Knowledge that Transforms

Scott W. Barnhart, Andrew C. Szakmary, Testing the Unbiased Forward Rate Hypothesis: Evidence on Unit Roots, Co- Integration, and Stochastic Coefficients, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Jun., 1991), pp. 245-267

This paper presents a model in which managers of firms that are takeover targets use debt-financed share repurchase to bond themselves to reduce perquisite consumption and increase investment in the firm. The resulting value increase makes the firm a less attractive target. The optimal level of share repurchase is the result of a trade-off between the benefit of a reduced probability of takeover and the cost of an increased probability of bankruptcy. Unlike earlier explanations of defensive repurchases, which are based on information signalling or control of voting rights, this explanation is independent of the extent of shareholding by target management.

Jimmy E. Hilliard, Jeff Madura, Alan L. Tucker, Currency Option Pricing with Stochastic Domestic and Foreign Interest Rates, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Jun., 1991), pp. 139-151

This study examines initial public offering contract choice decisions. In best-efforts offerings, minimum sales constraints allow issuers to precommit to withdraw the offering if a fixed minimum number of shares is not sold. In firm-commitment offerings, the over-allotment option allows the underwriter to increase sales when demand is strong. Two theories of contract choice–Benveniste and Spindt (1989) and Ritter's (1987) extension of Rock (1986)–offer predictions about the role of these contract features. We find that the 1977–1982 evidence is consistent with Benveniste and Spindt (1989). The evidence is less supportive of the Ritter (1987) hypothesis that minimum sales constraints serve to reduce the winner's curse of the riskier issuers.

A multiperiod model of optimal capital structure is developed under the assumption that earnings follow an autoregressive process. Firm value and leverage vary through time and, at each date, the firm achieves an optimal debt level that is a function of the full state contingent debt policy. The reversion parameter of the earnings series is shown to be positively related to various measures of variability and negatively related to leverage. If earnings processes are not homogeneous across firms, then standard earnings risk measures in capital structure studies do not adequately represent crosssectional differences in variability in firm value.

Previous studies in the valuation of American options apparently undervalue the right of early exercise. This study uses actual prices from the CBOE's S&P 100 option instead of model-generated values. Deviations from the theoretical put-call parity relationship are caused by the possibility of early exercise. These deviations are used to infer the value of early exercise. The actual value of early exercise is both statistically and economically significant. As expected from theoretical considerations, the value of early exercise for put options is greater than for call options.

This paper examines the pricing of S&P 100 calls using 14 months of transactions data. We find that market prices of S&P 100 calls differ systematically from Black-Scholes values. The biases in Black-Scholes model prices are both statistically and economically significant and correspond to biases that arise if market prices incorporate a stochastically changing volatility of the index.

This paper examines cash management bill announcements in an event study framework and finds that segmentation in the Treasury bill market is widespread and not limited to bills maturing across month-ends. Announcements of cash management bills, which represent unexpected additional supplies of outstanding Treasury bills, cause the yields on these bills to rise significantly relative to yields on adjacent maturity bills. This paper also finds, consistent with other studies, that segmentation is greater at the short end of the bill market.

This paper derives the optimal hedge of an uncertain (unknown quantity) future foreign currency cash flow. This more general optimal hedge includes the traditional hedge for a certain (known quantity) future foreign currency cash flow as a special case. The optimal hedge is found to be unbounded and determined by firm-specific conditions, including the variance of the expected cash flow, and the correlation of that future cash flow with actual exchange rate movements. Simulated optimal hedge values are found for U.S.-based multinational firms possessing S/Dm cash flows, using exchange rate data for the 1981–1987 period. Special cases in which the optimal hedge ratio equals zero and one also are identified, and we show that cash flow uncertainty can strongly affect the effectiveness of hedging.

We develop a closed-form general equilibrium model of stock index futures prices in a continuous-time economy with stochastic interest rates and market volatility. We show that futures prices implied by the model have very different properties from those of the cost of carry model. Using NYSE stock index futures data, we examine the restrictions imposed on futures prices by both the equilibrium and cost of carry models. Consistent with the equilibrium model, we find that stock index futures prices are related to market volatility and that their interest-rate sensitivity is a nonlinear function of contract maturity.