Testing commodity futures market efficiency under time-varying risk premiums and heteroscedastic prices

We propose a novel test to measure market efficiency while estimating the time-varying risk premiums of commodity futures, given that the prices are heteroscedastic. The risk premium is estimated using a state-space model with a Kalman filter modified for heteroscedasticity. Using 79 commodity futures traded on 16 exchanges during the period 2000–2014 and a Monte Carlo simulation, we demonstrate that the proposal produces robust results compared with conventional approaches. The global financial crisis has improved the efficiency and affected the trading volumes of commodity futures, but it has had no effect on the average or the volatility of risk premiums.     

Far from the madding crowd: collective wisdom in prediction markets

We investigate market selection and bet pricing in a repeated prediction market model. We derive the conditions for long-run survival of more than one agent (the crowd) and quantify the information content of prevailing prices in the case of fractional Kelly traders with heterogeneous beliefs. It turns out that, apart some non-generic situations, prices do not converge, neither almost surely nor on average, to true probabilities, nor are they always nearer to the truth than the beliefs of all surviving agents. This implies that, in general, prediction market prices are not maximum likelihood estimators of the true probabilities. However, when more than one agent survives, the average price emerging from a prediction market approximates the true probability with lower information loss than any individual belief.     

Forecasting returns in the VIX futures market

This paper introduces a new forecasting model for VIX futures returns. The model is structural in nature and parsimonious, and contains parameters that are relatively easy to estimate. The forecasts of next day VIX futures returns based on this model are superior to those produced by a linear forecasting model that uses the same set of predictors. Moreover, the profits to a market-timing model based on the proposed forecasts are statistically and economically significant, and are robust to both the method used for adjusting for risk and transaction costs (up to around 15 basis points). In contrast, the forecasts generated by the linear forecasting model are not.     

How hospitality brands grow: What hospitality marketers should know about Andrew Ehrenberg’s work (invited paper for ‘luminaries’ special issue of International Journal of Hospitality Management)

Andrew Ehrenberg’s work challenges the emphasis that hospitality marketing practitioners, educators and academic researchers place on segmentation, targeting (especially of heavy users), positioning, and meaningful brand differentiation. However, few marketing practitioners and scholars in hospitality appear familiar with this work. This invited paper attempts to increase awareness and appreciation of Ehrenberg’s work as well as its relevance to and implications for hospitality marketing. Topics covered include the NBD Law, Law of Double Jeopardy, Duplication of Purchase Law, and Law of Natural Monopoly as well as the evidence of weak brand segmentation, low perceived brand uniqueness, and the generalizability of the brand belief-usage relationship.     

Bubbles for Fama

We evaluate Eugene F. Fama's claim that stock prices do not exhibit price bubbles. Based on US industry returns (1926?2014) and international sector returns (1985?2014), we present four findings (1) Fama is correct in that a sharp price increase of an industry portfolio does not, on average, predict unusually low returns going forward; (2) such sharp price increases predict a substantially heightened probability of a crash but not of a further price boom; (3) attributes of the price run-up, including volatility, turnover, issuance, and the price path of the run-up, help forecast an eventual crash; and (4) these attributes also help forecast future returns. Results hold similarly in US and international samples.     

Media heterogeneity and post‐earnings announcement drift: evidence from China

This paper examines how the Chinese stock market acts differently towards state‐controlled and market‐oriented media coverage. Using a setting of post‐earnings announcement drift, we find that information from state‐controlled media enters the stock price in a timelier manner, while the message from market‐oriented media needs more time to get a response from investors. The effect is also influenced by whether the type of news coverage is good or bad. Our findings suggest that the capital market underreacts when good news is reported by the market‐oriented media.     

The information content of funds from operations and net income in real estate investment trusts

This study compares the information content of funds from operations (FFO) and net income (NI) in the real estate investment trust (REIT) industry. We find that models using FFO explain more of the variance in cumulative abnormal returns around earnings announcement dates than models using NI do. We also find that the information content of FFO differs across REITs of different sizes. FFO does not provide useful information to investors in the case of large REITs. Finally, we show that the gain or loss from sales of property is relevant to valuing large REITs.     

Vertical separation of transmission control and market efficiency in the wholesale electricity market

This study examines how vertical separation of transmission control affects the wholesale market efficiency in the electric power industry. We analyze a unique regional electricity wholesale market in the U.S. where initially restructuring only occurred in the transmission sector. Following a commonly-used best dispatch model (Wolfram, 1999; Borenstein et al., 2002), we simulate competitive benchmark prices and compare with the best estimates available for actual prices to measure price-cost markups of the wholesale market. Empirical results demonstrate that the vertical separation of transmission control led to a significant increase in market markups in peak-load hours, documenting evidence of enhanced market power. Although we also find a reduction in the price-cost margin in low-demand hours, we reserve caution for this finding.     

Foreign exchange customers and dealers: Who’s driving whom?

This paper tests the theoretical assumption of the foreign exchange market microstructure that dealers and non-dealer customers interact over discrete trading rounds. An exhaustive frequency-domain analysis reveals that the interaction is limited and mainly due to the instability of financial markets. The principal finding is that the trading activity of dealers is able to predict the customer order flow at low frequencies with wavelengths longer than roughly a week. In all, the evidence shows that non-financial customers are not as passive as some other research has suggested.     

Stabilizing the market with short sale constraint? New evidence from price jump activities

We re-examine the impact of short-sale constraints (SSC) on market stabilization via realized jump activities during 2002–2009 to circumvent the reverse causality in identifying the policy effects of SSC. We observed that the abnormal downturns under tighter short sale constraints are significantly larger whereas there is no difference for abnormal upturns. Our empirical results survive across a sequence of robustness examinations controlled for market illiquidity. The findings do not support the claims by regulators that restraining short-sales can stabilize prices; instead, SSC has led to a less efficient market with stronger extreme downward returns.