We identify a number of unintended consequences of grouping when the capital asset pricing model is true and when it is false. When the model is true, grouping may cause fundamental problems with the most basic capital asset pricing and cross-sectional regression relationships. For example, with traditional grouping, the market portfolio is super-efficient––unless securities in each group are value weighted. Yet, when the model is grossly false, grouping may cause the model to appear to be absolutely correct. Ironically, the only way this can occur is when securities in each group are value weighted. To make matters worse, when the model is false, the slope of a cross-sectional regression of expected returns on betas fitted to grouped data may be either steeper or flatter than when the regression is fitted to ungrouped data. In other words, grouping may exacerbate the very problem it was meant to alleviate.

Using a utility function to adjust the risk‐neutral PDF embedded in cross sections of options, we obtain measures of the risk aversion implied in option prices. Using FTSE 100 and S&P 500 options, and both power and exponential‐utility functions, we estimate the representative agent's relative risk aversion (RRA) at different horizons. The estimated coefficients of RRA are all reasonable. The RRA estimates are remarkably consistent across utility functions and across markets for given horizons. The degree of RRA declines broadly with the forecast horizon and is lower during periods of high market volatility.

Can monetary policy committees, accustomed to describing their plans and actions in terms of the level of a short-term nominal interest rate, find effective means of conducting and communicating their policies when that rate is zero or close to zero? The very low levels of interest rates in Japan, Switzerland, and the United States in recent years have stimulated much interesting research on this question and have led some central banks to make changes in their operating procedures and communications strategies. In this paper, we will give a brief overview of current thinking on the conduct of monetary policy when short-term interest rates are very low or even zero. Monetary policy works for the most part by influencing the prices and yields of financial assets, which in turn affect economic decisions and thus the evolution of the economy. When the short-term policy rate is at or near zero, the conventional means of effecting monetary ease (lowering the target for the policy rate) is no longer feasible. However, it would be a mistake to think that monetary policy was impotent. We discuss three strategies for stimulating the economy at an unchanged level of the policy rate: these involve (i) providing assurance to investors that short rates will be kept lower in the future than they currently expect, (ii) changing the relative supplies of securities in the marketplace by altering the composition of the central bank’s balance sheet, and (iii) increasing the size of the central bank’s balance sheet beyond the level needed to set the short-term policy rate at zero (“quantitative easing”). We also discuss the costs and benefits of very low interest rates, an issue that bears on the question of whether the central bank should take the policy rate all the way to zero before undertaking alternative policies.

The apparent conflict between the level of resources dedicated to technical analysis by practitioners and academic theories of market efficiency is a long-standing puzzle. We explore a previously unexamined feature of technical analysis — namely its relation to liquidity provision. We demonstrate that support and resistance levels coincide with peaks in depth on the limit order book and moving average forecasts reveal information about the relative position of depth on the book. Furthermore, we show that these relationships stem from technical rules locating depth already in place on the limit order book.

Previous research has shown that under a suitable no-jump condition, the price of a defaultable security is equal to its risk-neutral expected discounted cash flows if a modified discount rate is introduced to account for the possibility of default. Below, we generalize this result by demonstrating that one can always value defaultable claims using expected risk-adjusted discounting provided that the expectation is taken under a slightly modified probability measure. This new probability measure puts zero probability on paths where default occurs prior to the maturity, and is thus only absolutely continuous with respect to the risk-neutral probability measure. After establishing the general result and discussing its relation with the existing literature, we investigate several examples for which the no-jump condition fails. Each example illustrates the power of our general formula by providing simple analytic solutions for the prices of defaultable securities.

We examine CEO turnover and firm financial performance. Accounting measures of performance relative to other firms deteriorate prior to CEO turnover and improve thereafter. The degree of improvement is positively related to the level of institutional shareholdings, the presence of an outsider-dominated board, and the appointment of an outsider (rather than an insider) CEO. Turnover announcements are associated with significantly positive average abnormal stock returns, which are in turn significantly positively related to subsequent changes in accounting measures of performance. This suggests that investors view turnover announcements as good news presaging performance improvements.

This paper conducts powerful new tests of whether debt can mitigate the effects of agency and information problems. We focus on emerging market firms for which pyramid ownership structures create potentially extreme managerial agency costs. Our tests incorporate both traditional financial statement data and new data on global debt contracts. Our analysis is mindful of the potential endogeneity between debt, ownership structure, and value, and it takes into account differences in the debt capacity of a firm's assets in place and future growth opportunities. The results indicate that the incremental benefit of debt is concentrated in firms with high expected managerial agency costs that are also most likely to have overinvestment problems resulting from high levels of assets in place or limited future growth opportunities. Subsequent internationally syndicated term loans are particularly effective at creating value for these firms. Our results support the recontracting hypothesis that equity holders value compliance with monitored covenants, particularly when firms are likely to overinvest.

We investigate whether security analysts exhibit persistence in their stock picking ability. We find that analysts whose recommendation revisions earned the most (least) excess returns in the past continue to outperform (underperform) in the future. Further, the market recognizes these performance differences in the five-day period surrounding the recommendation revision. This market reaction, however, is incomplete. Excess returns in the one and three trading months following the revision are significant and positively associated with analysts’ prior performance. However, a trading strategy taking long (short) positions in recommendation upgrades (downgrades) conditional on analysts’ prior performance is unprofitable.