Knowledge that Transforms

As a consequence of optimal investment choices, a firm's assets and growth options change in predictable ways. Using a dynamic model, we show that this imparts predictability to changes in a firm's systematic risk, and its expected return. Simulations show that the model simultaneously reproduces: (i) the time‐series relation between the book‐to‐market ratio and asset returns; (ii) the cross‐sectional relation between book‐to‐market, market value, and return; (iii) contrarian effects at short horizons; (iv) momentum effects at longer horizons; and (v) the inverse relation between interest rates and the market risk premium.

The relative merits of dealer versus auction markets have been a subject of significant and sometimes contentious debate. On January 20, 1997, the Securities and Exchange Commission began implementing reforms that would permit the public to compete directly with Nasdaq dealers by submitting binding limit orders. Additionally, superior quotes placed by Nasdaq dealers in private trading venues began to be displayed in the Nasdaq market. We measure the impact of these new rules on various measures of performance, including trading costs and depths. Our results indicate that quoted and effective spreads fell dramatically without adversely affecting market quality.

In this paper we investigate the properties of the standard two‐pass methodology of testing beta pricing models with misspecified factors. In a setting where a factor is useless, defined as being independent of all the asset returns, we provide theoretical results and simulation evidence that the second‐pass cross‐sectional regression tends to find the beta risk of the useless factor priced more often than it should. More surprisingly, this misspecification bias exacerbates when the number of time series observations increases. Possible ways of detecting useless factors are also examined.

This paper applies to interest rate models the theoretical method developed in Aït‐Sahalia (1998) to generate accurate closed‐form approximations to the transition function of an arbitrary diffusion. While the main focus of this paper is on the maximum‐likelihood estimation of interest rate models with otherwise unknown transition functions, applications to the valuation of derivative securities are also briefly discussed.

This paper examines underwriters' pricing errors and the information content of first‐day trading activity in IPOs. We show that first‐day winners continue to be winners over the first year, and first‐day dogs continue to be relative dogs. Exceptions are “extra‐hot” IPOs, which provide the worst future performance. We also demonstrate that large, supposedly informed, traders “flip” IPOs that perform the worst in the future. IPOs with low flipping generate abnormal returns of 1.5 percentage points per month over the first six months beginning on the third day. We show that flipping is predictable and conclude that underwriters' pricing errors are intentional.

One possible explanation for bidding firms earning positive abnormal returns in diversifying acquisitions in the 1960s is that internal capital markets were expected to overcome the information deficiencies of the less‐developed capital markets. Examining 392 bidder firms during the 1960s, we find the highest bidder returns when financially “unconstrained” buyers acquire “constrained” targets. This result holds while controlling for merger terms and for different proxies used to classify firms facing costly external financing. We also find that bidders generally retain target management, suggesting that management may have provided company‐specific operational information, while the bidder provided capital‐budgeting expertise.

We examine whether portfolios of domestically traded securities can mimic foreign indices so that investment in assets that trade only abroad is not necessary to exhaust the gains from international diversification. We use monthly data from 1976 to 1993 for seven developed and nine emerging markets. Return correlations, mean‐variance spanning, and Sharpe ratio test results provide strong evidence that gains beyond those attainable through home‐made diversification have become statistically and economically insignificant. Finally, we show that the incremental gains from international diversification beyond home‐made diversification portfolios have diminished over time in a way consistent with changes in investment barriers.

This paper develops a nonparametric approach to examine how portfolio and consumption choice depends on variables that forecast time‐varying investment opportunities. I estimate single‐period and multiperiod portfolio and consumption rules of an investor with constant relative risk aversion and a one‐month to 20‐year horizon. The investor allocates wealth to the NYSE index and a 30‐day Treasury bill. I find that the portfolio choice varies significantly with the dividend yield, default premium, term premium, and lagged excess return. Furthermore, the optimal decisions depend on the investor's horizon and rebalancing frequency.

We investigate investment managers' use of derivatives by comparing return distributions for equity mutual funds that use and do not use derivatives. In contrast to public perception, derivative users have risk exposure and return performance that are similar to nonusers. We also analyze changes in fund risk in response to prior fund performance. Changes in risk are substantially less severe for funds using derivatives, consistent with the explanation that managers use derivatives to reduce the impact of performance on risk. We provide new evidence regarding the implications of cash flows and managerial gaming for the relation between performance and risk.

We find that firms protected by “second generation” state antitakeover laws substantially reduce their use of debt, and that unprotected firms do the reverse. This result supports recent models in which the threat of hostile takeover motivates managers to take on debt they would otherwise avoid. An implication is that legal barriers to takeovers may increase corporate slack.