Knowledge that Transforms

We conjecture that macro-level institutions affect equity trading costs through their impact on information risk and investor participation. In a study of trading costs for 412 NYSE-listed American Depository Receipts (ADRs) from 44 countries, we find that, after controlling for firm-level determinants of trading costs, effective spreads and price impact of trades are significantly lower for stocks from countries with better ratings for judicial efficiency, accounting standards, and political stability. Trading costs are significantly higher for stocks from French civil law countries than from common law countries. Overall, we conclude that improvements in legal and political institutions will lower the cost of liquidity in financial markets. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

This article uses transactions data for all NYSE/AMEX stocks in the period 1983--2002 to study how investors trade in Jegadeesh and Titman's (1993) momentum portfolios. Among small trades, there is an extremely sluggish reaction to the past returns. For instance, an initial small-trade buying pressure exists for loser stocks, and it gradually converts into an intense selling pressure over the following year. The results are consistent with initial underreaction followed by delayed reaction among small traders. Moreover, small-trade imbalances during the formation period significantly affect momentum returns, suggesting that underreaction among small traders contributes to the momentum effect. Large traders, by contrast, show no evidence of underreaction, and large-trade imbalances have little impact on subsequent returns. Overall, the results suggest that momentum could partly be driven by the behavior of small traders. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

We analyze the transmission effects of monetary policy in a general equilibrium model of the financial sector, with bank lending and securities markets. Bank lending is constrained by capital adequacy requirements, and asymmetric information adds a cost to outside bank equity capital. In our model, monetary policy does not affect bank lending through changes in bank liquidity; rather, it operates through changes in the spread of bank loans over corporate bonds, which induce changes in the aggregate composition of financing by firms, and in banks’ equity-capital base. The model produces multiple equilibria, one of which displays all the features of a “credit crunch.”

This article provides evidence of information transmission from the United States and Japan to Korean and Thai equity markets. Information is defined as important macroeconomic announcements in the United States, Japan, Korea, and Thailand. Using high-frequency intraday data, I find a large and significant association between developed-economy macroeconomic announcements and emerging-economy equity volatility and trading volume at short time horizons. Previous studies’ findings of at most weak evidence of transmission from developed to emerging economies may be due to their use of lower frequency data and their focus on developed-economy financial market innovations as a proxy for information. (JEL E44, G14, G15)

We investigate the implications of time-varying expected return and volatility on asset allocation in a high dimensional setting. We propose a dynamic factor multivariate stochastic volatility (DFMSV) model that allows the first two moments of returns to vary over time for a large number of assets. We then evaluate the economic significance of the DFMSV model by examining the performance of various dynamic portfolio strategies chosen by mean-variance investors in a universe of 36 stocks. We find that the DFMSV dynamic strategies significantly outperform various benchmark strategies out of sample. This outperformance is robust to different performance measures, investor’s objective functions, time periods, and assets.

This article proposes a trading-based explanation for the asymmetric effect in daily volatility of individual stock returns. Previous studies propose two major hypotheses for this phenomenon: leverage effect and time-varying expected returns. However, leverage has no impact on asymmetric volatility at the daily frequency and, moreover, we observe asymmetric volatility for stocks with no leverage. Also, expected returns may vary with the business cycle, that is, at a lower than daily frequency. Trading activity of contrarian and herding investors has a robust effect on the relationship between daily volatility and lagged return. Consistent with the predictions of the rational expectation models, the non-informational liquidity-driven (herding) trades increase volatility following stock price declines, and the informed (contrarian) trades reduce volatility following stock price increases. The results are robust to different measures of volatility and trading activity. (JEL C30, G11, G12) Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

This article develops a direct filtration-based maximum likelihood methodology for estimating the parameters and realizations of latent affine processes. Filtration is conducted in the transform space of characteristic functions, with a version of Bayes’ rule used for recursively updating the joint characteristic function of latent variables and the data conditional upon past data. An application to daily stock returns over 1953-96 reveals substantial divergences from EMM-based estimates; in particular, more substantial and time-varying jump risk. The implications for stock index options ’ prices are discussed.

Using both a linear regression method and a probability-based method, we find that on average, analysts place larger than efficient weights on (i.e., they overweight) their private information when they forecast corporate earnings. We also find that analysts overweight more when issuing forecasts more favorable than the consensus, and overweight less, and may even underweight, private information when issuing forecasts less favorable than the consensus. Further, the deviation from efficient weighting increases when the benefits from doing so are high or when the costs of doing so are low. These results suggest that analysts' incentives play a larger role in misweighting than their behavioral biases. Copyright 2006, Oxford University Press.

The underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) is generally explained with asymmetric information and risk. We complement these traditional explanations with a new theory where investors worry also about the after-market illiquidity that may result from asymmetric information after the IPO. The less liquid the aftermarket is expected to be, and the less predictable its liquidity, the larger will be the IPO underpricing. Our model blends such liquidity concerns with adverse selection and risk as motives for underpricing. The model’s predictions are supported by evidence for 337 British IPOs effected between 1998 and 2000. Using various measures of liquidity, we find that expected after-market liquidity and liquidity risk are important determinants of IPO underpricing.

This article develops a framework that applies to single securities to test whether asset pricing models can explain the size, value, and momentum anomalies. Stock level beta is allowed to vary with firm-level size and book-to-market as well as with macroeconomic variables. With constant beta, none of the models examined capture any of the market anomalies. When beta is allowed to vary, the size and value effects are often explained, but the explanatory power of past return remains robust. The past return effect is captured by model mispricing that varies with macroeconomic variables.