Knowledge that Transforms

Journal Article Managerial Compensation and the Market Reaction to Bank Loans Get access Andres Almazan, Andres Almazan University of Texas Address correspondence to Andres Almazan, Department of Finance, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin, TX 78712-1179, or e-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Javier Suarez Javier Suarez CEMFI Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Financial Studies, Volume 16, Issue 1, January 2003, Pages 237–261, https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/16.1.0237 Published: 16 June 2015

This article develops restrictions that arbitrage-constrained bond prices impose on the short-term rate process in order to be consistent with given dynamic properties of the term structure of interest rates. The central focus is the relationship between bond prices and the short-term rate volatility. In both scalar and multidimensional diffusion settings, typical relationships between bond prices and volatility are generated by joint restrictions on the risk-neutralized drift functions of the state variables and convexity of bond prices with respect to the short-term rate. The theory is illustrated by several examples and is partially extended to accommodate the occurrence of jumps and default. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

Journal Article The Role of Trading Halts in Monitoring a Specialist Market Get access Roger Edelen, Roger Edelen University of Pennsylvania Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Simon Gervais Simon Gervais University of Pennsylvania Address correspondence to Simon Gervais, Finance Department, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Steinberg Hall-Dietrich Hall, Suite 2300, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6367, or e-mail: [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of Financial Studies, Volume 16, Issue 1, January 2003, Pages 263–300, https://doi.org/10.1093/rfs/16.1.0263 Published: 16 June 2015

We compare and contrast some existing ordinary least squares (OLS)- and generalized method of moments (GMM)-based tests of asset pricing models with a new more general test. This new test is valid under the assumption that returns are elliptically distributed, a necessary and sufficient assumption of the linear capital asset pricing model (CAPM). This new test fails to reject the CAPM on a dataset of stocks sorted by market valuations, whereas similar tests constructed from OLS and GMM estimation methods reject the linear CAPM. We also find that outliers reduce the OLS-estimated mispricing of the linear CAPM on monthly returns sorted by previous performance, that is, momentum. Monte Carlo evidence supports superior size and power properties of the new test relative to OLS- and GMM-based tests. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

When a collection of specialists organize as an exchange, each can reap net private benefits at the expense of the exchange by quoting a privately optimal pricing schedule. Coordination makes all specialists and customers better off, but requires a system of monitoring and punishment that breaks down when information asymmetries between the exchange and a specialist are high. The specialist may then seek a temporary trading halt to alleviate unjustified punishment, or the exchange may halt trading to prevent the quoting of damaging privately optimal pricing schedules. We test this theory on a sample of NYSE halts. As predicted, we find a significant increase in estimated information asymmetry immediately preceding trading halts.

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Reload options, call options granting new options on exercise, are popularly used in compensation. Although the compound option feature may seem complicated, there is a distribution-free dominant policy of exercising reload options whenever they are in the money. The optimal policy implies general formulas for numerical valuation. Simpler formulas for valuation and hedging follow from Black–Scholes assumptions with or without continuous dividends. Time vesting affects the optimal policy, but numerical results indicate that it is nearly optimal to exercise in the money whenever feasible. The results suggest that reload options produce similar incentives as employee stock options and share grants.

A financial institution that finances and monitors firms learns private information about these firms. When the institution seeks funds to meet its own liquidity needs, it faces adverse selection ("liquidity") costs that increase with the risk of its claims on these firms. The institution can reduce its liquidity costs by holding debt rather than equity. Conversely, except in a limited setting resembling venture capital, firms that depend on monitored finance prefer to give the monitoring institution debt rather than equity. Institutions with less frequent or less severe liquidity needs have greater appetite for equity and for the debt of more risky borrowers. These predictions are consistent with general patterns of monitored finance. Copyright 2003, Oxford University Press.

This article is a critical survey of models designed for pricing fixed-income securities and their associated term structures of market yields. Our primary focus is on the interplay between the theoretical specification of dynamic term structure models and their empirical fit to historical changes in the shapes of yield curves. We begin by overviewing the dynamic term structure models that have been fit to treasury or swap yield curves and in which the risk factors follow diffusions, jump-diffusion, or have “switching regimes.” Then the goodness-of-fit of these models is assessed relative to their abilities to (i) match linear projections of changes in yields onto the slope of the yield curve; (ii) match the persistence of conditional volatilities, and the shapes of term structures of unconditional volatilities, of yields; and (iii) to reliably price caps, swaptions, and other fixed-income derivatives. For the case of defaultable securities we explore the relative fits to historical yield spreads.