Tick sizes and relative rates of price discovery in stock,futures, and options markets: Evidence from the Taiwan stock exchange

This study examines the competition in price discovery among stock index, index futures, and index options in Taiwan. The price‐discovery ability of the Taiwan Top 50 Tracker Fund, an exchange‐traded fund based on the Taiwan 50 index is examined. The authors find that, after the minimum tick size in the stock market decreases, the bid–ask spreads of the component stocks of the stock index and the Taiwan Top 50 Tracker Fund get lower, and the contribution of the spot market to price discovery increases. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 29:74–93, 2009     

A Further Examination of Appraisal Data and the Potential Bias in Real Estate Return Indexes

Recent articles by Giliberto [2] and Geltner [1] examine the biases inherent in the use of appraisal data in real estate performance measurement. This note takes another look at the direction and magnitude of any bias in holding period returns. Using appraisal data from a commingled real estate fund, we show that in actual application the size of the holding period return bias can be quite small and this bias may have no appreciable effect on real estate return indexes.     

Trading activities and price discovery in foreign currency futures markets

This study investigates the relation between trading activities and the price discovery efficacy of the futures markets for EUR–USD and JPY–USD. According to data pertaining to weekly positions, collected from the Commitments of Traders reports distributed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the information share of currency futures markets declines with hedgers’ positions but increases with speculators’ positions. In addition, both hedgers’ expected and unexpected positions have negative impacts on the contribution of the futures market; the futures market’s information share relates positively to speculators’ expected positions but is uncorrelated with speculators’ unexpected positions.     

News announcements and price discovery in foreign exchange spot and futures markets

This paper studies competition in price discovery between spot and futures rates for the EUR–USD and JPY–USD markets around scheduled macroeconomic announcements. Using both the information shares approach and the common factor component weight approach for futures prices from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), as well as deal prices from spot trading on the Electronic Broking Services (EBS), we gauge how foreign exchange spot and futures markets respond to news surprises. The results show that the spot rates provide more price discovery than do the CME futures rates overall; however, the contribution of the futures rates to price discovery increases in the time surrounding macroeconomic announcement releases.     

Expected risk and excess returns predictability in emerging bond markets

This study examines the predictability of expected excess returns from eight emerging bond markets within an international asset pricing framework. Two sets of instruments are used, which include both world and local factors, to forecast emerging bond returns. Besides investigating the influence of the macroeconomic factors in specific countries on bond returns in those countries, this study also divides local factors into macroeconomic and financial factors. Unlike previous studies, we apply macroeconomic instruments that contain more information on excess returns as a proxy for local risk factors via principal component analysis methodology. The information variable approach enables the prediction of excess bond returns based on world and local factors and facilitating understanding of the degree of integration between emerging bond markets and developed bond markets. The results indicate that the bond market in emerging world is partially integrated to that in the developed world and the predictability of local factors that include both financial and macroeconomic information variables can forecast around 25–66% of the returns of emerging bonds. Incorporating the macroeconomic variables increases the explanatory power of the model. Both world and country-specific local instruments can forecast excess bond returns, but local instruments appear to be better predictors of such returns, particularly the local credit spread to US. Additionally, this study finds that investor risk aversion is significant among most of sample countries.     

Interest Rate Risk, Residential Mortgages and Financial Futures Markets

Residential mortgage markets in both the United States and Canada have recently been dominated by instruments such as variable-rate and short-term rollover mortgages which require borrowers to assume a greater burden of interest rate risk. An outstanding question is whether this approach to risk allocation is Pareto optimal or whether there are other more effective methods of dealing with the risk created by interest rate volatility. This study examines the potential for shifting this risk from the mortgage market to the financial futures market. After considering the rationale for expecting that neither mortgage borrowers nor lenders wish to absorb the high levels of risk present in the existing financial environment, this study discusses the hedging of interest rate risk through financial futures markets. Empirical tests are then performed to evaluate the effectiveness of U.S. futures markets for hedging positions from the U.S. mortgage market. These results indicate that the interest rate risk inherent in residential mortgages can be substantially shifted through one or more positions in the existing futures contracts and long-term, fixed-rate mortgages may still be financially feasible under conditions of interest rate volatility.     

Multicollinearity and Reduced-Form Price Equations For Residential Markets: An Evaluation of Alternative Estimation Methods*

One of the problems that has plagued researchers in their estimation of reduced-form price equations for specific housing markets has been multicollinearity—the lack of statistical independence of the explanatory variables. This paper evaluates the suitability for structural analysis and prediction of stepwise regression and principal components regression as alternatives to the standard regression model in the estimation of equations with interdependent data. In general, the results of this study indicate that under conditions of multicollinearity principal components regression is the superior estimation technique.     

Dividend Policies and Dividend Announcement Effects for Real Estate Investment Trusts

Previous research on real estate investment trusts (REITs) assumes that their dividend policies are determined solely by tax regulations. We observe, however, that REITs often pay out more dividends than are required by tax rules. This paper examines the dividend policies of REITs by drawing inferences from agency-cost theory and tests for the determinants of REIT dividend payout ratios. The study also considers whether the stock market responds differently to the dividend announcement effects of equity and mortgage REITs based on asymmetric information. Our results support agency-cost explanations for dividend policy and suggest a differential announcement effect.