Knowledge that Transforms

Previous analyses of market structures characterized by gradual information dissemination presume the equilibrium price existing after all market participants are informed is independent of the order of information dissemination. In these papers, final market clearing price, given the investors' posterior beliefs, is known a priori and is assumed to equal the price that would exist if data were disseminated simultaneously. We demonstrate that final equilibrium price is dependent, in general, on the order of information dissemination. This implies that, if the dissemination sequence is stochastic, price is unknown prior to the complete dissemination of information, even if the investors' posterior beliefs given the information event are known. We derive a necessary and sufficient condition for equilibrium price to be independent of the dissemination sequence in our economy. Our analysis highlights the importance of the wealth redistribution dynamics inherent in the information dissemination process.

Pricing municipal debt is a process substantially different from the valuation of corporate liabilities. Municipalities are not seized upon default. Therefore, they might own additional assets that could he made available to retire debt even when the value of pledged revenues is insufficient to do so. However, if the value of the municipality's additional assets is only observable privately, moral hazard can deter payments from these alternative revenue sources. A second consequence of lack of seizure is that the municipality survives and might return to the capital markets to raise additional funds in the future. This opens an opportunity to induce “extraordinary” payments from the value of the additional assets through multiperiod pricing controls (e.g., by following defaults with poor pricing for subsequent securities issues).

This paper examines the implied standard deviation (ISD) estimated from transactons data on options, using the Black-Scholes pricing model. It was found that the distribution of the ISD is symmetric, though not normal. Also, the ISD based on the last daily observation deviates significantly from the daily average ISD. It is suggested that the daily average is a more reliable estimate of the standard deviation.

This paper demonstrates the strong linkages that exist between currency risk, represented by inflation risk and exchange rate changes, and relative price risk. These linkages affect the optional quantities of forward exchange contracts, nominal debt, and fixed price sales (purchase) contracts to use in hedging against these risks. It is shown that the existence of as many hedging mechanisms as there are forms of price risk allows for the precise targeting of specific price risks with specific hedging instruments. Moreover, even though each hedging mechanism specializes in protecting against a particular form of price risk, the optimal quantitiy of each influences and is influenced by the optimal quantities of the others.

The Arrow-Debreu approach to general equilibrium in an economy has been recognized as one of the most general and conceptually elegant frameworks for the study of financial problems under uncertainty [2], [9]. Equally well known is its elusiveness when it comes to ready application to practical problems (like capital budgeting) or empirical testing. (See [6], [15]–[18].) However, some recent research (see [1], [3], [6], [12]–[16], [18], and [19]) has made a serious attempt to put the state-preference theoretic model in an operational setting. Breeden and Litzenberger [6] have developed an interesting approach to derive constructively the prices of elementary Arrow-Debreu securities from the prices of call options on aggregate consumption. Banz and Miller [3] use a similar technique to value capital budgeting projects based on values for state-contingent claims computed from prices of call options written on the market portfolio. The “supershare†securities proposed by Hakansson [14]–[16] and related work by Garman [13], Ross [24], etc., have also served to give the so-called “state-contingent†approach a practical flavor.

The group of issues that falls under the heading of bank capital adequacy has received a great deal of attention from academics, regulators, and bankers in recent years and is likely to continue as a subject for debate for many years to come. Although the traditional questions debated in the literature on capital adequacy are important and remain unresolved, this paper is not directed at them. Instead, the approach here is to examine how bank regulators operating within the existing legal structure of regulation can pursue optimal policies with respect to the regulation of bank capital.

Foreign exchange risk and hence the demand for foreign assets depend on the objective and habitat of investors. The investment objective, in turn, is contingent upon how the consumption basket or its price is defined. If the investor is “domestic” in the sense that he or she spends all income on domestic goods, then the domestic price index should be used in defining the investment objective in real terms, regardless of whether returns are generated at home or abroad. However, for an investor who consumes a mix of foreign and home products, or for multinational firms with extensive operations outside their home countries, some sort of world price reflective of the relative importance of home and foreign goods in their consumption basket is the proper deflator.

Empirical studies of the behavior of stock returns are important for several reasons. First, the nature of stock return behavior is fundamental to the formulation of the concept of “risk” (or “uncertainty”) in various financial theories and models. Second, the measurement of risk depends heavily on properties (such as the stationarity, long-tailedness, finiteness of the second and higher moments, etc.) of empirical stock return distributions. Third, various tests for the empirical validity of financial models [28] and the applications of these models (e.g., to the evaluation of investment performances [21], [22]) rely to a considerable extent on the steadiness over time of stock return distributions and the constancy of systematic risk. Fourth, several important pricing models for stock options, warrants, convertible debentures, and other similar financial instruments usually require explicit estimates of stock return variances [5]; the usefulness of such models depends largely on the adequacy (e.g., the finiteness, accuracy, etc.) and the stationarity of the variance measurements.

The impact of corporate taxes on the leverage decision in a competitive market was analyzed in [8[, [9], and the incorporation of personal taxes into the problem structure was achieved in [4], [1] and [10]. In a more recent paper, Miller [6] suggested that the impacts of both corporate and personal taxation could be studied by simultaneously analyzing the supply of and demand for securities in an overall equilibrium framework. DeAngelo and Masulis [2], [3] formalized and extended the implications of Miller's model, but found that given the U.S. tax code, an equilibrium in which positive dividends were featured was not possible over and above the relatively small dividend exclusion provision.

Yitzhaki [19] recently developed two portfolio selection criteria (EG and EΓ) based on the mean and Gini's mean difference. Similar to mean-variance(EV), the EG criterion uses two summary statistics to describe the probability distribution of a risky prospect, the mean and one-half Gini's mean difference. Gini's mean difference is defined as the average of the absolute differences between all possible pairs of observations of a random variable. Yitzhaki's development concentrated on the theoretical aspects of EG and EΓ and the theoretical relationships among EG, EΓ, EV, and stochastic dominance (SD) selection criteria. He did not address either the empirical properties of EG and EΓ or the relationship between the empirical efficient sets of EG and EΓ and other portfolio selection criteria. Yitzhaki suggested that the next step in the development and application of his proposed selection criteria should be an empirical investigation of how the EG and EΓ criteria compare with other selection criteria.