Knowledge that Transforms

This paper provides evidence that firms signal their private information about future earnings by their choice of split factor. Split factors are increasing in earnings forecast errors, after controlling for differences in pre-split price and firm size. Further more, price changes at stock dividend and split announcements are significantly correlated with split factors, holding other factors constant, and with earnings forecast errors. These correlations suggest that management's choice of split factor signals private information about future earnings and that investors revise their beliefs about firm value accordingly. The analysis also suggests, however, that announcement returns are significantly correlated with split factors after controlling for earnings forecast errors. This suggests that earnings forecast errors measure management's private information about future earnings with error, that split factors signal other valuation-relevant attributes, or that a signaling explanation is incomplete.

This paper uses three methods to estimate quality option values for Chicago Board of Trade Treasury bond futures contracts. It presents evidence regarding payoffs from exercising this option at delivery, estimates from a T-bond futures pricing model that incorporates this option, and estimates obtained from an exchange option pricing formula. The results indicate that this option is worth considerably less than reported by A. Kane and A. Marcus (1986). For example, payoffs obtained by switching from the bond cheapest to deliver three months prior to delivery to the one cheapest at time of delivery average less than 0.30 percentage points of par.

This paper develops a theory of choice among alternative procedures for distributing cash from corporations to shareholders. Despite the preferential tax treatment of capital gains for individual investors, it is shown that a majority of a firm's shareholders may support a dividend payment for small distributions. For larger distributions, an open-market stock repurchase is likely to be preferred by a majority of shareholders and, for the largest distributions, tender offer repurchases dominate.

Analyses of rational speculation usually presume that it dampens fluctuations caused by "noise" traders. This is not necessarily the case if noise traders follow positive-feedback strategies–buy when prices rise and sell when prices fall. It may pay to jump on the bandwagon and purchase ahead of noise demand. If rational speculators' early buying triggers positive-feedback trading, then an increase in the number of forward-looking speculators can increase volatility about fundamentals. This model is consistent with a number of empirical observations about the correlation of asset returns, the overreaction of prices to news, price bubbles, and expectations. Coauthors are Andrei Shleifer, Lawrence H. Summers, and Robert J. Waldmann.

This paper uses a sample of over 25,000 daily warrant prices to empirically investigate potential problems with the commonly used warrant pricing model proposed by F. Black and M. Scholes as an extension of their call option model. One problem seems to be especially important: the constant variance assumption of the dilution adjusted Black-Scholes model appears to cause biases in model prices for almost all warrants and over the entire sample period. The authors show that more accurate price forecasts are obtained with a specific form of the constant elasticity of variance model.

The authors use predictions of aggregate stock return variances from daily data to estimate time-varying monthly variances for size-ranked portfolios. The authors propose and estimate a single factor model of heteroskedasticity for portfolio returns. This model implies time-varying betas. Implications of heteroskedasticity and time-varying betas for tests of the capital asset pricing model are then documented. Accounting for heteroskedasticity increases the evidence that risk-adjusted returns are related to firm size. The authors also estimate a constant correlation model. Portfolio volatilities predicted by this model are similar to those predicated by more complex multivariate generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity procedures.

In this paper, the authors examine the performance of a sample of fifteen U.S.-based internationally diversified mutual funds between 1982 and 1988. Two performance measures are used, the Jensen measure and the positive period weighting measure proposed by Mark Grinblatt and Sheridan Titman. They find no evidence that the funds, either individually or as a whole, provide investors with performance that surpasses that of a broad, international equity index over this sample period.

This paper studies the dividend policy adjustments of eighty NYSE firms to protracted financial distress as evidenced by multiple losses during 1980-85. Almost all sample firms reduced dividends, and more than half apparently faced binding debt covenants in years they did so. Absent binding debt covenants, dividends are cut more often than omitted, suggesting that managerial reluctance is to the omission and not simply the reduction of dividends. Moreover, managers of firms with long dividend histories appear particularly reluctant to omit dividends. Finally, some dividend reductions seem strategically motivated, e.g., designed to enhance the firm's bargaining positions with organized labor.

This paper presents an information-theoretic, infinite-horizon model of the equity issue decision. The model predicts that equity issues on average are preceded by an abnormal positive return on the stock, although for some firms the issue is preceded by a loss; equity issues on average are preceded by an abnormal rise in the market; and the stock price drops at the announcement of an issue. The model provides a measure of the welfare cost of asymmetric information; the welfare loss may be small even if the price drop at issue announcement is large.

This study reexamines the earlier finding of Michael J. Alderson and K. C. Chen (1986) that financial markets do not consider excess pension assets in determining share prices and that significant increases in shareholder wealth occur when an overfunded pension plan is terminated. The results document that specific event-time contamination (corporate restructuring announcements) provides the driving force for all the earlier findings.