We examine the effect of regime change on privatization. In the 2004 Indian election, the pro-reform BJP was unexpectedly defeated by a less reformist coalition. Stock prices of government-controlled companies that had been slated for privatization by the BJP dropped 3.5% relative to private firms. Government-controlled companies that were under study for possible privatization fell 7.5% relative to private firms. This is consistent with investor belief of a “point of no return,” where advanced reforms are more difficult to reverse. Further analysis suggests that layoffs, combined with the privatization announcement, served as a credible commitment to privatize.

Fama and French [2002. The equity premium. Journal of Finance 57, 637–659] estimate the equity premium using dividend growth rates to measure expected rates of capital gain. We apply their method to study the value premium. From 1945 to 2005, the expected value premium is on average 6.1% per annum, consisting of an expected dividend growth component of 4.4% and an expected dividend price ratio component of 1.7%. Unlike the equity premium, the value premium has been largely stable over the last half century.

Short-horizon return predictability from order flows is an inverse indicator of market efficiency. We find that such predictability is diminished when bid-ask spreads are narrower, and has declined over time with the minimum tick size. Variance ratio tests suggest that prices were closer to random walk benchmarks in the more liquid decimal regime than in other ones. These findings indicate that liquidity stimulates arbitrage activity, which, in turn, enhances market efficiency. Further, as the tick size decreased, open-close/close-open return variance ratios increased, while return autocorrelations decreased. This suggests an increased incorporation of private information into prices during more liquid regimes.

Consistent with a life-cycle theory of dividends, the fraction of publicly traded industrial firms that pay dividends is high when retained earnings are a large portion of total equity (and of total assets) and falls to near zero when most equity is contributed rather than earned. We observe a highly significant relation between the decision to pay dividends and the earned/contributed capital mix, controlling for profitability, growth, firm size, total equity, cash balances, and dividend history, a relation that also holds for dividend initiations and omissions. In our regressions, the mix of earned/contributed capital has a quantitatively greater impact than measures of profitability and growth opportunities. We document a massive increase in firms with negative retained earnings (from 11.8% of industrials in 1978 to 50.2% in 2002). Controlling for the earned/contributed capital mix, firms with negative retained earnings show virtually no change in their propensity to pay dividends from the mid-1970s to 2002, while those whose earned equity makes them reasonable candidates to pay dividends have a propensity reduction that is twice the overall reduction in Fama and French [2000, Journal of Financial Economics 76, 549–582]. Finally, our simulations show that, if well-established firms had not paid dividends, their cash balances would be enormous and their long-term debt trivial, thus granting extreme discretion to managers of these mature firms.

There are two variance components embedded in the returns constructed using high frequency asset prices: the time-varying variance of the unobservable efficient returns that would prevail in a frictionless economy and the variance of the equally unobservable microstructure noise. Using sample moments of high frequency return data recorded at different frequencies, we provide a simple and robust technique to identify both variance components. In the context of a volatility-timing trading strategy, we show that careful (optimal) separation of the two volatility components of the observed stock returns yields substantial utility gains.

Previous research finds the volatility implied by S&P 100 index option prices to be a biased and inefficient forecast of future volatility and to contain little or no incremental information beyond that in past realized volatility. In contrast, we find that implied volatility outperforms past volatility in forecasting future volatility and even subsumes the information content of past volatility in some of our specifications. Our results differ from previous studies because we use longer time series and nonoverlapping data. A regime shift around the October 1987 crash explains why implied volatility is more biased in previous work.

Most models of market volatility use either past returns or ex post volatility to forecast volatility. In this paper, the dynamic behavior of market volatility is assessed by forecasting the volatility implied in the transaction prices of Standard & Poor's 100 index options. We test and reject the hypothesis that volatility changes are unpredictable. However, while our statistical model delivers precise forecasts, abnormal returns are not possible in a trading strategy (based on daily out-of-sample volatility projections) which takes transaction costs into account, suggesting that predictable time-varying volatility is consistent with market efficiency.

This paper develops a theory of the role of the underwriter in certifying that risky issue prices reflect potentially adverse inside information. The theory derives from the literature on the use of reputational capital to guarantee product quality. An underwriting cost/benefit paradigm is employed to generate testable implications related to announcement effects, issue underpricing, the choice of competitive versus negotiated underwriting, and the level of underwriter compensation as a function of firm-specific information. Existing empirical literature is reviewed in the context of the certification hypothesis and several new tests are conducted. All of the findings are supportive of the hypothesis.

We examine CEO-board dynamics using a new panel dataset that spans 1920 to 2011. The long sample allows us to perform within-firm and within-CEO tests over a long horizon, many for the first time in the governance literature. Consistent with theories of bargaining or dynamic contracting, we find board independence increases at CEO turnover and falls with CEO tenure, with the decline stronger following superior performance. CEOs are also more likely to be appointed board chair as tenure increases, and we find evidence consistent with a substitution between board independence and chair duality. Other results suggest that these classes of models fail to capture important elements of board dynamics. First, the magnitude of the CEO tenure effect is economically small, much smaller, for example, than the strong persistence in board structure that we show. Second, when external CEOs are hired, board independence falls and subsequently increases. Third, event studies show a positive market reaction when powerful CEOs die in office, consistent with powerful CEOs becoming entrenched.

We study the properties of the yield curve under the assumptions that (i) the fixed-income market is complete and (ii) the state vector that drives interest rates follows a finite discrete-time Markov chain. We focus in particular on the relationship between the behavior of the long end of the yield curve and the recovered time discount factor and marginal utilities of a pseudo-representative agent; and on the relationship between the “trappedness” of an economy and the convergence of yields at the long end.