Knowledge that Transforms

We show that firms׳ idiosyncratic volatility obeys a strong factor structure and that shocks to the common idiosyncratic volatility (CIV) factor are priced. Stocks in the lowest CIV-beta quintile earn average returns 5.4% per year higher than those in the highest quintile. The CIV factor helps to explain a number of asset pricing anomalies. We provide new evidence linking the CIV factor to income risk faced by households. Our findings are consistent with an incomplete markets heterogeneous agent model. In the model, CIV is a priced state variable because an increase in idiosyncratic firm volatility raises the average household׳s marginal utility. The calibrated model matches the high degree of co-movement in idiosyncratic volatilities, the CIV-beta return spread, and several other asset price moments.

Government agencies routinely allow pre-release access to information to accredited news agencies under embargo agreements. Using high-frequency data, we find evidence consistent with informed trading during embargoes of Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) scheduled announcements. The E-mini Standard & Poor’s 500 futures’ abnormal order imbalances are in the direction of subsequent policy surprises and contain information that predicts the market reaction to the policy announcements. The estimated informed trades’ profits are arguably large. Notably, we find no evidence of informed trading prior to the start of FOMC news embargoes or during lockups ahead of nonfarm payroll, US Producer Price Index, and gross domestic product data releases.

We introduce a novel class of term structure models for variance swaps. The multivariate state process is characterized by a quadratic diffusion function. The variance swap curve is quadratic in the state variable and available in closed form, greatly facilitating empirical analysis. Various goodness-of-fit tests show that quadratic models fit variance swaps on the S&P 500 remarkably well, and outperform affine models. We solve a dynamic optimal portfolio problem in variance swaps, index option, stock index and bond. An empirical analysis uncovers robust features of the optimal investment strategy. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

This paper shows that a reduction in tax discrimination between debt and equity funding leads to better capitalized financial institutions. The paper exploits exogenous variation in the tax treatment of debt and equity created by the introduction of a tax shield for equity. The results demonstrate that a more equal treatment of debt and equity increases bank capital ratios, driven by an increase in common equity. The change also leads to a significant reduction in risk taking for ex-ante low capitalized banks. Overall, the findings suggest that tax shields could be a valuable and innovative policy tool for bank regulators.

We discover a new currency strategy with highly desirable return and diversification properties, which uses the predictive ability of currency volatility risk premia for currency returns. The volatility risk premium—the difference between expected realized volatility and model-free implied volatility—reflects the costs of insuring against currency volatility fluctuations. The strategy sells high insurance-cost currencies and buys low insurance-cost currencies. A distinctive feature of the strategy’s returns is that they are mainly generated by movements in spot exchange rates instead of interest rate differentials. We explore explanations for the profitability of the strategy, which cannot be understood using traditional risk factors.

Private equity firms increasingly sell companies to each other in secondary buyouts (SBOs), raising concerns which we examine using novel data sets. Our evidence paints a nuanced picture. SBOs underperform and destroy value for investors when they are made by buyers under pressure to spend. Investors then reduce their capital allocation to the firms doing those transactions. But not all SBOs are money-burning devices. SBOs made under no pressure to spend perform as well as other buyouts. When buyer and seller have complementary skill sets, SBOs outperform other buyouts. Investors do not pay higher total transaction costs as a result of SBOs, even if they have a stake in both the buying fund and the selling fund.

This paper studies how financial information frictions can generate sentiment-driven fluctuations in asset prices and self-fulfilling business cycles. In our model economy, exuberant financial market sentiments of high output and high demand for capital increase the price of capital, which signals strong fundamentals of the economy to the real side and consequently leads to an actual boom in real output and employment. The model further derives implications for asymmetric nonlinear asset prices and for economic contagion and co-movement across countries. In the extension to the dynamic overlapping generations (OLG) setting, our model demonstrates that sentiment shocks can generate persistent output, employment, and business cycle fluctuations, and it offers some new implications for asset prices over business cycles.

Despite their strong positive average returns across numerous asset classes, momentum strategies can experience infrequent and persistent strings of negative returns. These momentum crashes are partly forecastable. They occur in panic states, following market declines and when market volatility is high, and are contemporaneous with market rebounds. The low ex ante expected returns in panic states are consistent with a conditionally high premium attached to the option like payoffs of past losers. An implementable dynamic momentum strategy based on forecasts of momentum’s mean and variance approximately doubles the alpha and Sharpe ratio of a static momentum strategy and is not explained by other factors. These results are robust across multiple time periods, international equity markets, and other asset classes.

Using US Department of Justice data on local political corruption, I find that firms in more corrupt areas hold less cash and have greater leverage than firms in less corrupt areas. The results are robust to including a range of controls and to using an instrumental variable approach, two alternative survey measures of corruption, and propensity score matching. Further, the association between corruption and leverage is largest among firms that operate primarily around their headquarters. Overall, the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that firms manage liquidity downward and debt obligations upward to limit expropriation by corrupt local officials.

We employ a regression discontinuity design to identify the real effects of share repurchases on other firm outcomes. The probability of share repurchases that increase earnings per share (EPS) is sharply higher for firms that would have just missed the EPS forecast in the absence of the repurchase, when compared with firms that “just beat” the EPS forecast. We use this discontinuity to show that EPS-motivated repurchases are associated with reductions in employment and investment, and a decrease in cash holdings. Our evidence suggests that managers are willing to trade off investments and employment for stock repurchases that allow them to meet analyst EPS forecasts.