Knowledge that Transforms

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 examine a production-based asset-pricing model with an unobservable mean growth rate following a two-state Markov chain and with an ambiguity-averse representative agent. Our model requires a low coefficient of relative risk aversion to produce: (i) a high equity premium and volatile equity returns, (ii) a low and smooth risk-free rate, (iii) smooth consumption growth and volatile investment growth, (iv) countercyclical equity premium and market price of risk, (v) conditional heteroscedasticity in returns, and (vi) long-horizon predictability of excess returns.

We examine the role of high-frequency traders (HFTs) in price discovery and price efficiency. Overall HFTs facilitate price efficiency by trading in the direction of permanent price changes and in the opposite direction of transitory pricing errors, both on average and on the highest volatility days. This is done through their liquidity demanding orders. In contrast, HFTs' liquidity supplying orders are adversely selected. The direction of HFTs' trading predicts price changes over short horizons measured in seconds. The direction of HFTs' trading is correlated with public information, such as macro news announcements, market-wide price movements, and limit order book imbalances.

This paper considers the optimal joint decision on firm organization and capital structure under a tax-bankruptcy trade-off, stressing the role of guarantees against default. Conditional guarantees, which are embedded in parent-subsidiary structures, increase joint value and joint debt relative to unguaranteed stand-alone firms. Such guarantees, that are unilateral rather than mutual for moderate default costs, may dominate the unconditional mutual guarantees built in mergers. We study the optimal characteristics of both guarantors and beneficiaries, as well as their impact on the self-enforcement potential of conditional guarantees.