[Considerable evidence exists that governmental accounting numbers are related empirically to bond risk and return measures. However, prior research does not preclude the possibility that accounting numbers merely reflect unobserved factors such as economic and political attributes impounded in bond measures. This study considers whether governmental annual financial reports convey new information directly to the bond market. Changes in bond prices during the period around the release date of governmental annual reports were examined to assess market responses to the reports. No significant evidence was obtained to suggest that municipal bond investors use the information in the annual report at the time of its release to adjust bond prices. In contrast, new bond issues and bond rating announcements were associated with significant market reactions. Thus, these results indicate that, while issuer-specific accounting information may be used by bond investors in conjunction with decisions involving new issues and rating evaluations, investors do not appear to impound the information directly into secondary market prices at the time the information is released.]

Knowledge of the one‐month interest rate is useful in forecasting the sign as well as the variance of the excess return on stocks. The services of a portfolio manager who makes use of the forecasting model to shift funds between bills and stocks would be worth an annual management fee of 2% of the value of the assets managed. During 1954:4 to 1986:12, the variance of monthly returns on the managed portfolio was about 60% of the variance of the returns on the value weighted index, whereas the average return was two basis points higher.

A model that includes bounded price variation and rational expectations by producers is estimated for the U.S. corn market. The resulting model specification is highly nonlinear though, since the probability of market equilibrium must be determined endogenously. Unlike previous research, the cross-equation restrictions implied by the rational expectations hypothesis are incorporated in the bounded prices model by using Fair and Taylor's (1983) procedure for obtaining maximum likelihood estimates of nonlinear rational expectations models. The resulting model is compared against a standard equilibrium model with naive expectations. The results show the bounded prices model is a superior specification.

A test for the ex ante efficiency of a given portfolio of assets is analyzed. The relevant statistic has a tractable small sample distribution. Its power function is derived and used to study the sensitivity of the test to the portfolio choice and to the number of assets used to determine the ex post mean-variance efficient frontier. Several intuitive interpretations of the test are provided, including a simple mean-standard deviation geometric explanation. A univariate test, equivalent to our multivariate-based method, is derived, and it suggests some useful diagnostic tools which may explain why the null hypothesis is rejected. Empirical examples suggest that the multivariate approach can lead to more appropriate conclusions than those based on traditional inference which relies on a set of dependent univariate statistics.

Unequal access to financing for education may be an important source of educational differences. We develop a model relating sib schooling and earnings similarities to sibship size with and without equal access and estimate it for the education of veterans, for whom the GI Bill assured equal access, and for their children, who had no such government assistance. We find an inverse relationship between sibship size and sib schooling and earnings similarities for the children, but not for the veterans; we conclude that, in the absence of equal access policies, unequal access is an important source of educational differences.

This paper deals with the problem of aggregation where the focus of the analysis is whether to predict aggregate variables using macro or micro equations. The GrunfeldGriliches prediction criterion for choosing between aggregate and disaggregate equations is generalized to allow for contemporaneous covariances between the disturbances of micro equations and the possibility of different parametric restrictions on the equations of the disaggregate model. A new test is proposed of the hypothesis of 'perfect aggregation' which tests the validity of aggregation either through coefficient equality or through the stability over time of the composition of the regressors across the micro units. The tools developed in the paper are then applied to employment demand functions for the UK economy disaggregated by 40 industries. Firstly a set of unrestricted log-linear dynamic specifications are estimated for the disaggregate equations and then linear parameter restrictions are imposed as appropriate. Corresponding unrestricted and restricted aggregate equations are estimated. Two different levels of aggregation are considered: aggregation over the 23 manufacturing industries and aggregation over all 40 industries of the economy. In both cases the hypothesis of perfect aggregation is firmly rejected. For the manufacturing industries the prediction criterion marginally favors the aggregate equation but over all industries the disaggregated equations are strongly preferred.