Competition in shared markets and Major League Baseball broadcast viewership

This work evaluates the cross-quality elasticity of related products in the context of local market Nielsen Local People Meter ratings of Major League Baseball (MLB) regular season broadcasts from 2010 through 2013 from six teams in three shared markets. We employ a fixed effects panel regression with multi-way error clustering, finding that fans exhibit nuanced behaviour related to the absolute quality and relative quality of the two local teams. Our estimates imply quality-related competition for viewership between teams in the face of large disparities in quality. However, when both teams are of high quality, viewership increased beyond what own-team success would predict alone for the competing team. The competitive effects are largely dominated by the spillover effects. These findings point to complementary effects of team success beyond own-team interest, and bring about an important nuance in the literature on market definition, competition and substitution in sport.     

The market microstructure of the European climate exchange

This paper analyzes the market microstructure of the European Climate Exchange, the largest EU ETS trading venue. The ECX captures 2/3 of the screen traded market in EUA and more than 90% in CER. Volume growth has averaged 277% in EUA between 2005 and 2009 and 724% in CER since 2007. Spreads range from €0.0188 to €0.0406 for EUA and €0.0276 to €0.0796 for CER. The median proportion of the spread due to adverse selection reaches 76% for EUA and 75% for CER. Realized volatility, bid-ask spreads and adverse selection costs decline with verified emission releases. Market impact estimates imply that an average trade will move the EUA market by 1.06 euro centimes and the CER market 1.45. The ECX is providing between 75% and 88% of price discovery for EUA trading and between 64% and 72% for CER. We find imbalances in the order book help predict returns for up to three days. A simple trading strategy that enters the market long or short when the order imbalance is strong is profitable even after accounting for spreads and market impact.     

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.     

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.     

Measurement of competitiveness in smallholder livestock systems and emerging policy advocacy: An application to Botswana

Farm level cross sectional data of 556 randomly selected livestock producers were used to investigate the competitiveness of smallholder beef farmers in Botswana. The results show the presence of inefficiency, with about 74% of the variation in actual profit from maximum profit (profit frontier) between farms mainly arising from differences in farmers’ practices rather than random variability. Further the mean profit efficiency level of 0.58 suggests that there is a substantial scope to improve beef profitability in Botswana. Significant profit efficiency drivers include, among others, education, distance to market, herd size, access to information and access to income from crop production. Considering the importance of livestock sector for wealth creation and poverty eradication in the rural areas where poverty is more pronounced, there is a need for appropriate development strategies and policies directed towards addressing these factors. In particular there is need to invest in market infrastructure in order to improve market access, hence profit efficiency of smallholder livestock farmers.     

Interbank tiering and money center banks

This paper provides evidence that interbank markets are tiered rather than flat, in the sense that most banks do not lend to each other directly but through money center banks acting as intermediaries. We capture the concept of tiering by developing a core-periphery model, and devise a procedure for fitting the model to real-world networks. Using Bundesbank data on bilateral interbank exposures among 2000 banks from 1999 to 2012, we find strong evidence of tiering in the German banking system. This extent of tiering is unlikely to arise in standard random networks. Indeed, we show that bank specialization and balance sheet variables predict how banks position themselves in the interbank market. This link provides a promising avenue for understanding the formation of financial networks.     

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.     

Which institutional investor types are the most informed?

We examine the informativeness of quarterly disclosed portfolio holdings across four institutional investor types: hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds and private banking firms. Overweight positions outperform underweight positions only for hedge funds. By decomposing holdings and stock returns, we find that hedge funds are superior to other institutional investors both at picking industries and stocks and that they are better at forecasting long‐term as well as short‐term returns. Furthermore, our results show that hedge funds, mutual funds and pension funds are able to successfully time the market. The outperformance of hedge funds is not explained by a liquidity premium.     

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.     

Are USDA reports still news to changing crop markets?

This study investigates whether major USDA reports still provide important news to changing crop markets. The news component of each report, or market “surprise,” is measured as a difference between the USDA estimate and its private expectation in corn, soybeans, and wheat markets. Changes in the relevance of USDA information are assessed by examining changes in the magnitude of market surprises and shifts in the futures price reaction to these surprises, which isolates the impact of each report. The stable size of market surprises over time suggests that competition from alternative data sources has not reduced the news component of USDA crop reports. Increasing price reaction to most reports, including those facing competition from alternative information sources, suggests that value of public information may be enhanced in uncertain markets affected by structural changes.