEE CHARLES M. C. , READY MARK J. , SEGUIN PAUL J.
Published: April 2012

Trading halts increase, rather than reduce, both volume and volatility. Volume (volatility) in the first full trading day after a trading halt is 230 percent (50 to 115 percent) higher than following “pseudohalts”: nonhalt control periods matched on time of day, duration, and absolute net‐of‐market returns. These results are robust over different halt types and news categories. Higher posthalt volume is observed into the third day while higher posthalt volatility decays within hours. The extent of media coverage is a partial determinant of volume and volatility following both halts and pseudohalts, but a separate halt effect remains after controlling for the media effect.
The Value of Wildcard Options
Authors: FLEMING JEFF , WHALEY ROBERT E.
Published: April 2012

Wildcard options are embedded in many derivative contracts. They arise when the settlement price of the contract is established before the time at which the wildcard option holder must declare his intention to make or accept delivery and the exercise of the wildcard option closes out the underlying asset position. This paper provides a simple method for valuing wildcard options and illustrates the technique by valuing the sequence of wildcard options embedded in the S&P 100 index (OEX) option contract. The results show that wildcard options can account for an economically significant fraction of OEX option value.
Market Efficiency and the Favorite‐Longshot Bias: The Baseball Betting Market
Authors: WOODLAND LINDA M. , WOODLAND BILL M.
Published: April 2012

This paper examines the efficiency of the legal gambling market for major league baseball. Weak‐form tests of market efficiency within and across odds lines are performed. Surprisingly, the consistently observed favorite‐longshot bias in racetrack betting is shown to exist in reverse for baseball bettors. However, these and other deviations from efficiency are shown to be insufficient to allow for profitable betting strategies when commissions are considered.
Contrarian Investment, Extrapolation, and Risk
Authors: LAKONISHOK JOSEF , SHLEIFER ANDREI , VISHNY ROBERT W.
Published: April 2012

For many years, scholars and investment professionals have argued that value strategies outperform the market. These value strategies call for buying stocks that have low prices relative to earnings, dividends, book assets, or other measures of fundamental value. While there is some agreement that value strategies produce higher returns, the interpretation of why they do so is more controversial. This article provides evidence that value strategies yield higher returns because these strategies exploit the suboptimal behavior of the typical investor and not because these strategies are fundamentally riskier.
Testing for Linear and Nonlinear Granger Causality in the Stock Price‐Volume Relation
Authors: HIEMSTRA CRAIG , JONES JONATHAN D.
Published: April 2012

Linear and nonlinear Granger causality tests are used to examine the dynamic relation between daily Dow Jones stock returns and percentage changes in New York Stock Exchange trading volume. We find evidence of significant bidirectional nonlinear causality between returns and volume. We also examine whether the nonlinear causality from volume to returns can be explained by volume serving as a proxy for information flow in the stochastic process generating stock return variance as suggested by Clark's (1973) latent common‐factor model. After controlling for volatility persistence in returns, we continue to find evidence of nonlinear causality from volume to returns.
The Post‐Issue Operating Performance of IPO Firms
Authors: JAIN BHARAT A. , KINI OMESH
Published: April 2012

This article investigates the change in operating performance of firms as they make the transition from private to public ownership. A significant decline in operating performance subsequent to the initial public offering (IPO) is found. Additionally, there is a significant positive relation between post‐IPO operating performance and equity retention by the original entrepreneurs, but no relation between post‐IPO operating performance and the level of initial underpricing. Post‐issue declines in the market‐to‐book ratio, price/earnings ratio, and earnings per share are also documented.
Macroeconomic Seasonality and the January Effect
Authors: KEAMER CHAELES
Published: April 2012

Many financial markets researchers have sought an explanation for the role of January in stock returns. Any explanation of this phenomenon that is consistent with rational pricing must specify a source of seasonality in expected returns. The pervasive seasonality in the macroeconomy is an appealing possibility. A multifactor model that links macroeconomic risk to expected return is found to show substantial seasonality in expected returns. This model accounts for the seasonality in average returns, while the capital asset pricing model cannot.
The Effect of Market Segmentation and Illiquidity on Asset Prices: Evidence from Exchange Listings
Authors: KADLEC GREGORY B. , MCCONNELL JOHN J.
Published: April 2012

This article documents the effect on share value of listing on the New York Stock Exchange and reports the results of a joint test of Merton's (1987) investor recognition factor and Amihud and Mendelson's (1986) liquidity factor as explanations of the change in share value. We find that during the 1980s stocks earned abnormal returns of 5 percent in response to the listing announcement and that listing is associated with an increase in the number of shareholders and a reduction in bid‐ask spreads. Cross‐sectional regressions provide support for both investor recognition and liquidity as sources of value from exchange listing.
Efficiency Gains in Unsuccessful Management Buyouts
Authors: OFEK ELI
Published: April 2012

This article uses a sample of 120 unsuccessful management buyouts (MBOs) to test whether operational improvements following successful MBOs are a result of organizational changes or private information. The findings are consistent with the organizational changes hypothesis. Firms with an unsuccessful MBO had no increase in operating performance following the buyout attempt. In addition, the cumulative abnormal stock return from before the attempted buyout until two years after the attempt is insignificantly different from 0 percent. I also find that management turnover following an unsuccessful MBO is significantly higher than normal.
The Rationality and Price Effects of U.S. Department of Agriculture Forecasts of Oranges
Authors: BAUR ROBERT F. , ORAZEM PETER F.
Published: April 2012

This article examines the effect of public information on the orange juice market. We investigate the rationality, information content, and price effects of U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts of the production of oranges. U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts are found to be unbiased and efficient. The first forecast contains the most new information, and subsequent reports become valuable only when freezes occur. Significant price movements occur in response to announced production in both Florida and California. However, the majority of price variations cannot be explained by these movements in supply.

We are always talking about overproduction. There would not be any overproduction if we could get these oranges at a decent price to the people who … could use them. The children need them; they have so many vitamins. By keeping the price way up nobody can buy them and God knows, we get nothing for them. I sold my Valencias for 10 cents a box. I was offered 50 cents, and I thought I would hold out a little until I finally sold them for 10 cents.1