Knowledge that Transforms

This paper examines an economy in which aggregate shocks are not dispersed equally throughout the population. Instead, while these shocks affect all individuals ex ante, they are concentrated among a few ex post. The equity premium in general depends on the concentration of these aggregate shocks; it follows that one cannot estimate the degree of risk aversion from aggregate data alone. These findings suggest that the empirical usefulness of aggregation theorems for capital asset pricing models is limited.

This paper uses arbitrage arguments to calculate the market value of riskless after-tax cash flows. The market value equals the present value of riskless after-tax cash flows discounted at the after-corporate-tax riskless interest rate. The market value equals the adjusted present value of riskless after-tax cash flows only when the incremental debt used in the adjusted present value calculations equals the market value of the remaining after-tax cash flows. Also, the analysis provides valuation formulas when interest and tax rates are certain but not uniform and when interest rates are uncertain.

This paper uses discrete-time and continuous-time models to derive equilibrium relations among real and nominal interest rates and the expected growth, variance and covariance parameters of optimally chosen paths for aggregate real consumption and aggregate production. Simple, intuitive and fairly general relations are obtained which apply to most of the models of financial economics of the past 20 years. The single-good analysis generalizes and provides a synthesis of many prior works, whereas the multi-good analysis provides more original results. Consistent business cycle movements are examined for interest rates, inflation and consumption and production aggregates.

This study examines day-of-the-week effects using hourly values of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. We find that over the 1963–1983 period the weekend effect has sifted from characterizing active trading on Monday to characterizing the non-trading weekend. Over the early part of our sample period negative returns characterize each hour of trading on Monday, while the return from Friday close to Monday open is positive. In the most recent subperiod, Monday average hourly returns after noon are all positive and the weekend effect is due to negative average returns from Friday close to Monday open.

This paper studies the effect of the bid-ask spread on asset pricing. We analyze a model in which investors with different expected holding periods trade assets with different relative spreads. The resulting testable hypothesis is that market-observed expexted return is an increasing and concave function of the spread. We test this hypothesis, and the empirical results are consistent with the predictions of the model.

A two-factor model using the instantaneous rate of interest and the return on a consol bond to describe the term structure of interest rates — the Brennan-Schwartz model — is used to derive theoretical prices for American call and put options on US government bonds and treasury bills. These model prices are then compared with market prices. The theoretical model used to value the dept options also provides hedge ratios which may be used to construct zero-investment portfolios which, in theory, are perfectly riskless. Several trading strategies based on these ‘riskless’ portfolios are examined.

This paper investigates share price reactions of parent firms to announcements of public offerings of stock of wholly-owned subsidiaries. The average abnormal gains associated with ‘equity carve-out’ announcements contrast with the average abnormal losses documented here and elsewhere upon announcements of public offerings of parent equity. Four features distinguishing equity carve-outs from parent equity offerings are discussed. Evidence is provided on these features as potential explanations for the positive average share price reaction associated with announcements of equity carve-outs.

Asset prices are much more volatile during exchange trading hours than during non-trading hours. This paper considers three explanations for this phenomenon: (1) volatility is caused by public information which is more likely to arrive during normal business hours; (2) volatility is caused by private information which affects prices when informed investors trade; and (3) volatility is caused by pricing errors that occur during trading. Although a significant fraction of the daily variance is caused by mispricing, the behavior of returns around exchange holidays suggests that private information is the principle factor behind high trading-time variances.

This paper analyzes the effect of corporate debt offerings on stock prices. Straight debt offerings have non-positive price effects, while convertible debt offerings have significantly negative effects. Public utility mortgage (non-convertible) bond offerings have marginally negative effects, and the effect is significantly negative when the proceeds are used to finance the utility's investment program. Cross-sectional regressions reveal no relation between offer-induced price effects and offering size, rating, post-offer changes in abnormal earnings or debt-related tax shields. The evidence is inconsistent with theories predicting that the price effects of capital structure changes go in the direction of the leverage change.

Several published studies claim that acquisition targets can be accurately predicted by models using public data. This paper points out a number of methodological flaws which bias the results of these studies. A fresh empirical study is carried out after correcting these methodological flaws. The results show that it is difficult to predict targets, indicating that the prediction accuracies reported by the earlier studies are overstated. The methodological issues addressed in this paper are also relevant to other research settings that involve binary state prediction models with skewed distribution of the two states of interest.