Knowledge that Transforms

This study examines stock and bond price reactions to dividend changes. The positive stock market response to dividend increases has several potential explanations, two of the more commonly discussed being information content and wealth redistribution between stockholders and bondholders. The evidence presented supports the wealth redistribution hypothesis but does not rule out the information content hypothesis. Typically, the authors find that the bond price reaction to announcements of large dividend changes is opposite to the stock price reaction. Their results differ from those of G. Handjinicolaou and A. Kalay (1984).

Wildcard options are embedded in many derivative contracts. They arise when the settlement price of the contract is established before the time at which the wildcard option holder must declare his intention to make or accept delivery and the exercise of the wildcard option closes out the underlying asset position. This paper provides a simple method for valuing wildcard options and illustrates the technique by valuing the sequence of wildcard options embedded in the S&P 100 index option contract. The results show that wildcard options can account for an economically significant fraction of S&P 100 index option value.

The authors evaluate journals based on their relative contributions to top-level finance research in a recent period. Journals are ranked according to the number of citations found in articles published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Review of Financial Studies. The analysis controls for both the average number of articles and average number of words published annually in each cited journal. The authors identify the fifty most frequently cited journals during this period. They also list the fifty most frequently cited authors and articles and note topical trends in the research.

This article tests for the relations between trading volume and subsequent returns patterns in individual securities' short-horizon returns that are suggested by such articles as L. Blume, D. Easley, and M. O'Hara (1994) and J. Y. Campbell, S. J. Grossman, and J. Wang (1993). Using a variant of B. Lehmann's (1990) contrarian trading strategy, the authors find strong evidence of a relation between trading activity and subsequent autocovariances in weekly returns. Specifically, high-transaction securities experience price reversals, while the returns of low-transactions securities are positively autocovarying. Overall, information on trading activity appears to be an important predictor of the returns of individual securities.

This article develops a new method for inferring risk‐neutral probabilities (or state‐contingent prices) from the simultaneously observed prices of European options. These probabilities are then used to infer a unique fully specified recombining binomial tree that is consistent with these probabilities (and, hence, consistent with all the observed option prices). A simple backwards recursive procedure solves for the entire tree. From the standpoint of the standard binomial option pricing model, which implies a limiting risk‐neutral lognormal distribution for the underlying asset, the approach here provides the natural (and probably the simplest) way to generalize to arbitrary ending risk‐neutral probability distributions.

This article examines corporate debt values and capital structure in a unified analytical framework. It derives closed‐form results for the value of long‐term risky debt and yield spreads, and for optimal capital structure, when firm asset value follows a diffusion process with constant volatility. Debt values and optimal leverage are explicitly linked to firm risk, taxes, bankruptcy costs, risk‐free interest rates, payout rates, and bond covenants. The results elucidate the different behavior of junk bonds versus investment‐grade bonds, and aspects of asset substitution, debt repurchase, and debt renegotiation.

This paper empirically examines how ties between a firm and its creditors affect the availability and cost of funds to the firm. We analyze data collected in a survey of small firms by the Small Business Administration. The primary benefit of building close ties with an institutional creditor is that the availability of financing increases. We find smaller effects on the price of credit. Attempts to widen the circle of relationships by borrowing from multiple lenders increases the price and reduces the availability of credit. In sum, relationships are valuable and appear to operate more through quantities rather than prices.

How should firms decide whether and when to invest in new capital equipment, additions to their workforce, or the development of new products? Why have traditional economic models of investment failed to explain the behavior of investment spending in the United States and other countries? In this book, Avinash Dixit and Robert Pindyck provide the first detailed exposition of a new theoretical approach to the capital investment decisions of firms, stressing the irreversibility of most investment decisions, and the ongoing uncertainty of the economic environment in which these decisions are made. In so doing, they answer important questions about investment decisions and the behavior of investment spending.This new approach to investment recognizes the option value of waiting for better (but never complete) information. It exploits an analogy with the theory of options in financial markets, which permits a much richer dynamic framework than was possible with the traditional theory of investment. The authors present the new theory in a clear and systematic way, and consolidate, synthesize, and extend the various strands of research that have come out of the theory. Their book shows the importance of the theory for understanding investment behavior of firms; develops the implications of this theory for industry dynamics and for government policy concerning investment; and shows how the theory can be applied to specific industries and to a wide variety of business problems.