A Fast Literature Search Engine based on top-quality journals, by Dr. Mingze Gao.

• Kan, R., & Zhou, G. (1999). A Critique of the Stochastic Discount Factor Methodology. The Journal of Finance, 54, 1221–1248.

  In this paper, we point out that the widely used stochastic discount factor (SDF) methodology ignores a fully specified model for asset returns. As a result, it suffers from two potential problems when asset returns follow a linear factor model. The first problem is that the risk premium estimate from the SDF methodology is unreliable. The second problem is that the specification test under the SDF methodology has very low power in detecting misspecified models. Traditional methodologies typically incorporate a fully specified model for asset returns, and they can perform substantially better than the SDF methodology.

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• Danziger, L. (1999). A Dynamic Economy with Costly Price Adjustments. American Economic Review, 89, 878–901.

  This paper studies a general-equilibrium model of a dynamic economy with menu costs. Each firm's productivity is exposed to idiosyncratic and aggregate productivity shocks around a trend, and the money supply to monetary shocks around a trend. All consumption, pricing, and production decisions are based on optimizing behavior. There exists a staggered Markov perfect equilibrium with prices determined by a two-sided (s, S) markup strategy. The paper analyzes the optimal markup strategy and investigates the dynamics of the price index and the aggregate output. The welfare consequences of the uncertain aggregate productivity and money supply are also examined.

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• Lesmond, D. A., Ogden, J. P., & Trzcinka, C. A. (1999). A New Estimate of Transaction Costs. Review of Financial Studies, 12, 1113–1141.

  Transaction costs are important for a host of empirical analyses from market efficiency to international market research. But transaction costs estimates are not always available, or where available, are cumbersome to use and expensive to purchase. We present a model that requires only the time series of daily security returns to endogenously estimate the effective transaction costs for any firm, exchange, or time period. The feature of the data that allows for the estimation of transaction costs is the incidence of zero returns. Incorporating zero returns in the return-generating process, the model provides continuous estimates of average round-trip transaction costs from 1963 to 1990 that are 1.2% and 10.3% for large and small decile firms, respectively. These estimates are highly correlated (85%), with the most commonly used transaction cost estimators.

• Ahn, D.-H., & Gao, B. (1999). A Parametric Nonlinear Model of Term Structure Dynamics. Review of Financial Studies, 12, 721–762.

  Recent nonparametric estimation studies pioneered by Ait-Sahalia document that the diffusion of the short rate is similar to the parametric function, r[superscript 1.5], estimated by Chan et al., whereas the drift is substantially nonlinear in the short rate. These empirical properties call into question the efficacy of the existing affine term structure models and beg for alternative models which admit the observed behavior. This article presents such a model. Our model delivers closed-form solutions for bond prices and a concave relationship between the interest rate and the yields. We show that in empirical analyses, our model outperforms the one-factor affine models in both time-series as well as cross-sectional tests.

• Hubbard, R. G., & Palia, D. (1999). A Reexamination of the Conglomerate Merger Wave in the 1960s: An Internal Capital Markets View. The Journal of Finance, 54, 1131–1152.

  One possible explanation for bidding firms earning positive abnormal returns in diversifying acquisitions in the 1960s is that internal capital markets were expected to overcome the information deficiencies of the less‐developed capital markets. Examining 392 bidder firms during the 1960s, we find the highest bidder returns when financially “unconstrained” buyers acquire “constrained” targets. This result holds while controlling for merger terms and for different proxies used to classify firms facing costly external financing. We also find that bidders generally retain target management, suggesting that management may have provided company‐specific operational information, while the bidder provided capital‐budgeting expertise.

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• Dinopoulos, E., & Segerstrom, P. (1999). A Schumpeterian Model of Protection and Relative Wages. American Economic Review, 89, 450–472.

  This paper presents a dynamic general equilibrium model of R&D-based trade between two structurally identical countries in which both innovation and skill acquisition rates are endogenously determined. Trade liberalization increases R&D investment and the rate of technological change. It also reduces the relative wage of unskilled workers and results in skill upgrading within each industry when R&D is the skilled-labor intensive activity relative to manufacturing of final products. Time-series evidence from the United States and simulation analysis support the empirical relevance of the model, which offers a North-North trade explanation for increasing wage inequality.

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• Berk, J. B. (1999). A Simple Approach for Deciding When to Invest. American Economic Review, 89, 1319–1326.
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• Kavajecz, K. A. (1999). A Specialist’s Quoted Depth and the Limit Order Book. The Journal of Finance, 54, 747–771.

  By partitioning quoted depth into the specialist's contribution and the limit order book's contribution, the paper investigates whether specialists manage quoted depth to reduce adverse selection risk. The results show that both specialists and limit order traders reduce depth around information events, thereby reducing their exposure to adverse selection costs. Moreover, specialists' quotes may reflect only the limit order book on the side (or sides) of the market where they believe there is a chance of informed trading. Changes in quoted depth are consistent with specialists managing their inventory as well as having knowledge of the stock's future value.

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• Chemmanur, T. J., & Fulghieri, P. (1999). A Theory of the Going-Public Decision. Review of Financial Studies, 12, 249–279.

  We address the question: At what stage in its life should a firm go public rather than undertake its projects using private equity financing? In our model a firm may raise external financing either by placing shares privately with a risk-averse venture capitalist or by selling shares in an IPO to numerous small investors. The entrepreneur has private information about his firm's value, but outsiders can reduce this informational disadvantage by evaluating the firm at a cost. The equilibrium timing of the going-public decision is determined by the firm's trade-off between minimizing the duplication in information production by outsiders (unavoidable in the IPO market, but mitigated by a publicly observable share price) and avoiding the risk-premium demanded by venture capitalists. Testable implications are developed for the cross-sectional variations in the age of going-public across industries and countries.

• Kadlec, G. B., & Patterson, D. M. (1999). A Transactions Data Analysis of Nonsynchronous Trading. Review of Financial Studies, 12, 609–630.

  Weekly returns of stock portfolios exhibit substantial autocorrelation. Analytical studies suggest that nonsynchronous trading is capable of explaining from 5% to 65% of the autocorrelation. The varying importance of nonsynchronous trading in these studies arises primarily from differing assumptions regarding nontrading periods of stocks. We simulate the effects of nonsynchronous trading by sampling stock returns from a return generating process using transactions data to obtain the precise time of each stock's last trade. We find that simulated weekly portfolio returns exhibit autocorrelations that are roughly 25% that of their observed (CRSP) weekly returns.