Knowledge that Transforms

Paul H. Malatesta, Rex Thompson, Government Regulation and Structural Change in the Corporate Acquisitions Market: The Impact of the Williams Act, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Sep., 1993), pp. 363-379

A vector autoregressive (VAR) model is used to examine the relation between aggregate insider transactions and stock market returns. Consistent with the extant literature, there is some predictive content associated with aggregate insider transactions, but its magnitude is slight. In contrast, market returns have substantial influence on the aggregate purchases and sales of corporate insiders. The findings suggest that: 1) the degree of mispricing observed by insiders is small; 2) very little of the mispricing is associated with unanticipated macroeconomic factors; and 3) investors cannot use aggregate insider transactions to profitably predict future market returns over the following eight weeks.

Moon H. Song, Ralph A. Walkling, The Impact of Managerial Ownership on Acquisition Attempts and Target Shareholder Wealth, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Dec., 1993), pp. 439-457

Recent empirical studies have indicated that spin-offs are value enhancing, yet the theoretical aspects of spin-off gains have not been as well explored. This paper presents a theoretical analysis of spin-offs. In the model of the firm presented, outstanding risky debt gives rise to agency costs of underinvestment, which are offset by the benefit of debt-related tax shields. The trade-off specifies the optimal leverage for a firm. Within this framework, the paper considers whether and under what circumstances firm value could be enhanced by a spin-off. It is shown that a spin-off in which parent company debt is optimally allocated between the post-spin-off firms increases value by reducing agency costs and increasing the value of tax shields when the component firm cash flows are positively correlated. The optimal allocation is characterized in terms of the parameters of the technologies of the component firms. When the component cash flows are negatively correlated, under the sufficient conditions developed, a combined firm operation dominates spin-offs. Here, the coinsurance effect on investment incentives dominates the effect of a flexible allocation of debt across technologies in a spin-off.

Keith C. Brown, W. V. Harlow, Seha M. Tinic, The Risk and Required Return of Common Stock following Major Price Innovations, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Mar., 1993), pp. 101-116

This paper provides a direct test of the hypothesis that large January returns can be attributed to omitted risk factors. Data from 1926–1991 show that the January return in the smallest decile of NYSE firms dominates the January returns for all other deciles by the first-order stochastic dominance. Similarly, January returns in all deciles (with the exception of ninth and tenth deciles) dominate non-January returns by first-, second-, or third-order stochastic dominance. The presence of stochastic dominance by January returns suggests that the omitted risk factors are not likely to explain the January effect.

P. V. Viswanath, Strategic Considerations, the Pecking Order Hypothesis, and Market Reactions to Equity Financing, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Jun., 1993), pp. 213-234

This study examines whether earnings changes convey information in bond markets and finds a significant positive (negative) reaction to unexpected earnings increases (decreases). The results are consistent whether earnings announcements precede or follow dividend announcements. Thus, earnings surprises convey information to bond markets and changes in firm value are split among bondholders and stockholders. This is in contrast to evidence from studies examining unexpected dividend announcements where bond price reaction is asymmetric. Cross-sectional analysis reveals that bond excess returns are positively related to earnings surprises.

This study tests the popular claim that the DJIA's movements around key reference points affect “investor sentiment” and thus price behavior. It is found that the DJIA's rise and fall is indeed restrained by “support” and “resistance” levels at multiples of 100 (e.g., 2800, 2900, 3000, etc.) but that, having broken through a 100-level, the DJIA then moves by more than otherwise warranted. A Monte Carlo study and comparisons with other indices confirm the significance of these findings. This suggests that some agents may trade on the basis of the DJIA but does not necessarily suggest that the market is inefficient.

This paper considers the Arbitrage Pricing Theory when investors have incomplete information on the parameters generating asset returns. Each asset in the economy may have a different amount of information available on it. Bayesian investors use their prior beliefs in conjunction with the total available information to assign an expected return and a set of factor betas to each asset. The assigned expected returns are shown to be linear in their associated factor betas. However, the factor betas and prices of assets differ from those under complete information. Specifically, risky assets with high (low) information are priced relatively higher (lower). On the other hand, factor betas of high (low) information assets are relatively lower (higher). The analysis has econometric implications for testing the APT. In this paper's framework, maximum likelihood estimates of factor betas, which are based on normality assumptions, are too high (low) for high (low) information assets. In addition, sequentially increasing the sample size by adding new securities to a factor analysis procedure can result in the detection of apparent additional priced factors when they do not really exist.