Knowledge that Transforms

We present a microstructure model of competition for order flow between exchanges based on liquidity provision. We find that neither a pure limit order market (PLM) nor a hybrid specialist/limit order market (HM) structure is competition-proof. A PLM can always be supported in equilibrium as the dominant market (i.e., where the hybrid limit book is empty), but an HM can also be supported, for some market parameterizations, as the dominant market. We also show the possible coexistence of competing markets. Order preferencing—that is, decisions about where orders are routed when investors are indifferent—is a key determinant of market viability. Welfare comparisons show that competition between exchanges can increase as well as reduce the cost of liquidity.

Although institutional investors have a preference for large capitalization stocks, over time they have shifted their preferences toward smaller, riskier securities. These changes in aggregate preferences have arisen primarily from changes in the preferences of each class of institution, rather than changes in the importance of different classes. Evidence also suggests that recent growth in institutional investment combined with this shift in preferences helps explain why markets in general, and smaller stocks in particular, have exhibited greater firm-specific risk and liquidity in recent years. Additional analyses suggest that institutional investors moved toward smaller securities because such securities offer "greener pastures."

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.

This article provides evidence that financial development impacts growth by reducing financing constraints that would otherwise distort efficient allocation of investment. The financing constraints are inferred from the investment Euler equation by assuming that the firm's stochastic discount factor is a function of the firm's financial position (specifically, the stock of liquid assets). The magnitude of the changes in the cost of capital is twice as large in a country with a low level of financial development as in a country with an average level of financial development. The size effect, business cycles, and legal environment effects are also considered.

In a sample of 2,794 initial public offerings (IPOs), we test three potential explanations for the existence of IPO lockups: lockups serve as (i) a signal of firm quality, (ii) a commitment device to alleviate moral hazard problems, or (iii) a mechanism for underwriters to extract additional compensation from the issuing firm. Our results support the commitment hypothesis. Insiders of firms that are associated with greater potential for moral hazard lockup their shares for a longer period of time. Insiders of firms that have experienced larger excess returns, are backed by venture capitalists, or go public with high-quality underwriters are more likely to be released from the lockup restrictions.

This article presents a model of information monitoring and market making in a dealership market. We model how intensively dealers monitor public information to avoid being picked off by professional day traders when monitoring is costly. Price competition among dealers is hampered by their incentives to share monitoring costs. The risk of being picked off by the day traders makes dealers more competitive. The interaction between these effects determines whether a firm quote rule improves trading costs and price discovery. Our empirical results support the prediction that professional day traders prefer stocks with small spreads, but offer less support for the prediction that their trading leads to wider spreads.

Using a new Bayesian method for the analysis of diffusion processes, this article finds that the nonlinear drift in interest rates found in a number of previous studies can be confirmed only under prior distributions that are best described as informative. The assumption of stationarity, which is common in the literature, represents a nontrivial prior belief about the shape of the drift function. This belief and the use of "flat" priors contribute strongly to the finding of nonlinear mean reversion. Implementation of an approximate Jeffreys prior results in virtually no evidence for mean reversion in interest rates unless stationarity is assumed. Finally, the article documents that nonlinear drift is primarily a feature of daily rather than monthly data, and that these data contain a transitory element that is not reflected in the volatility of longer-maturity yields.

We assess the profitability of momentum strategies using a stochastic discount factor approach. In unconditional tests, approximately half of the strategies' profitability is explained. In conditional tests we see a further slight decline in profits. We argue that the risk of these strategies should be increasing in the market risk premium. Empirically, while their risk measures estimated relative to the stochastic discount factor behave as predicted, market betas do not; thus capital asset pricing model (CAPM)-like benchmarks may lead to incorrect inferences. Given that our nonparametric risk adjustment explains roughly half of momentum strategy profits, we cannot rule out the possibility of residual mispricing.

We find that executives who jump to chief executive officer (CEO) positions at new employers come from firms that exhibit above-average stock price performance. This relationship is more pronounced for more senior executives. No such relationship exists for jumps to non-CEO positions. Stock options and restricted stock do not appear to significantly affect the likelihood of jumping ship, but the existence of an "heir apparent" on the management team increases the likelihood that executives will leave for non-CEO positions elsewhere. Hiring grants used to attract managers are correlated with the equity position forfeited at the prior employer and with the prior employer's performance.

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.