Knowledge that Transforms

This article presents a technique for nonparametrically estimating continuous-time diffusion processes that are observed at discrete intervals. We illustrate the methodology by using daily three and six month Treasury Bill data, from January 1965 to July 1995, to estimate the drift and diffusion of the short rate, and the market price of interest rate risk. While the estimated diffusion is similar to that estimated by Chan, Karolyi, Longstaff, and Sanders (1992), there is evidence of substantial nonlinearity in the drift. This is close to zero for low and medium interest rates, but mean reversion increases sharply at higher interest rates.

The double taxation of corporate income should discourage firms from incorporating. We investigate the extent to which the aggregate allocation of assets and taxable income in the United States between corporate and noncorporate firms responds to the size of this tax distortion during the period 1959–1986. In theory, profitable firms should shift out of the corporate sector when the tax distortion is large, and conversely for firms with tax losses. Our empirical results provide strong support for these forecasts, and imply that the resulting excess burden equals 16 percent of business tax revenue.

Commercial paper sells at an extra discount if it matures in the next calendar year but Treasury bills do not. The discount is apparent in downward price shifts before the year‐end, and upward price shifts at the turn of the year that are significantly correlated with the simultaneous returns to small stocks, and that cannot reflect tax‐loss selling. Cross‐sectional and time‐series tests on prices, as well as low of funds evidence on trades by institutional investors, indicate that both the debt and equity patterns reflect agency problems related to portfolio disclosures.

Duffie (1996) examines the theoretical impact of repo “specials” on the prices of Treasury securities and concludes that, all else the same, an issue on special will carry a higher price than an otherwise identical issue. We examine this hypothesis and find strong evidence in support of it. We also examine whether the liquidity premium associated with “on‐the‐run” issues is due to repo specialness and find evidence of a distinct effect. Finally, we investigate whether auction tightness and percentage awarded to dealers are related to subsequent specialness and find that both variables àre generally significant.

We compare execution costs (market impact plus commission) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq for institutional investors. The differences in cost generally conform to each market's area of specialization. Controlling for firm size, trade size, and the money management firm's identity, costs are lower on Nasdaq for trades in comparatively smaller firms, while costs for trading the larger stocks are lower on NYSE. The cost differences estimated from a regression model are, however, sensitive to the choice of time period.

The goal of this article is to examine the impact of 1975 Congressional mandate to integrate the trading of NYSE‐listed stocks. The conclusions are: most of the time, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) quote matches or determines the best displayed quote, and the NYSE is the most frequent initiator of quote changes. Non‐NYSE markets attract a significant portion of their volume when they are posting inferior bids or offers, indicating they obtain order flow for other reasons, such as “payment for order flow.” Yet, when a non‐NYSE market does post a better bid or offer, it does attract additional order flow.

This article identifies price leadership patterns in foreign exchange trading, with a focus on central bank intervention as an informational trigger for leadership positioning. Granger causality tests applied to DM/US$ spot rate quotes reveal Deutsche Bank as a price leader up to 60 minutes prior to Bundesbank interventionary reports. By the minus 25‐minute mark, interbank quote adjustments become two‐way Granger‐causal. These results suggest that central bank activity is revealed in stages: first to the price leader, then to competitors, and lastly to the general public.

The higher taxation of dividends in the United States gave rise to theories that explain why companies pay dividends. Tax‐based signaling models propose that the higher tax on dividends is a necessary condition to make them informative about companies' values. In Germany, where dividends are not tax‐disadvantaged and in fact are taxed lower for most investor classes, these models predict that dividends are not informative. However, we find that the stock price reaction to dividend news in Germany is similar to that found in the United States. This suggests other reasons, beyond taxation, that make dividends informative.