Knowledge that Transforms

Acquisitions among New York Stock Exchange specialist firms can increase specialist firm size, capitalization, and market concentration, and thereby affect the market quality of the stocks they trade. We find that while traded stocks show significant improvement in several market quality measures following acquisitions, similar changes are evident in matched control stocks not involved in acquisitions. We conclude that specialist firm acquisitions either do not improve market quality, or improve market quality, but competitive and other pressures (resulting partly from the acquisitions themselves) force improvements in market quality for control stocks also. Either interpretation implies that specialist acquisitions have not had deleterious effects on market quality.

Correlations between U.S. stocks and the aggregate U.S. market are much greater for downside moves, especially for extreme downside moves, than for upside moves. We develop a new statistic for measuring, comparing, and testing asymmetries in conditional correlations. Conditional on the downside, correlations in the data differ from the conditional correlations implied by a normal distribution by 11.6%. We find that conditional asymmetric correlations are fundamentally different from other measures of asymmetries, such as skewness and co-skewness. We find that small stocks, value stocks, and past loser stocks have more asymmetric movements. Controlling for size, we find that stocks with lower betas exhibit greater correlation asymmetries, and we find no relationship between leverage and correlation asymmetries. Correlation asymmetries in the data reject the null hypothesis of multivariate normal distributions at daily, weekly, and monthly frequencies. However, several empirical models with greater flexibility, particularly regime-switching models, perform better at capturing correlation asymmetries.

This paper investigates the empirical characteristics of investor risk aversion over equity return states by estimating a time-varying pricing kernel, which we call the empirical pricing kernel (EPK). We estimate the EPK on a monthly basis from 1991 to 1995, using S&P 500 index option data and a stochastic volatility model for the S&P 500 return process. We find that the EPK exhibits counter cyclical risk aversion over S&P 500 return states. We also find that hedging performance is significantly improved when we use hedge ratios based the EPK rather than a time-invariant pricing kernel.

We analyze the ultimate ownership and control of 5,232 corporations in 13 Western European countries. Typically firms are widely held (36.93%) or family controlled (44.29%). Widely held firms are more important in the UK and Ireland, family controlled firms in continental Europe. Financial and large firms are more likely widely held, while non-financial and small firms are more likely family controlled. State control is important for larger firms in certain countries. Dual class shares and pyramids enhance the control of the largest shareholders, but overall there are significant discrepancies between ownership and control in only a few countries.

This paper examines the relation between chief executive officers’ (CEOs’) incentive levels and their firms’ risk characteristics. I show theoretically that, when CEOs cannot trade the market portfolio, optimal incentive level decreases with firm's nonsystematic risk but is ambiguously affected by firm's systematic risk; when CEOs can trade the market portfolio, optimal incentive level decreases with nonsystematic risk but is unaffected by systematic risk. Empirically I find support for these predictions. Furthermore, I find that incentives for CEOs likely facing binding short-selling constraints decrease with systematic as well as nonsystematic risk, as predicted by theory. Thus, compensation practice is consistent with predictions of theory.

A hot growth stock in the 1980s, L.A. Gear's equity fell from $1 billion in market value in 1989 to zero in 1998. For over six years as revenues declined precipitously, management tried a series of radical strategy shifts while subsidizing the firm's large losses through working-capital liquidations. The L.A. Gear case illustrates that asset liquidity (broadly construed, not limited to excess cash) can give managers substantial operating discretion during financial distress. It also shows (1) that debt covenants can be stronger disciplinary mechanisms than requirements to meet cash interest payments, (2) why debt contracts typically constrain earnings instead of cash flow, (3) why cash balances are not equivalent to negative debt, and (4) why debt maturity matters. We find that many firms have highly liquid asset structures, thus their managers have the potential to subsidize losing operations should the need arise.

We develop a stock market model with differences of opinion and short-sales constraints. When breadth is low—i.e., when few investors have long positions—this signals that the short-sales constraint is binding tightly, and that prices are high relative to fundamentals. Thus reductions in breadth should forecast lower returns. Using data on mutual fund holdings, we find that stocks whose change in breadth in the prior quarter is in the lowest decile of the sample underperform those in the top decile by 6.38% in the twelve months after formation. Adjusting for size, book-to-market, and momentum, the figure is 4.95%.

We propose a multiperiod model in which competitive arbitrageurs exploit discrepancies between the prices of two identical risky assets traded in segmented markets. Arbitrageurs need to collateralize separately their positions in each asset, and this implies a financial constraint limiting positions as a function of wealth. In our model, arbitrage activity benefits all investors because arbitrageurs supply liquidity to the market. However, arbitrageurs might fail to take a socially optimal level of risk, in the sense that a change in their positions can make all investors better off. We characterize conditions under which arbitrageurs take too much or too little risk.

We examine how the intrinsic differences between U.S. and non-U.S. stocks affect market participants and the market quality of non-U.S. stocks relative to U.S. stocks. Using proprietary data on NYSE specialist trading, we find that, all else equal, specialist closing inventory positions for non-U.S. stocks are closer to zero than U.S. stocks. The evidence on specialist participation and stabilization rates is mixed. Non-U.S. stocks from developed markets have higher specialist participation and stabilization rates than U.S. stocks, while emerging market stocks have lower participation and stabilization rates than U.S. stocks. With respect to market quality, we find that, all else equal, non-U.S. stocks have wider spreads, less depth, and greater transitory volatility than U.S. stocks. We investigate the reasons behind the difference in liquidity and find that the larger non-U.S. spreads are primarily due to higher information asymmetry and increased adverse selection risk. We conclude that liquidity providers demand greater compensation for trading non-U.S. stocks, but this additional compensation is necessary to offset the higher adverse selection risk.

Linear projections of returns on the slope of the yield curve have contradicted the implications of the traditional “expectations theory”. This paper shows that these findings are not puzzling relative to a large class of richer dynamic term structure models. Specifically, we match all the key empirical findings reported by Fama and Bliss ((1987) American Economic Review 77 (4), 680–692) and Campbell and Shiller ((1991) Review of Economic Studies 58, 495–514), among others, within large subclasses of affine and quadratic-Gaussian term structure models. Additionally, we show that certain “risk-premium adjusted” projections of changes in yields on the slope of the yield curve recover the coefficients of unity predicted by the models. Key to this matching are parameterizations of the market prices of risk that let the risk factors affect the market prices of risk directly, and not only through factor volatilities. The risk premiums have a simple form consistent with Fama's findings on the predictability of forward rates, and are also shown to be consistent with interest-rate feedback rules used by a monetary authority in setting monetary policy.