Knowledge that Transforms

We show how to price the time series and cross section of the term structure of interest rates using a three-step linear regression approach. Our method allows computationally fast estimation of term structure models with a large number of pricing factors. We present specification tests favoring a model using five principal components of yields as factors. We demonstrate that this model outperforms the Cochrane and Piazzesi (2008) four-factor specification in out-of-sample exercises but generates similar in-sample term premium dynamics. Our regression approach can also incorporate unspanned factors and allows estimation of term structure models without observing a zero-coupon yield curve.

Hedge fund managers trade off the benefits of leveraging on the alpha-generating strategy against the costs of inefficient fund liquidation. In contrast to the standard risk-seeking intuition, even with a constant-return-to-scale alpha-generating strategy, a risk-neutral manager becomes endogenously risk-averse and decreases leverage following poor performance to increase the fund's survival likelihood. Our calibration suggests that management fees are the majority of the total compensation. Money flows, managerial restart options, and management ownership increase the importance of high-water-mark-based incentive fees but management fees remain the majority. Investors' valuation of fees are highly sensitive to their assessments of the manager's skill.

This paper studies the ability of long-run risk models to explain out-of-sample asset returns during 1931–2009. The long-run risk models perform relatively well on the momentum effect. A cointegrated version of the model outperforms the classical, stationary version. Both the long-run and the short-run consumption shocks in the models are empirically important for the models' performance. The models' average pricing errors are especially small in the decades from the 1950s to the 1990s. When we restrict the risk premiums to identify structural parameters, this results in larger average pricing errors but often smaller error variances. The mean squared errors are not substantially better than those of the classical CAPM, except for Momentum.

We present a model that helps explain several past collapses of securitization markets. Originators issue too many informationally insensitive securities in good times, blunting investor incentives to become informed. The resulting endogenous scarcity of informed investors exacerbates primary market collapses in bad times. Inefficiency arises because informed investors are a public good from the perspective of originators. All originators benefit from the presence of additional informed investors in bad times, but each originator minimizes his reliance on costly informed capital in good times by issuing safe securities. Our model suggests regulations that limit the issuance of safe securities in good times.

This paper studies the time series predictability of currency carry trades, constructed by selecting currencies to be bought or sold against the US dollar, based on forward discounts. Changes in a commodity index, currency volatility and, to a lesser extent, a measure of liquidity predict in-sample the payoffs of dynamically re-balanced carry trades, as evidenced by individual and joint p-values in monthly predictive regressions at horizons up to six months. Predictability is further supported through out-of-sample metrics, and a predictability-based decision rule produces sizable improvements in the Sharpe ratios and skewness profile of carry trade payoffs. Our evidence also indicates that predictability can be traced to the long legs of the carry trades and their currency components. We test the theoretical restrictions that an asset pricing model, with average currency returns and the mimicking portfolio for the innovations in currency volatility as risk factors, imposes on the coefficients in predictive regressions.

We find that patient traders profit from the predictable, flow-induced trades of mutual funds. In anticipation of a 1%-of-volume change in mutual fund flows into a stock next quarter, the institutions in the same 13F category as hedge funds trade 0.29–0.45% of volume in the current quarter. A third of the trading is associated with the subset of 504 identified hedge funds. The effect is stronger when quarterly mutual fund portfolio disclosure is required and among hedge funds with more patient capital. A one standard deviation higher measure of anticipatory trading by a hedge fund is associated with a 0.9% higher annualized four-factor alpha. A one standard deviation higher measure of anticipation of a mutual fund's trades by institutions is associated with a 0.07–0.15% lower annualized four-factor alpha. The effect is stronger for more constrained mutual funds.

The Federal Reserve’s 2009 program to purchase $300 billion of US Treasury securities represented an unprecedented intervention in the Treasury market and provides a natural experiment with the potential to shed light on the price elasticities of Treasuries and theories of supply effects in the term structure. Using security-level data on Treasury prices and quantities during the course of this program, we document a ‘local supply’ effect in the yield curve—yields within a particular maturity sector responded more to changes in the amounts outstanding in that sector than to similar changes in other sectors. We find that this phenomenon was responsible for a persistent downward shift in yields averaging about 30 basis points over the course of the program (the “stock effect”). In addition, except at very long maturities, purchase operations caused an average decline in yields in the sector purchased of 3.5 basis points on the days when those operations occurred (the “flow effect”). The sensitivity of our results to security characteristics generally supports a view of segmentation or imperfect substitution within the Treasury market during this time.

Prior research argues that a manager whose wealth is more sensitive to changes in the firm׳s stock price has a greater incentive to misreport. However, if the manager is risk-averse and misreporting increases both equity values and equity risk, the sensitivity of the manager׳s wealth to changes in stock price (portfolio delta) will have two countervailing incentive effects: a positive “reward effect” and a negative “risk effect.” In contrast, the sensitivity of the manager׳s wealth to changes in risk (portfolio vega) will have an unambiguously positive incentive effect. We show that jointly considering the incentive effects of both portfolio delta and portfolio vega substantially alters inferences reported in prior literature. Using both regression and matching designs, and measuring misreporting using discretionary accruals, restatements, and enforcement actions, we find strong evidence of a positive relation between vega and misreporting and that the incentives provided by vega subsume those of delta. Collectively, our results suggest that equity portfolios provide managers with incentives to misreport when they make managers less averse to equity risk.

We provide evidence that incumbent and entrant firms' access to business group deep pockets affects the entry patterns in product markets. Relying on a unique French data set on business groups, our paper shows that entry into manufacturing industries is negatively related to the cash hoarded by incumbent affiliated groups and positively related to entrant groups' cash. In line with theoretical predictions, we find that the impact of group cash holdingson entry is more important in environments where financial constraints are pronounced. The cash holdings of incumbent and entrant groups also affect the survival rate of entrants in the three- to five-year post-entry window. Overall, our findings suggest that internal capital markets operate within corporate groups and affect the product market behavior of affiliated firms by mitigating financial constraints.

I identify a “slope” factor in the cross section of commodity futures returns: high-basis commodity futures have higher loadings on this factor than low-basis commodity futures. Combined with a level factor (an index of commodity futures), this slope factor explains most of the average excess returns of commodity futures portfolios sorted by basis. More importantly, I find that this factor is significantly correlated with investment shocks, which represent the technological progress in producing new capital. I investigate a competitive dynamic equilibrium model of commodity production to endogenize this correlation. The model reproduces the cross-sectional futures returns and many asset pricing tests.