In 2002 and 2003, many Chinese banks implemented reforms that delegated authority to individual loan officers. The change followed China's entrance into the WTO and offers a plausibly exogenous shock to loan officer incentives to produce information. We find that the bank's internal risk rating becomes a stronger predictor of loan interest rates and ex post outcomes after reform. When the loan officer and the branch president who approves the loan work together longer, the rating also becomes more strongly related to loan prices and outcomes. Our results highlight how incentives and communication costs affect information production and use.

We find that socially connected fund managers have more similar holdings and trades. The overlap of funds whose managers reside in the same neighborhood is considerably higher than that of funds whose managers live in the same city but in different neighborhoods. These effects are larger when managers share a similar ethnic background, and are not explained by preferences. Valuable information is transmitted through these peer networks: a long‐short strategy composed of stocks purchased minus sold by neighboring managers delivers positive risk‐adjusted returns. Unlike prior empirical work, our tests disentangle the effects of social interactions from community effects.

We investigate lead‐lag relationships among monthly country stock returns and identify a leading role for the United States: lagged U.S. returns significantly predict returns in numerous non‐U.S. industrialized countries, while lagged non‐U.S. returns display limited predictive ability with respect to U.S. returns. We estimate a news‐diffusion model, and the results indicate that return shocks arising in the United States are only fully reflected in equity prices outside of the United States with a lag, consistent with a gradual information diffusion explanation of the predictive power of lagged U.S. returns.

The development of asset pricing models that rely on instrumental variables together with the increased availability of easily‐accessible economic time‐series have renewed interest in predicting security returns. Evaluating the significance of these new research findings, however, is no easy task. Because these asset pricing theory tests are not independent, classical methods of assessing goodness‐of‐fit are inappropriate. This study investigates the distribution of the maximal when k of m regressors are used to predict security returns. We provide a simple procedure that adjusts critical values to account for selecting variables by searching among potential regressors.

The development of asset pricing models that rely on instrumental variables together with the increased availability of easily-accessible economic time-series have renewed interest in predicting security returns. Evaluating the significance of these new research findings, however, is no easy task. Because these asset pricing theory tests are not independent, classical methods of assessing goodness-of-fit are inappropriate. This study investigates the distribution of the maximal R2 when k of m regressors are used to predict security returns. We provide a simple procedure that adjusts critical R2 values to account for selecting variables by searching among potential regressors.

This paper finds a high correlation between the open to close returns for U.S. stocks in the previous trading day and the Japanese equity market performance in the current period. In contrast, the Japanese market has only a small impact on the U.S. return in the current period. High correlations among open to close returns are a violation of the efficient market hypothesis; however, in trading simulations, the excess profits in Japan vanish when transactions costs and transfer taxes are included.

New Intro, Seth Klarman New Intro, Jim Grant New Intro to Part 1, by Roger Lowenstein Part 1, Survey & Approach New Intro to Part 2, By Howard Marks Part 2, Fixed Value Investments New Intro to Part 3, By Ezra Merkin Part 3, Securities with Speculative Features New Intro to Part 4, By Bruce Berkowitz Part 4, Common Stocks New Intro to Part 5, By Glenn Greenberg Part 5, Analysis of the Income Account New Intro to Part 6, By Bruce Greenwald Part 6, Balance Sheet Analysis New Intro to Part 7, By David Abrams Part 7, Additional Aspects of Security Analysis