Knowledge that Transforms

This paper investigates the relationship between bank ownership structure and risk taking. It is hypothesized that stockholder controlled banks have incentives to take higher risk than managerially controlled banks and that these differences in risk become more pronounced in periods of deregulation. In support of this hypothesis, we show that stockholder controlled banks exhibit significantly higher risk taking behavior than managerially controlled banks during the 1979–1982 period of relative deregulation.

This paper develops and empirically tests a two‐factor model for pricing financial and real assets contingent on the price of oil. The factors are the spot price of oil and the instantaneous convenience yield. The parameters of the model are estimated using weekly oil futures contract prices from January 1984 to November 1988, and the model's performance is assessed out of sample by valuing futures contracts over the period November 1988 to May 1989. Finally, the model is applied to determine the present values of one barrel of oil deliverable in one to ten years time.

Trading losses associated with information asymmetries can be mitigated by designing securities which split the cash flows of underlying assets. These securities, which can arise endogenously, have values that do not depend on the information known only to informed agents. Bank debt (deposits) is an example of this type of liquid security which protect relatively uninformed agents, and we provide a rationale for deposit insurance in this content. High‐grade corporate debt and government bonds are other examples, implying that a money market mutual fund‐based payments system may be an alternative to one based on insured bank deposits.

This paper provides empirical support for the notion that Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (ARCH) in daily stock return data reflects time dependence in the process generating information flow to the market. Daily trading volume, used as a proxy for information arrival time, is shown to have significant explanatory power regarding the variance of daily returns, which is an implication of the assumption that daily returns are subordinated to intraday equilibrium returns. Furthermore, ARCH effects tend to disappear when volume is included in the variance equation.

This paper provides clear evidence of substantial tax effects on the choice between issuing debt or equity; most studies fail to find significant effects. The relationship between tax shields and debt policy is clarified. Other papers miss the fact that most tax shields have a negligible effect on the marginal tax rate for most firms. New predictions are strongly supported by an empirical analysis; the method is to study incremental financing decisions using discrete choice analysis. Previous researchers examined debt/equity ratios, but tests based on incremental decisions should have greater power.

1. Introduction. 2. Futures Markets. 3. Forward and Futures Prices. 4. Interest Rate Futures. 5. Swaps. 6. Options Markets. 7. Properties of Stock Option Prices. 8. Trading Strategies Involving Options. 9. A Model of the Behavior of Stock Prices. 10. The Black-Scholes Analysis. 11. Options on Stock Indices, Currencies and Futures Contracts. 12. A General Approach to Pricing Derivative Securities. 13. Hedging Positions in Options and Other Derivative Securities. 14. Numerical Procedures. 15. Interest Rate Derivative Securities. 16. Alternatives to Black-Scholes for Option Pricing. 17. Credit Risk. 18. Exotic Options. 19. Review of Key Concepts.

This paper provides a theory of capital structure based on the effect of debt on investors' information about the firm and on their ability to oversee management. We postulate that managers are reluctant to relinquish control and unwilling to provide information that could result in such an outcome. Debt is a disciplining device because default allows creditors the option to force the firm into liquidation and generates information useful to investors. We characterize the time path of the debt level and obtain comparative statics results on the debt level, bond yield, probability of default, probability of reorganization, etc.

Measuring the total return variation explained by shocks to expected cash flows, time‐varying expected returns, and shocks to expected returns is one way to judge the rationality of stock prices. Variables that proxy for expected returns and expected‐return shocks capture 30% of the variance of annual NYSE value‐weighted returns. Growth rates of production, used to proxy for shocks to expected cash flows, explain 43% of the return variance. Whether the combined explanatory power of the variables—about 58% of the variance of annual returns—is good or bad news about market efficiency is left for the reader to judge.

The author examines the CBOE option market depth and bid-ask spreads. Absence of price effects surrounding large option trades suggests excellent market depth. However, bid-ask spreads for the CBOE options and the NYSE stocks are nearly equal, even though an average option is equivalent to less than half a stock plus borrowing. The author explains this trade-off between market depth and bid-ask spreads on the CBOE and the NYSE by differences in market mechanisms. The author also shows that the adverse-selection component of the option spread, which measures the extent of information-related trading on the CBOE, is very small.