We investigate the impact of stock‐based compensation on managerial ownership. We find that equity compensation succeeds in increasing incentives of lower‐ownership managers, but higher‐ownership managers negate much of its impact by selling previously owned shares. When executives exercise options to acquire stock, nearly all of the shares are sold. Our results illuminate dynamic aspects of managerial ownership arising from divergent goals of boards of directors, who use equity compensation for incentives, and managers, who respond by selling shares for diversification. The findings cast doubt on the frequent and important theoretical assumption that managers cannot hedge the risks of these awards.
I show that the effect of option introductions on underlying stock prices is best described by a two‐regime switching means model whose optimal switch date occurs in 1981. In accordance with previous studies, I find positive abnormal returns for options listed during 1973 to 1980. By contrast, I find negative abnormal returns for options listed in 1981 and later. Possible causes for this switch include the introduction of index options in 1982, the implementation of regulatory changes in 1981, and the possibility that options expedite the dissemination of negative information.
Gross spreads received by underwriters on initial public offerings (IPOs) in the United States are much higher than in other countries. Furthermore, in recent years more than 90 percent of deals raising $20–80 million have spreads of exactly seven percent, three times the proportion of a decade earlier. Investment bankers readily admit that the IPO business is very profitable, and that they avoid competing on fees because they ‘don't want to turn it into a commodity business.’ We examine several features of the IPO underwriting business that result in a market structure where spreads are high.
We analyze competition among informed traders in the continuous‐time Kyle(1985) model, as Foster and Viswanathan (1996) do in discrete time. We explicitly describe the unique linear equilibrium when signals are imperfectly correlated and confirm the conjecture of Holden and Subrahmanyam (1992) that there is no linear equilibrium when signals are perfectly correlated. One result is that at some date, and at all dates thereafter, the market would have been more informationally efficient had there been a monopolist informed trader instead of competing traders. The relatively large amount of private information remaining near the end of trading causes the market to approach complete illiquidity.
Exchange seat prices are widely reported and followed as measures of market sentiment. This paper analyzes the information content of NYSE seat prices using: (1) annual seat prices from 1869 to 1998, and (2) the complete record of trades, bids and offers for the seat market from 1973 to 1994. Seat market volumes have predictive power regarding future stock market returns, consistent with a model where seat market activity is a proxy for unobserved factors affecting expected returns. We find abnormally large price movements in seats prior to October 1987, consistent with the hypothesis that seat prices capture market sentiment.
This paper extends the theory of non‐cash auctions by considering the revenue and efficiency of using different securities. Research on bankruptcy and privatization suggests using non‐cash auctions to increase cash‐constrained bidder participation. We examine this proposal and demonstrate that securities may lead to higher revenue. However, bidders pool unless bids include debt, which results in possible repossession by the seller. This suggests all‐equity outcomes are unlikely and explains the high debt of reorganized firms. Securities also inefficiently determine bidders' incentive contracts and the firm's capital structure. Therefore, we recommend a new cash auction for an incentive contract.
Finance theory can be used to form informative prior beliefs in financial decision making. This paper approaches portfolio selection in a Bayesian framework that incorporates a prior degree of belief in an asset pricing model. Sample evidence on home bias and value and size effects is evaluated from an asset‐allocation perspective. U.S. investors' belief in the domestic CAPM must be very strong to justify the home bias observed in their equity holdings. The same strong prior belief results in large and stable optimal positions in the Fama–French book‐to‐market portfolio in combination with the market since the 1940s.
This paper examines the effect of recent market reforms on the competitive structure of the Nasdaq. Our results show that changes in inventory and information costs cannot explain the post‐reform decrease in bid‐ask spreads. We interpret this as evidence that the reforms have reduced Nasdaq dealers' rents. Additionally, we find that the difference between NYSE and Nasdaq spreads have been greatly diminished with the new rules. Further, the reforms have resulted in an exit, ceteris paribus , from the industry for market making. Overall, our results provide strong evidence that the reforms have improved competition on the Nasdaq.
The goal of this paper is to show that normality of asset returns can be recovered through a stochastic time change. Clark (1973) addressed this issue by representing the price process as a subordinated process with volume as the lognormally distributed subordinator. We extend Clark's results and find the following: (i) stochastic time changes are mathematically much less constraining than subordinators; (ii) the cumulative number of trades is a better stochastic clock than the volume for generating virtually perfect normality in returns; (iii) this clock can be modeled nonparametrically, allowing both the time‐change and price processes to take the form of jump diffusions.
How will banks evolve as competition increases from other banks and from the capital market? Will banks become more like capital market underwriters and offer passive transaction loans or return to their roots as relationship lending experts? These are the questions we address. Our key result is that as interbank competition increases, banks make more relationship loans, but each has lower added value for borrowers. Capital market competition reduces relationship lending (and bank lending shrinks), but each relationship loan has greater added value for borrowers. In both cases, welfare increases for some borrowers but not necessarily for all.