How Does Size Affect Mutual Fund Behavior?

If actively managed mutual funds suffer from diminishing returns to scale, funds should alter investment behavior as assets under management increase. Although asset growth has little effect on the behavior of the typical fund, we find that large funds and small‐cap funds diversify their portfolios in response to growth. Greater diversification, especially for small‐cap funds, is associated with better performance. Fund family growth is related to the introduction of new funds that hold different stocks from their existing siblings. Funds with many siblings diversify less rapidly as they grow, suggesting that the fund family may influence a fund's portfolio strategy.     

Measuring Inflation Expectations Uncertainty Using High‐Frequency Data

Inflation expectations play a key role in determining future economic outcomes. The associated uncertainty provides a direct gauge of how well‐anchored the inflation expectations are. We construct a model‐based measure of inflation expectations uncertainty by augmenting a standard unobserved components model of inflation with information from noisy and possibly biased measures of inflation expectations obtained from financial markets. This new model‐based measure of inflation expectations uncertainty is more accurately estimated and can provide valuable information for policymakers. Using U.S. data, we find significant changes in inflation expectations uncertainty during the Great Recession.     

Option Mispricing around Nontrading Periods

We find that option returns are significantly lower over nontrading periods, the vast majority of which are weekends. Our evidence suggests that nontrading returns cannot be explained by risk, but rather are the result of widespread and highly persistent option mispricing driven by the incorrect treatment of stock return variance during periods of market closure. The size of the effect implies that the broad spectrum of finance research involving option prices should account for nontrading effects. Our study further suggests how alternative industry practices could improve the efficiency of option markets in a meaningful way.     

High-Frequency Trading and Market Performance

We study the consequences of, and potential policy responses to, high-frequency trading (HFT) via the tradeoff between liquidity and information production. Faster speeds facilitate HFT, with consequences for this tradeoff: Information production decreases because informed traders have less time to trade before HFTs react, but liquidity (measured by the bid-ask spread) improves because informational asymmetries decline. HFT also pushes outcomes inside the frontier of this tradeoff. However, outcomes can be restored to the frontier by replacing the limit order book with one of two alternative mechanisms: delaying all orders except cancellations or implementing frequent batch auctions.     

Trading Against the Random Expiration of Private Information: A Natural Experiment

For years, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) accidentally distributed securities disclosures to some investors before the public. We exploit this setting, which is unique because the delay until public disclosure was exogenous and the private information window was well defined, to study informed trading with a random stopping time. Trading intensity and the pace at which prices incorporate information decrease with the expected delay until public release, but the relation between trading intensity and time elapsed varies with traders' learning process. Noise trading and relative information advantage play similar roles as in standard microstructure theories assuming a fixed time window.     

VERTICAL CONTRACTING WHEN COMPETITION FOR ORDERS PRECEDES PROCUREMENT*

This paper reverses the standard order between input supply negotiations and downstream competition and assumes that competition for orders takes place prior to procurement of inputs in a vertical chain. It is found that oligopolistically competitive outcomes will result despite the presence of an upstream monopolist. Here, vertical integration is a means by which the monopolist can leverage its market power downstream to the detriment of consumers. However, it does so, not by foreclosing on independent downstream firms, but by softening the competitive behaviour of its own integrated units.     

Access Regulation and the Timing of Infrastructure Investment

This paper examines infrastructure investment incentives under a system of 'regulation by negotiation'. We demonstrate that an appropriately specified access pricing rule can induce private firms to choose to invest at a socially optimal time. The optimal regulatory regime allocates investment costs to the access provider and seeker based on their relative use-values of the facility. It is superior to an unregulated environment because it commits firms ex ante to an access charge that allows for sunk cost recovery. In addition, we show that when the time that access is sought is flexible both replacement- and historical-cost asset valuation methodologies can lead to optimal investment incentives. However, when seeker timing is restricted, historical cost can give rise to distorted incentives.     

THE ECONOMIC EFFECT OF BANNING SMOKING IN WISCONSIN'S BARS AND RESTAURANTS

There is much debate as to whether or not the passage of no‐smoking laws has adverse consequences for businesses in the hospitality industry. In 2010, the state of Wisconsin implemented a law that banned smoking in all public places. Using a panel of county‐level employment data, I examine the relationship between the implementation of smoking bans in Wisconsin and the subsequent changes in bar and restaurant employment. Using variation in the timing of bans that occurred as a result of four counties that implemented local bans prior to the July 2010 statewide ban, I conduct a difference‐in‐differences analysis to measure the average treatment effect of implementing a smoking ban in Wisconsin. I find that restaurant employment is not affected and that bar employment is significantly reduced as a result of the smoking ban. I also find that counties with higher levels of smoking prevalence see greater reductions in bar employment when a smoking ban is enacted. Back‐of‐the‐envelope estimates suggest that even though there are employment losses, the benefits of the smoking ban outweigh the costs. (JEL L510, D780)     

PATENT LENGTH AND THE TIMING OF INNOVATIVE ACTIVITY

The standard result in patent policy, as demonstrated by Gilbert and Shapiro (1990), is that infinitely lived but very narrow patents are optimal as deadweight losses are minimised and spread through time but inventors can still recover their R&D expenditures. By extending their innovative environment to include timing as an important choice, we demonstrate that a finitely lived, but broader, patent can be socially desirable. This is because a patent breadth is a better instrument than length to encourage socially optimal timing. Thus, patents need not be infinitely long in order to encourage a greater number of inventions     

The Bullionist Controversy: Theory and New Evidence

The Bullionist Controversy in the United Kingdom is one of the first debates about the determination of the price level and the exchange rate under a paper money standard. Despite the importance of the debate in the development of monetary theory, there remains little empirical evidence that uses modern, multivariate time series techniques. The evidence that does exist provides support for the Anti‐Bullionist position. The purpose of this paper is to review the debate and develop a dynamic general equilibrium model that is capable of capturing key features of the nineteenth‐century British financial system. The model is estimated using Bayesian procedures to test the competing hypotheses. The paper provides support for the Bullionist position.