Knowledge that Transforms

In this paper, the authors provide empirical evidence consistent with the hypothesis that options market makers face risks in managing inventory that are unique to the options market. In particular, they show that risks associated with the inability to rebalance an option position continuously and uncertainty about the return volatility of the underlying stock each account for a statistically and economically significant proportion of the bid-ask spreads quoted for a sample of Chicago Board Options Exchange options.

This paper introduces a new method to measure the unexpected component of dividend announcements. While measures used previously were based on various arbitrary models of dividend expectations, the authors' suggested method compares the reaction of stock and option prices to dividend announcements. Their measure is compared to commonly used model-based measures, to a Box-Jenkins time-series-based measure, and to a Value-Line Investor Survey-based measure of dividend surprises. The new measure is more highly correlated with the market's reaction to the announcements than are alternative measures of dividend surprises. The new measure is also shown to be insensitive to the extent to which the options used to identify unexpected dividend announcements are in- or out-of-the-money.

The authors study the impact of voluntary trade by the manager. They find that, in contrast to standard signaling models, an action is good news for some firms and bad news for others, depending on observable characteristics of the firm, its managers, and their compensation plans. Further, voluntary trade eliminates separating equilibria and, thus, the possibility of exactly inferring the manager's private information. This may cause the manager to take inefficient actions so as to earn trading profits. Such undesirable behavior can be more effectively constrained by compensation contracts based on phantom shares or nontradeable options instead of large stockholdings.

The authors show that after controlling for the effects of bid-ask spreads and trading volume the conditional future volatility of equity returns is negatively related to the level of stock price. This "leverage effect" is stronger for small, as compared to large, firms. The authors also document that while the essential characteristics of the relations between stock price dynamics and firm size are stable, the strengths of the relationships appear to change over time.

This paper analyzes price formation under two trading mechanisms: a continuous quote-driven system where dealers post prices before order submission and an order-driven system where traders submit orders before prices are determined. The order-driven system operates either as a continuous auction, with immediate order execution, or as a periodic auction, where orders are stored for simultaneous execution. With free entry into market making, the continuous systems are equivalent. While a periodic auction offers greater price efficiency and can function where continuous mechanisms fail, traders must sacrifice continuity and bear higher information costs.

With dual trading, brokers trade both for their customers and for their own account. The authors study dual trading and find that customers who are less likely to be informed have higher expected profits with dual trading while customers who are more likely to be informed have higher expected profits without dual trading. They also examine the effects of frontrunning. The authors test the major empirical implications of their model. Consistent with the model, dual traders earn higher profits than nondual traders, and customers of dual-trading brokers do better than customers of nondual-trading brokers.

The authors provide new evidence regarding the degree of integration among markets for stocks, futures, and options prior to and during the October 1987 market crash. Where previous analyses have resulted in recommendations for the implementation of circuit breakers, the coordination of margin requirements across markets, and changes in regulatory jurisdiction, their analysis indicates that delinkage between markets during the crash was primarily caused by an antiquated mechanism for processing stock-market orders. The results suggest that market integration may be better served by efficient order execution than by further restricting markets.

The leading explanation for the positive price response surrounding tender offer share repurchase and specially designated dividend (SDD) announcements is the information signaling hypothesis. This paper reexamines these announcements to determine if Jensen's free cash-flow theory also has explanatory power. Lang and Litzenberger's (1989) findings suggest an important role for the free cash-flow theory in explaining the market's reaction to dividend changes. In contrast, they find the market's reaction to share repurchases and SDDs is approximately the same for both high-Q and low-Q firms. They thus have an empirical puzzle: If Jensen's free cash-flow theory applies to dividend changes, it is difficult to see why it does not also apply to the analogous events examined here.

This paper provides a simple proof of a recent theorem presented by Haim Reisman (1992) concerning the use of proxies for the factors in the return-generating process of the arbitrage pricing theory. In the single-factor case, the theorem asserts that any variable correlated with the factor can serve as the benchmark in an approximate arbitrage pricing theory expected return relation. The significance of this result is considered and a new direction for empirical work on "arbitrage pricing" is outlined.

While the benefits of bank financing are relatively well understood, the costs are not. This paper argues that while informed banks make flexible financial decisions which prevent a firm's projects from going awry, the cost of this credit is that banks have bargaining power over the firm's profit once projects have begun. The firm's portfolio choice of borrowing source and the choice of priority for its debt claims attempt to optimally circumscribe the powers of banks.