Knowledge that Transforms

While the U.S. has pursued a vigorous antitrust policy towards horizontal mergers over the past four decades, mergers in Canada have until recently been permitted to take place in a virtually unrestricted antitrust environment. The absence of an antitrust overhang in Canada presents an interesting opportunity to test the conjecture that the rigid market share and concentration criteria of the U.S. policy effectively deters a significant number of potentially collusive mergers. The effective deterrence hypothesis implies that the probability of a horizontal merger being anticompetitive is higher in Canada than in the U.S. However, parameters in cross-sectional regressions reject the market power hypothesis on samples of both U.S. and Canadian mergers. Judging from the Canadian evidence, there simply isn't much to deter.

This paper focuses on contractual distinctions as an explanation for the price divergence between futures and forward contracts. Specifically, it investigates the effect of marking-to-market on the observed price differences using the pricing model described in Cox, Ingersoll, and Ross (1981). Using previously unavailable data, this paper employs Eurodollars, an interest rate-sensitive financial asset, to test the Cox, Ingersoll, and Ross model. Unlike prior empirical studies, test results support both the weak prediction concerning the sign of the average price difference and the stronger prediction that specific covariances explain the variation in the price differences.

Many firms with dividend reinvestment plans also allow their shareholders to voluntarily invest supplemental funds to purchase additional shares. The purchase price for newly issued shares often is determined by the average stock price over a prespecified time period preceding the investment date. This gives the firm's shareholders an option to invest in additional shares only when the stock price exceeds the computed average. This paper uses both theoretical and numerical methods to analyze the value of these voluntary purchase options in theory and practice.

The January effect is primarily a low-share price effect and less so a market value effect. In the recent 1977-86 period, after-transaction-cost raw and excess January returns are lower on low-price stocks than on high-price stocks. Failure of informed traders to eliminate significantly large before-transaction-cost excess January returns on low-price stocks is potentially explained by higher transactions costs and a bid-ask bias. At the least, the January anomaly found in prior tests is not persistent and, thereby, not likely to be exploitable by typical investors.

Unit time costs, or holding costs, are incurred in many arbitrage contexts. Examples include losing the use of short sale proceeds and lending funds at below market rates in reverse repurchase agreements. This paper analyzes the investment problem of a risk-averse arbitrageur who faces holding costs. The model allows prices to deviate from "fundamental" values without allowing for riskless arbitrage opportunities. After characterizing an arbitrageur's optimal strategy, the model is examined in the context of the Treasury market. The analysis reveals that holding costs are an important friction in this market and that they can significantly affect arbitrageur behavior.

This paper uses the predictability of monthly excess returns on U.S. and Japanese equity portfolios over the U.S Treasury bill rate to study the integration of long-term capital markets in these two countries. During the period 1971-90, similar variables, including the dividend-price ratio and interest-rate variables, help to forecast excess returns in each country. In addition, in the 1980s, U.S. variables help to forecast excess Japanese stock returns. There is some evidence of common movement in expected excess returns across the two countries, which is suggestive of integration of long-term capital markets.

This paper tests two of the simplest and most popular trading rules–moving average and trading range break–by utilizing the Dow Jones Index from 1897 to 1986. Standard statistical analysis is extended through the use of bootstrap techniques. Overall, their results provide strong support for the technical strategies. The returns obtained from these strategies are not consistent with four popular null models: the random walk, the AR(1), the GARCH-M, and the Exponential GARCH. Buy signals consistently generate higher returns than sell signals, and further, the returns following buy signals are less volatile than returns following sell signals. Moreover, returns following sell signals are negative, which is not easily explained by any of the currently existing equilibrium models.

A dynamic equilibrium model is constructed in which agents with access to different information sets participate in the capital market. Agents must use the equilibrium price of capital to make optimal forecasts of the return to holding capital. Examples show that the volume of trade, as well as the price of capital, can be highly correlated with a measure of the information content of prices. The measure of information is the difference between the unconditional entropy of the dividend and the entropy of the dividend conditional on observing the price of capital.