Knowledge that Transforms

We study whether stocks are riskier or safer in the long run from the perspective of Bayesian investors who employ the long-run risk, habit formation, or prospect theory models to form prior beliefs about return dynamics. Economic theory delivers important guidance for long-run investment opportunities. Specifically, incorporating prior information from the habit formation or prospect theory models reinforces beliefs in mean reversion and inferences that stocks are safer over longer horizons. Conversely, investors with long-run risk priors perceive weaker mean reversion and riskier equities. Model-based information is particularly important for inferences about uncertainty in the dividend growth component of returns. Received May 18, 2016; editorial decision April 25, 2017 by Editor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh.

We analyze the removal of the credit-risk guarantees provided by the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) in a model with agents heterogeneous in income and house price risk. We find that wealth inequality increases, driven by higher mortgage spreads and housing rents. Housing holdings become more concentrated. Foreclosures fall. The removal benefits high-income households, while hurting low- and mid-income households (renters and highly leveraged mortgagors with conforming loans). GSE reform requires compensating transfers, sufficiently high elasticity of rental supply, or linking GSE reform with the elimination of the mortgage interest deduction. Received March 11, 2016; editorial decision May 5, 2017 by Editor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh.

We provide evidence that open-end organizational structures undermine incentives for asset managers to attack long-term mispricing. We compare open-end funds with closed-end funds. Closed-end funds purchase more underpriced stocks than do open-end funds, especially if the stocks involve high arbitrage risk. We then show that hedge funds with highshare restrictions having a lower degree of open-endedness also trade against long-term mispricing to a larger extentthan do other hedge funds. Our analysis suggests that open-end organizational structures are not conducive to long-term risky arbitrage. Received November 4, 2015; editorial decision March 10, 2017 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.

Credit default swaps can be used to lower the capital requirements of dealer banks entering into uncollateralized derivatives positions with sovereigns. We show in a model that the regulatory incentive to obtain capital relief makes CDS contracts valuable to dealer banks and empirically that, consistent with the use of CDS for regulatory purposes, there is a disconnect between changes in bond yield spreads and in CDS premiums, especially for safe sovereigns. Additional empirical tests related to the volume of contracts outstanding, effects of regulatory proxies, and the corporate bond and CDS markets support that CDS contracts are used for capital relief. (

This paper explores the dynamics of unsecured credit supply over the recent credit cycle and around the passage of the CARD Act. We examine a unique data set of over 200,000 credit card mail solicitations to a representative sample of households and introduce credit card offers as a direct, informative measure of supply of such credit. Contrasting personal credit card offer dynamics before and after the passage of the CARD Act with those of personal loans, auto loans, and corporate credit cards, we find that lenders reduced credit supply of personal credit cards to nonprime borrowers in response to the CARD Act. Our analysis highlights the importance of separately examining supply and demand responses to assess the unintended consequences of regulation. Received January 30, 2016; editorial decision August 9, 2017 by Editor Philip Strahan.

How reliable is the recovery theorem of Ross (2015)? We explore this question in the context of options on the 30-year Treasury bond futures, allowing us to deduce restrictions that link the physical and risk-neutral return distributions. Our empirical results undermine the implications of the recovery theorem. First, we reject an implicit assumption of the recovery theorem that the martingale component of the stochastic discount factor is identical to unity. Second, we consider the restrictions between the physical and risk-neutral return moments when the recovery theorem holds, and reject them in both forecasting regressions and generalized method of moments estimations. Received November 7, 2016; editorial decision July 24, 2017 by Editor Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

Studying a comprehensive sample of stocks from the U.S. OTC market, we show that this market is a large and diverse trading environment with a rich set of regulatory and disclosure regimes, comprising venue rules and state laws beyond SEC regulation. We exploit this institutional richness to show that OTC firms subject to stricter regulatory regimes and disclosure requirements have higher market quality (higher liquidity and lower crash risk). Our analysis points to an important trade-off in regulating the OTC market and protecting investors: lowering regulatory requirements reduces the compliance burden for smaller firms, but it also reduces market quality. Received July 26, 2013; editorial decision July 8, 2017 by Editor Itay Goldstein.

We examine a change in the European Central Bank’s collateral framework, which significantly lowered the rating requirement for eligible residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), and its impact on bank lending and risk-taking in the Netherlands. Banks most affected by the policy increase loan supply and lower interest rates on new mortgage originations. These lower-interest-rate loans serve as collateral for newly issued RMBS with lower-rated tranches and subsequently experience worse repayment performance. The performance deterioration is pronounced among loans with state guarantees, which suggests that looser collateral requirements may lead to undesired credit risk transfer to the sovereign. Received June 14, 2016; editorial decision September 8, 2017 by Editor Philip Strahan. Authors have furnished an Internet Appendix, which is available on the Oxford University Press Web site next to the link to the final published paper online.

At the settlement time of the VIX Volatility Index, volume spikes on S&P 500 Index (SPX) options, but only in out-of-the-money options used to calculate the VIX, and more so for options with a higher and discontinuous influence on VIX. We investigate alternative explanations of hedging and coordinated liquidity trading. Tests including those utilizing differences in put and call options, open interest around the settlement, and a similar volatility contract with an entirely different settlement procedure in Europe are inconsistent with these explanations but consistent with market manipulation. Large transient deviations in prices demonstrate the importance of settlement design. Received November 28, 2015; editorial decision June 19, 2017 by Editor Robin Greenwood.

A previous literature has documented that bond returns are predicted by macroeconomic information not contained in yields contemporaneously. That literature has mostly relied on final revised, rather than real time macroeconomic data. We show that the use of real time data substantially reduces the predictive power of macro variables for future bond returns as well as the implied countercyclicality of term premiums. We discuss potential interpretations of our results. Received January 26, 2014; editorial decision June 16, 2017 by Editor Geert Bekaert.