Losers and prospectors in the short-term options market

Intraday data for weekly options are investigated for behavioral biases implied in prospect theory (PT) and cumulative prospect theory (CPT). The results generally support both theories, with losers (winners) observed to be relatively risk-seeking (averse). On aggregate, losers (winners) overprice (underprice) their contracts and overweight (underweight) the probability of winning. Additionally, the volatility smirk observed in equity options is dampened by PT/CPT biases. The price distortions are time sensitive, especially for losing traders. Losers hold out by transacting later in the day and closer to expiration than their baseline counterparts. This betting-time effect is absent among winners.     

Traffic evacuation time under nonhomogeneous conditions

During many manmade and natural crises such as terrorist threats, floods, hazardous chemical and gas leaks, emergency personnel need to estimate the time in which people can evacuate from the affected urban area. Knowing an estimated evacuation time for a given crisis, emergency personnel can plan and prepare accordingly with the understanding that the actual evacuation time will take longer. Given the urban area to be evacuated, street widths exiting the area's perimeter, the area's population density, average vehicle occupancy, transport mode share and crawl speed, an estimation of traffic evacuation time can be derived. Peak-hour traffic data collected at three, midblock, Mumbai sites of varying geometric features and traffic composition were used in calibrating a model that estimates peak-hour traffic flow rates. Model validation revealed a correlation coefficient of +0.98 between observed and predicted peak-hour flow rates. A methodology is developed that estimates traffic evacuation time using the model.     

Bargaining with revoking costs

A simple two stage bilateral bargaining game is analyzed. The players simultaneously demand shares of a unit size pie. If the demands add up to more than one, the players simultaneously choose whether to stick to their demand or accept the other?s offer. While both parties sticking to their offers leads to an impasse, accepting a lower share than the original demand is costly for each party. The set of pure strategy subgame perfect equilibria of the game is characterized for continuously differentiable payoff and cost functions, strictly increasing in the pie share and the amount conceded, respectively. Higher cost functions are shown to improve bargaining power. The limit equilibrium prediction of the model, as the cost functions are made arbitrarily high, selects a unique equilibrium in the Nash Demand Game that corresponds to a Proportional Bargaining Solution of Kalai (1977).     

LIQUIDITY AND MATURITY EFFECTS AROUND NEWS RELEASES

We study the effects of liquidity and term-to-maturity following macroeconomic news announcements. To do this we select five instruments that differ in liquidity, or term-to-maturity, or both, and examine their response to the release of macroeconomic news. The results from this study suggest that variance on announcement days is higher in more liquid, longer term-to-maturity instruments. When instruments differ in both term-to-maturity and liquidity, term-to-maturity effects dominate. Tests for persistence in higher volatility in the five instruments following news releases show that most of the effects of the announcements seem to be well absorbed within fifteen minutes of the announcements. However, the evidence also suggests that the effects persist for longer periods in instruments that are more liquid. Term-to-maturity appears to have little or no effect in this instance.     

Dominant markets,staggered openings,and price discovery

This study examines information incorporation and price discovery in closely related markets that witness staggered openings. A theoretical model is presented. In this framework, one market, termed dominant, is the venue where most of the price discovery occurs, and the other is termed secondary. The model predicts heightened volatility and order flow in each market when it opens first compared with when it opens second. The effects are predicted to be more pronounced in the dominant market, and is linked to the process of information incorporation. Tests conducted using futures on crude oil (dominant) and gasoline (secondary), two related markets that witness staggered openings, reveal findings consistent with the model's predictions. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark     

Deregulation,news releases,and price discovery

We hypothesize that the firm’s regulatory environment influences the sensitivity of its equity value to information. Using intraday stock price data of utilities operating in differing regulatory environments we test for systematic differences between the responsiveness of stock prices of utility firms operating in deregulated and regulated environments to a common information set. Our findings reveal sharp differences in responses, with those of utilities operating in deregulated environments the strongest, and the responses of utilities in highly regulated environments the weakest. While the evidence supports our hypothesis, in a broader sense, the evidence suggests that deregulation aids in the process of price discovery. We also find evidence that suggests that deregulation, per se, does not lead to higher stock price volatility.      

The Effects of Unanticipated Macroeconomic News on Debt Markets

We examine the effects of unanticipated macroeconomic news on two interest rate futures using intraday data. The surprises are identified on the basis of their potential effects on debt markets (positive or negative) and by their size (large, medium, or small). The results show distinct ex‐post return patterns associated with different categories of news surprises. For example, large surprises have the strongest immediate effects whereas negative surprises have the longest persisting effects. Tests that examine the separate effects of each announcement suggest that debt responses vary with the size and potential effect of the news surprise in each announcement.     

Coming to the Nuisance: An Economic Analysis from an Incomplete Contracts Perspective

We construct a model in which an investment opportunity arisesfor a first mover before it knows the identity of a second moverand in which joint location results in a negative externality.Contracts are inherently incomplete since the first mover cannotbargain over its ex ante investment decision with the anonymoussecond mover. Given this departure from the setting of the Coasetheorem, the allocation of property rights over the externalityhas real effects on social welfare. We investigate the relativeefficiency of property rights regimes used in practice: injunctions,damages, the ruling in the Spur Industries case, etc. The firstbest can be obtained by allocating property rights (in particularthe right to sue for damages) to the second mover. Allocatingproperty rights to the first mover, as a "coming to the nuisance"rule entails, leads to overinvestment. In contrast to conventionalwisdom, this inefficiency persists even if a monopoly landownercontrols all the land on which the parties may locate.     

Political Business Cycles,Elections and Entrepreneurial Finance: A Framework

Political processes affect the real economy. An important channel through which politics affects economics is uncertainty. It has been observed that political uncertainty is high around national elections and negatively affects corporate investments and foreign capital inflows. If national elections affect corporations and foreign investors, we should expect them to also affect entrepreneurial finance provided by investors like venture capitalists (VCs). To add to that, in a complex federal democracy, state level politics is a significant source of political uncertainty. This is the first paper to examine the impact of national and state elections on entrepreneurial finance and provides a framework of VC investment behavior in the face of political uncertainty. We find that VC investments decrease significantly due to political uncertainty around national and state elections. VCs respond strongly to national elections by decreasing the total investment value and the number of deals in election years. However, they give a softer response to regional political uncertainty around state elections by decreasing only the average deal size. The findings have important implications for governments, regulators and policymakers, and open up an opportunity to examine a variety of new questions which can provide a more detailed and nuanced understanding of the impact of elections on VC investments.