Knowledge that Transforms

Larry G. Epstein, Michael G. S. Denny, The Multivariate Flexible Accelerator Model: Its Empirical Restrictions and an Application to U.S. Manufacturing, Econometrica, Vol. 51, No. 3 (May, 1983), pp. 647-674

This paper describes an analysis of survey data on unemployed people who reported their asking wage and the wage they expected to earn. We show that if agents' behavior is described by the standard optimal job search model, one can use these data to deduce structural parameters rather than estimate them, and we report our deductions from two surveys^1 of British unemployed people.

ABSTRACT An individual who chooses to serve as a market‐maker is assumed to optimize his position by setting a bid‐ask spread which maximizes the difference between expected revenues received from liquidity‐motivated traders and expected losses to information‐motivated traders. By characterizing the cost of supplying quotes, as writing a put and a call option to an information‐motivated trader, it is shown that the bid‐ask spread is a positive function of the price level and return variance, a negative function of measures of market activity, depth, and continuity, and negatively correlated with the degree of competition. Thus, the theory of information effects on the bid‐ask spread proposed in this paper is consistent with the empirical literature.

J. G. Kallberg, A Generalized Cash Flow Approach to Short-Term Financial Decisions: Discussion, The Journal of Finance, Vol. 38, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings Forty-First Annual Meeting American Finance Association New York, N.Y. December 28-30, 1982 (May, 1983), pp. 385-387