Knowledge that Transforms

ABSTRACT This paper examines the empirical implications of an information asymmetry between primary and secondary dealers in the U.S. Government Securities market. This asymmetry arises because primary dealers are permitted to trade through all brokers operating in the marketplace while secondary dealers are restricted to trade through only a subset of brokers. Brokers distribute valuable information over video screens to their trading clients including dealers' up‐to‐date bid‐ask spreads and recent transaction prices. As such, all brokers' video screen information is available to primary dealers, while only a subset of brokers' information is available to secondary dealers. Empirical analyses detect the resulting information asymmetry.

We provide evidence that taxes affect equity valuation by studying British investment trusts having otherwise identical classes of cash- and stock-dividend-paying shares outstanding. We study 1969–1982, a period in which there were two dramatic changes in tax policy. We find that stock-dividend shares, which are convertible into cash-dividend shares, sell at premiums when the tax system favors capital gains and at discounts when the tax advantage of capital gains is reduced. After the 1975 elimination of the tax advantage to stock-dividend shares, we observe that investors convert virtually all stock-dividend shares into cash-dividend shares.

This paper employs a “transaction” data-base to study whether observed quote-revisions are consistent with those predicted by the adverse selection and inventory cost theories of the bid-ask spread. We find that actual quote-revisions are consistent with the theoretical prediction in only 25% of the cases. Furthermore, quote-revision patterns are found to be strongly dependent on the level of the outstanding spread and, to a lesser extent, on the transaction size. These systematic patterns, unrelated to the inventory cost and adverse selection theories, are consistent with the effect on quote-revisions of the limit order book and the minimum 1/8 price-change rule.

This paper examines the effects of price-contingent orders on security prices. We show that a market maker who knows the type and composition of trades will set larger spreads and adjust prices faster than if price-contingent orders were not allowed. Because traders have rational expectations over the book, we demonstrate that uncertainty over order type reduces the variance of prices but with a corresponding loss in price informativeness. We also show that the sequence property of price-contingent orders increases the probability of large price movements. This distinction between variance and episodic price volatility has important policy implications.

For generations government regulations and business traditions confined financial activities within national borders. Leaders and borrowers maintained relationships with domestic bankers, who offered little in the way of innovation or advantage. But the abolition of fixed exchange rates, along with hyper-inflation in the 1970s spelled the beginning of the end for this system. By the 1980s the financial game in the UK, Japan and USA was being played ith some important new rules, and by many new players. The old world of relationship banking had given way to financial transactions based upon price and product innovation. Macroeconomic forces and the policies of central bankers have profoundly altered international trade, exchange rates, and the flow of capital around the world. David Meerschwam explains these economic forces, describes the dramatic effects of de-regulation in the major centres of finance, and shows how financial services firms have had to alter their strategies and develop new skills in order to compete.

This paper investigates the stock price behavior of rival firms in the same industry as firms announcing stock repurchase tender offers. Using a sample of 134 repurchase announcements, I find that rival firms on average realize insignificant announcement period abnormal returns. Negative rival stock price performance is detected over longer intervals surrounding the announcement period and for a subset of announcements which ex ante were identified as most likely to affect rivals. This evidence, however, is statistically weak and does little to alter the overall conclusion that the information in repurchase announcements is primarily firm-specific.

After-hours pricing in foreign equity markets of multiple-listed U.S. securities appeared to be efficient in predicting New York prices in the weeks immediately following the October 1987 crash but relatively uninformative in succeeding months. By contrast, daily changes in New York prices appear to be efficiently incorporated in after-hours trading on both the Tokyo and London exchanges throughout the sample period. This paper suggests that the asymmetry and temporal variations in cross-market correlations are consistent with rational investor behavior in equity markets with nonzero transaction costs and time-varying share price volatility. IN THE WAKE OF the October 1987 crash, a number of studies have provided evidence of significant international linkages among national equity markets where high-frequency movements in the share price indices of national exchanges appear to induce sympathetic price movements in subsequent trading on other national exchanges.' However, the cross-market correlations are generally much larger in periods of extreme volatility and appear to subside to modest or even negligible associations during periods of more normal trading activity. Since the constituent stocks of national exchange indices are not identical, it may be that the episodic increases in correlated movements of the indices are due to changes in the actual (or perceived) relative importance of common factors in periods of unusual volatility. The thrust of this paper is to remove the issue of the disparate composition of the price indices of national exchanges by examining the prices of a set of