In this article, we survey the literature that studies fixed-income trading rules and outcomes, including Treasury securities, corporate and municipal bonds, and structured credit products. We compare and contrast the microstructure and regulation of fixed-income markets with equity markets. We highlight the nature of over-the-counter trading in the face of search costs and the associated slow evolution of electronically facilitated intermediation. We discuss the databases available to study fixed-income microstructure, as well as measures and determinants of trading costs, and the important roles dealer networks and limited transparency play. We also highlight unresolved issues.

We analyze theoretically and empirically the implications of information asymmetry for equilibrium asset pricing and portfolio choice. In our partially revealing dynamic rational expectations equilibrium, portfolio separation fails, and indexing is not optimal. We show how uninformed investors should structure their portfolios, using the information contained in prices to cope with winner’s curse problems. We implement empirically this price- contingent portfolio strategy. Consistent with our theory, the strategy outperforms economically and statistically the index. While momentum can arise in the model, in the data, the momentum strategy does not outperform the price-contingent strategy, as predicted by the theory.

We derive and investigate empirically arbitrage pricing restrictions among three bonds of RJR Nabisco Holdings Capital Corporation. The three RJR bonds are virtually identical in all respects, except for the form in which interest is paid. We document large and persistent errors in the market pricing of the three bonds over a two-year period. The cash-paying bond was consistently more expensive than either the pay-in-kind or deferred-coupon bonds. The magnitude of the pricing errors is too large to be explained by market imperfections.

[This article examines the information content and consequences of third-party voting advice that arrives as news at an interim stage in corporate proxy contests. We first document significant stock returns around announcements of proxy vote recommendations. We then develop a multi-equation empirical procedure for disentangling the price impact of prediction effects (changes in contest outcome probabilities) from the price impact of certification effects (changes in outcome-contingent valuations). Both effects are present in the data: Voting advice is both predictive about contest outcomes and informative about the ability of dissidents to add value. Consequently, proxy advice plays a dual informational role.]

This article characterizes optimal dynamic consumption and portfolio decisions in the presence of capital gains taxes and short-sale restrictions. The optimal decisions are a function of the investor’s age, initial portfolio holdings, and tax basis. Our results capture the trade-off between the diversification benefits and tax costs of trading over an investor’s lifetime. The incentive to rediversify the portfolio is inversely related to the size of the embedded gain and investor’s age. Contrary to standard financial advice, the optimal equity holding increases well into an investor’s lifetime in our model due to the forgiveness of capital gains taxes at death.

The second special issue on big data in finance showcases advancements in research related to data of large size, high dimension, and complex structure since the first NBER/RFS big data conference. The papers published in this next chapter address some questions that were proposed in the initial special issue in 2021. Other papers are more directly connected to recent developments in the markets. We discuss some new research directions, following on the papers published here. They include evaluating market microstructure reforms, understanding medium-frequency trading, improving missing data imputations, and deepening data valuation. We look forward to more developments to follow.

Big data is revolutionizing the finance industry and has the potential to significantly shape future research in finance. This special issue contains papers following the 2019 NBER-RFS Conference on Big Data. In this introduction to the special issue, we define the “big data” phenomenon as a combination of three features: large size, high dimension, and complex structure. Using the papers in the special issue, we discuss how new research builds on these features to push the frontier on fundamental questions across areas in finance—including corporate finance, market microstructure, and asset pricing. Finally, we offer some thoughts for future research directions.

ABSTRACT We investigate optimal intertemporal asset allocation and location decisions for investors making taxable and tax‐deferred investments. We show a strong preference for holding taxable bonds in the tax‐deferred account and equity in the taxable account, reflecting the higher tax burden on taxable bonds relative to equity. For most investors, the optimal asset location policy is robust to the introduction of tax‐exempt bonds and liquidity shocks. Numerical results illustrate optimal portfolio decisions as a function of age and tax‐deferred wealth. Interestingly, the proportion of total wealth allocated to equity is inversely related to the fraction of total wealth in tax‐deferred accounts.

We develop an equilibrium model of the term structure of forward prices for storable commodities. As a consequence of a nonnegativity constraint on inventory, the spot commodity has an embedded timing option that is absent in forward contracts. This option's value changes over time due to both endogenous inventory and exogenous transitory shocks to supply and demand. Our model makes predictions about volatilities of forward prices at different horizons and shows how conditional violations of the ‘Samuelson effect’ occur. We extend the model to incorporate a permanent second factor and calibrate the model to crude oil futures data.

This article examines the information content and consequences of third-party voting advice that arrives as news at an interim stage in corporate proxy contests. We first document significant stock returns around announcements of proxy vote recommendations. We then develop a multi-equation empirical procedure for disentangling the price impact of prediction effects (changes in contest outcome probabilities) from the price impact of certification effects (changes in outcome-contingent valuations). Both effects are present in the data: Voting advice is both predictive about contest outcomes and informative about the ability of dissidents to add value. Consequently, proxy advice plays a dual informational role.