This paper uses intraday data from the interdealer government bond market to investigate the effects of scheduled macroeconomic announcements on prices, trading volume, and bid-ask spreads. We find that 17 public news releases, as measured by the surprise in the announced quantity, have a significant impact on the price of at least one of the following instruments: a three-month bill, a two-year note, a 10-year note, and a 30-year bond. These effects vary significantly according to maturity. Public news can explain a substantial fraction of price volatility in the aftermath of announcements, and the adjustment to news generally occurs within one minute after the announcement. We document significant and persistent increases in volatility and trading volume after the announcements. Bid-ask spreads, on the other hand, widen at the time of the announcements, but then revert to normal values after five to 15 minutes. The effects that we document have relevant implications for yield curve modeling and for the microstructure of bond markets. I

Early studies find that option introductions tend to raise the price of underlying stocks. More recent research indicates that post-1980 option introductions are associated with negative abnormal returns in underlying stocks. Other studies document increased short sale activities following option listing. This paper provides evidence that the documented abnormal returns and changes in short interest around option listings are consistent with the mitigation of short sale constraints resulting from the option introduction, and that both the abnormal returns and short interest changes around listing dates can be predicted using ex ante characteristics of the underlying stock

Public discussion about corporate use of derivatives focuses on whether firms use derivatives to reduce or increase firm risk. In contrast, em- pirical, academic studies of corporate derivatives-use take it for granted that firms hedge with derivatives. Using data from financial statements of 425 large u.s. corporations, we investigate whether firms systematically reduce or increase their riskiness with derivatives. We find that many firms manage their exposures with large derivatives positions. Nonetheless, compared to firms that do not use financial derivatives, firms that use derivatives display few, if any, measurable differences in risk that are associated with the use of derivatives.

I examine the impact of mutual fund manager replacement on subsequent fund perfor? mance. Using a sample of 393 domestic equity and bond fund managers that were replaced over the 1979-1991 period, for the underperformers, I document significant improvements in post-replacement performance relative to the past performance of the fund. On the other hand, the replacement of overperforming managers results in deterioration in postreplacement performance. I find evidence supporting the presence of strategic risk shifting in the fund portfolios prior to replacement. Furthermore, consistent with the notion of win? dow dressing, I document that the level of portfolio turnover activity decreases significantly in the post-replacement period. Lastly, the replacement of poor performers is preceded by significant decreases in net new inflows in the fund.

An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

We propose a link between market structure and the resulting market characteristics—tick size, bid-ask spreads, quote clustering, and market depth. We analyze transactions data of stocks traded on the London Stock Exchange, a dealer market. We conclude that market charateristics are endogenous to the market structure. The London dealer market does not have a mandated tick size, and it exhibits higher spreads, higher quote clusterings, and higher market depth than the NYSE auction market. Clustering of trade prices is similar in London and New York.

Srinivas Nippani, Pu Liu, Craig T. Schulman, Are Treasury Securities Free of Default?, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 36, No. 2, Special Issue on International Corporate Governance (Jun., 2001), pp. 251-265

This paper shows how to decompose the dollar profit earned from an option into two basic components: i) mispricing of the option relative to the asset at the time of purchase; and ii) profit from subsequent fortuitous changes or mispricing of the underlying asset. This separation hinges on measuring the true relative of the option from its realized payoff. The payoff from any one option has a huge standard error about this value that can be reduced by averaging the payoff from several independent option positions. Simulations indicate that 95% reductions in standard errors can be further achieved by using the payoff of a dynamic replicating portfolio as a Monte Carlo control variate. In addition, the paper shows that these low standard errors are robust to discrete rather than continuous dynamic replication and to the likely degree of misspecification of the benchmark formula used to implement the replication. Option mispricing profit can be further decomposed into profit due to superior esti? mation of the volatility (volatility profit) and profit from using a superior option valuation formula (formula profit). To make this decomposition reliably, the benchmark formula used for the attribution needs to be similar to the formula implicitly used by the market to price options. If so, then simulation indicates that this further decomposition can be achieved with low standard errors. Basic component ii) can be further decomposed into profit from a forward contract on the underlying asset (asset profit) and what I term pure option profit. The asset profit indicates whether the investor was skillful by buying or selling options on mispriced underlying assets. However, asset profit could also simply be just compensation for bearing risk?a distinction beyond the scope of this paper. Al? though simulation indicates that the attribution procedure gives an unbiased allocation of the option profit to this source, its standard error is large?a feature common with others' attempts to measure performance of assets

Abhay Abhyankar, Devraj Basu, Does Conditioning Information Matter in Estimating Continuous Time Interest Rate Diffusions?, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Vol. 36, No. 3 (Sep., 2001), pp. 335-344

Existing theory suggests that, in an unregulated market for corporate control, the level of takeovers is suboptimal because shareholders do not receive the full benefit from them.However, existing theory neglects that the threat of takeover may divert managerial effort from productive to defensive activities.This paper shows that, when this is considered, takeovers may, in fact, be excessive.I