ABSTRACT Recent studies using aging analysis have found high rates of default for rated, nonconvertible high‐yield bonds. This paper examines the remainder of the market and concludes that rated and nonrated convertible high‐yield bonds had significantly lower default rates. It also provides some evidence that nonrated, nonconvertible securities may have lower default rates. Even after controlling for issue size and coupon rates in a logit model, these differences remain statistically significant.
ABSTRACT 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.
ABSTRACT The methods of Gibbons and Ferson (1985) are extended, relaxing the assumption that expected returns are linear functions of predetermined instruments. A model of conditional mean‐variance spanning generalizes Huberman and Kandel (1987). The empirical results indicate that more than a single risk premium is needed to model expected stock and bond returns, but the number of common factors in the expected returns is small. However, when size‐based common stock portfolios proxy for the risk factors, we reject the hypothesis that four of them describe the conditional expected returns of the other assets.
An endowment economy with heterogeneous agents and incomplete asset markets is specified, parameterized and solved using a numerical solution algorithm. The model features two types of infinitely lived agents who are endowed with different sources for non-tradable income. Despite not being able to insure against endowment risk, individuals are able to partially diversify away idiosyncratic risk by trading in a limited set of competitive asset markets. Numerical results indicate that the model can account for substantially more of the variability in intertemporal marginal rates of substitution documented by Hensen and Jagannathan (1990) than can models based on a representative agent. In addition, the model can generate a mean risk-free rate of interest smaller than the rate of time preference and potentially account for the so called 'risk-free rate puzzle'.
ABSTRACT Two proposals are made that may facilitate the creation of derivative market instruments, such as futures contracts, cash settled based on economic indices. The first proposal concerns index number construction: indices based on infrequent measurements of nonstandardized items may control for quality change by using a hedonic repeated measures method, an index number construction method that follows individual assets or subjects through time and also takes account of measured quality variables. The second proposal is to establish markets for perpetual claims on cash flows matching indices of dividends or rents. Such markets may help us to measure the prices of the assets generating these dividends or rents even when the underlying asset prices are difficult or impossible to observe directly. A perpetual futures contract is proposed that would cash settle every day in terms of both the change in the futures price and the dividend or rent index for that day.
ABSTRACT Forward and spot exchange rates between major currencies imply large standard deviations of both predictable returns from currency speculation and of the equilibrium price measure (the intertemporal marginal rate of substitution). Representative agent theory with time‐additive preferences cannot account for either of these properties. We show that the theory does considerably better along these dimensions when the representative agent's preferences exhibit habit persistence, but that the theory fails to reproduce some of the other properties of the data—in particular, the strong autocorrelation of forward premiums.
ABSTRACT 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.
ABSTRACT 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.
This paper develops a general framework for analyzing corporate risk management policies. We begin by observing that if external sources of finance are more costly to corporations than internally generated funds, there will typically be a benefit to hedging: hedging adds value to the extent that it helps ensure that a corporation has sufficient internal funds available to take advantage of attractive investment opportunities. We then argue that this simple observation has wide ranging impli-cations for the design of risk management strategies. We delineate how these strategies should depend on such factors as shocks to investment and financing opportunities. We also discuss exchange rate hedging strategies for multinationals, as well as strategies involving "nonlinear" instruments like options.
We find support for a negative relation between conditional expected monthly return and conditional variance of monthly return, using a GARCH-M model modified by allowing (1) seasonal patterns in volatility, (2) positive and negative innovations to returns having different impacts on conditional volatility, and (3) nominal interest rates to predict conditional variance. Using the modified GARCH-M model, we also show that monthly conditional volatility may not be as persistent as was thought. Positive unanticipated returns appear to result in a downward revision of the conditional volatility whereas negative unanticipated returns result in an upward revision of conditional volatility.