Knowledge that Transforms

This paper tests the overreaction hypothesis using monthly data for stocks listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange over the 1950–1988 period. Unlike De Bondt and Thaler (1985), (1987), it finds statistically significant continuation behavior for the next one (and two) year(s) for winners and losers, and insignificant reversal behavior for winners and losers over longer formation/test periods of up to ten years. While the systematic risks of the winners decrease significantly over all test periods, the systematic risks of the losers increase significantly for only the 12-month formation/test periods (unlike Chan (1988)). The only significant change in variance from the formation to test periods occurs for the losers for the 12-month formation/test periods. The findings are robust for January versus non-January and size-based portfolios (unlike Zarowin (1989), (1990)). The findings are robust for various performance measures (specifically, market-adjusted CAR, and the Jensen (1968) and Sharpe (1966) portfolio performance measures).

Raman Kumar, Parvez R. Sopariwala, The Effect of Adoption of Long-Term Performance Plans on Stock Prices and Accounting Numbers, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Dec., 1992), pp. 561-573

Assuming that individual investors account for most odd-lot transactions, we examine oddlot purchases and sales around the turn of the year and find a pattern that is related to the well-known January effect in stock returns. A significant change in the ratio of odd-lot sales to odd-lot purchases occurs at the turn of the year, which supports the hypothesis that the January effect results from trading by individual investors. The trading patterns that we find are not due entirely to tax considerations.

In this paper, we derive simple, directly computable conditions for minimum-variance portfolios to have all positive weights. We show that either there is no minimum-variance portfolio with all positive weights or there is a single segment of the minimum-variance frontier for which all portfolios have positive weights. Then, we examine the likelihood of observing positively weighted minimum-variance portfolios. Analytical and computational results suggest that: i) even if the mean vector and covariance matrix are compatible with a given positively weighted portfolio being mean-variance efficient, the proportion of the minimum-variance frontier containing positively weighted portfolios is small and decreases as the number of assets in the universe increases, and ii) small perturbations in the means will likely lead to no positively weighted minimum-variance portfolios.

This paper examines problems in the use of divergence of analyst opinion as a proxy for estimation risk in empirical studies of security returns and asset pricing models. We demonstrate that diversity of opinion can increase even though the amount of private information increases, and we show that diversity of opinion may overstate estimation risk if the capital market aggregates the information held by investors. We produce empirical results consistent with our conclusions. Specifically, we find that divergence of opinion can produce measures of estimation risk that are inconsistent with a received proxy for estimation risk and with observed common stock returns.

Thomas D. Dowdell, Suresh Govindaraj, Prem C. Jain, The Tylenol Incident, Ensuing Regulation, and Stock Prices, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 2 (Jun., 1992), pp. 283-301

This paper critically evaluates the claim in recent papers that precisely estimated betas explain the cross-sectional differences in expected returns across size-based portfolios. In these studies, the correlations between firm size and betas across the test portfolios are close to one in magnitude, yielding potentially spurious inferences. This paper shows that when the test portfolios are constructed so that the correlations between firm size and beta are small, the betas explain virtually none of the cross-sectional differences in portfolio returns.

Ralph W. Sanders, Jr., John S. Zdanowicz, Target Firm Abnormal Returns and Trading Volume Around the Initiation of Change in Control Transactions, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Mar., 1992), pp. 109-129

Lease valuation models often begin with the assumption that leases and debt are substitutes. This paper demonstrates that, because leasing is a mechanism for selling excess tax deductions, it can motivate the lessee firm to increase the proportion of debt in its capital structure relative to an otherwise identical firm that does not use leasing. Thus, debt and leases can be complements. We also show that a competitive lessor will use diversification to reduce risk and increase the probability that tax deductions are fully utilized so that it can lower lease payments.

This paper examines the relationships among capital regulation, deposit insurance, and the optimal bank interest margin. In a model where loan losses are the source of uncertainty, changes in capital regulation or deposit insurance premiums have direct effects on the bank's interest margin. An increase in bank capital requirement or in deposit insurance premiums results in a reduced interest margin under nonincreasing risk aversion. Comparative static analysis also explores the relation between asset quality and interest margin. It is shown that a mean-preserving spread of the distribution of loan losses results in a reduced margin.