Continuous-time trading and the emergence of probability

This paper establishes a non-stochastic analog of the celebrated result by Dubins and Schwarz about reduction of continuous martingales to Brownian motion via time change. We consider an idealized financial security with continuous price paths, without making any stochastic assumptions. It is shown that typical price paths possess quadratic variation, where “typical” is understood in the following game-theoretic sense: there exists a trading strategy that earns infinite capital without risking more than one monetary unit if the process of quadratic variation does not exist. Replacing time by the quadratic variation process, we show that the price path becomes Brownian motion. This is essentially the same conclusion as in the Dubins–Schwarz result, except that the probabilities (constituting the Wiener measure) emerge instead of being postulated. We also give an elegant statement, inspired by Peter McCullagh’s unpublished work, of this result in terms of game-theoretic probability theory.     

Are price limits really bad for equity markets?

Despite widely documented criticisms, price-limit rules are present in many equity markets around the world. Using a game-theoretic model, we argue that, if the cost of monitoring a market is high, price-limit rules are beneficial. Empirical tests based on a cross section of 43 equity markets across five continents support our theoretical prediction. We find that the probability of the existence of price-limit rules is greater in markets that incur higher monitoring costs due to poorer business disclosure, more corruption and less efficiency in legal, regulatory and technological environments.     

Tote arbitrage and lock opportunities in racetrack betting

A game-theoretic approach to the investigation of arbitrage opportunities based on combinations of exotic wagers for the same event is described. This situation is also known as a ‘lock’ or ‘Dutch Book’. The technique is applied to recent totalizator data from Australian thoroughbred races. It appears that such opportunities appear fairly regularly, at least according to published final dividends for various bet types. The method is demonstrated in some detail on a particular example.     

Strategic Auditor Behavior and Going-Concern Decisions

This paper analyzes a game-theoretic model in which a client can potentially avoid a going-concern opinion and its self-fulfilling prophecy by switching auditors. Incumbent auditors are less willing to express a going-concern opinion the more credible the client's threat of dismissal and the stronger the self-fulfilling prophecy effect. Similarly, the client is more willing to switch auditors the more likely it is that auditors' reporting judgments will differ and the stronger the self-fulfilling prophecy effect. Further, with greater noise in the auditor's forecast of client viability, the auditor tends to express fewer going-concern opinions.     

不同货币总量的比较及其对中国的启示

官方公布的简单相加货币总量违背消费者行为理论。作为对简单相加总量的一种改进,学者们目前提出了迪维西亚货币总量、现金等价物货币总量、费雪货币存量指数和动量化货币。本文分析了各货币总量理论上的优缺点,并通过归纳和梳理相关文献,基于可测性、可控性、相关性三个原则,认为迪维西亚总量最适合作当前中国货币政策的中介目标,因而值得进一步深入研究。     

Optimal credit limit management under different information regimes

Credit limit management is of paramount importance for successful short-term credit risk management, even more so when the situation in credit and financial markets is tense. We consider a continuous-time model where the credit provider and the credit taker interact within a game-theoretic framework under different information structures. The model with complete information provides decision-theoretic insights into the problem of optimal limit policies and motivates more complicated information structures. Moving to a partial information setup, incentive distortions emerge that are not in the bank’s interest. We discuss how these distortions can effectively be reduced by an incentive-compatible contract. Finally, we provide some practical implications of our theoretical results.     

Modernity, Modernization and the Deinstitutionalization of Incremental Budgeting in Local Government

Governmental reform programs in the UK have a long history of failed attempts to end incrementalism in local government budgeting. Drawing on structuration theory, incrementalism is presented as institutionalized organizational behaviour. From this perspective, the recent New Labour reform agenda may be interpreted via a theory of de‐institutionalization. The approach is illustrated through an analysis of recent developments in a large UK metropolitan authority where new political structures, inspection regimes and regulatory pressures are beginning to challenge incrementalism. A new belief in the measurability of public sector performance seems to be legitimized by a post‐bureaucratic modernity rather than any significant technical innovations.     

Organizational control systems in research and development

This paper empirically examines an organizational control framework in research and development (R/D) settings. Data were collected from 76 R/D work group leaders. Analysis of the data indicates that the importance of controls is associated with knowledge of the task transformation process (technological uncertainty) but not with measurability of the work group's outputs, task complexity or task dependence. It is suggested that the results of this and other research indicate the need for a more complete theoretical framework as well as attention to measurement issues.     

Conducting the international orchestra: Bank of England leadership under the classical gold standard

A large literature assigns to the Bank of England a leadership role in the management of the classical gold standard. This paper documents the exceptional behavior of the Bank of England's discount rate — in particular, that it tended to lead discount rates abroad. It then develops a game-theoretic analysis of central bank interaction under the classical gold standard. Sterling's reserve currency status is shown to provide a rationale for Stackelberg leadership by the Bank of England. Contrary to popular notions, however, Britain's foreign creditor status does not provide a basis for the Bank of England's leadership strategy.     

Risk aversion and price limits in futures markets

Assuming that a representative trader is risk-neutral, Brennan [1986. Journal of Financial Economics 16, 213–233] shows that price limits, in conjunction with margins, may help reduce the default risk, lower the margin requirement, and decrease the total contract cost. We show that Brennan's result is true only when the trader's degree of risk aversion is low and the precision of additional information about the equilibrium futures price is also low. When the trader either is more risk-averse or can receive precise information, price limits become ineffective in either reducing the default probability, cutting down the margin requirement, or lowering the contract cost.     

Collusive tax evasion and social norms

Although collusive tax evasion by buyers and sellers of commodities and also by employers and employees is widespread all over the world, it has rarely been analyzed in the tax evasion literature. To fill this gap and to compare collusive tax evasion with independent tax evasion, this paper develops a simple noncooperative game-theoretic model and confirms the model’s predictions in a laboratory experiment. Because collusive tax evasion involves social interaction, this paper focuses on the effect of social norms and theoretically and empirically demonstrates that the tax compliance norm has a stronger negative effect on the magnitude of collusive tax evasion than on independent tax evasion. The reason for this result is that in a collusive tax evasion game with multiple equilibria social norms affect the range of equilibria and act as an equilibrium selection device, whereas social norms need to be strongly internalized to change the behavior of taxpayers who evade taxes unobservedly.     

Capital requirements and business cycle regimes: Forward-looking modelling of default probabilities

This paper proposes a forward-looking model for time-varying capital requirements, which finds application within Basel II. The model rests on the relationship between default rates and the business cycle: by positing two regimes, expansion and recession, and by forecasting the associated probabilities, the default probability for each rating class is defined as the expected value of a default rate whose distribution is a mixture of an expansion and a recession distribution. The application to US data over the forecasting period 1971–2002 provides evidence that the model makes it possible to preserve the risk sensitivity of the capital requirement and at the same time to dampen procyclicality.     

The asymmetric behavior and procyclical impact of asset correlations

This paper examines the behavior of asset correlations with the market returns in the asymptotic single risk factor (ASRF) approach of the Basel II accord on regulatory capital requirement. Over a sample period from 1988 to 2007, we find that asset correlations are positively related to firm size, but negatively related to firm default probability. Asset correlations are also industry specific, as firms in media, transportation, pharmaceutical, and semiconductor industries exhibit higher asset correlations than those in retail and consumer staples. Most importantly, asset correlations are asymmetric and have a procyclical impact on the real economy after controlling for these effects. They tend to rise during economic downturns, but decline during economic upturns. The average magnitude of the rise is larger than that of the decline. These findings suggest that asset correlations may be underestimated during economic downturns, and may provide policy implications for the capital requirement framework.     

Incentives and financial crises: Microfounded macroprudential regulation

We provide a micro-based rationale for macroprudential capital regulation of financial intermediaries (banks) by developing a model in which bankers can privately undertake a costly effort and reduce the probability of adverse shocks to their asset holdings that force liquidation (deterioration risk). A decline in the fundamental risk of assets ameliorates funding conditions, boosting the banks’ ability to expand their balance sheets. In principle, a higher continuation value would improve incentives to put effort. However, the rise in asset demand and prices also increases the payoff in liquidation, eventually reducing the equilibrium optimal effort. Poor incentives impose socially inefficient liquidation and can be corrected through a regulatory capital requirement. We show that the requirement should be high when fundamental risk is low. Therefore, the model suggests a theoretical foundation for macroprudential regulation and the countercyclical capital buffer of Basel III.     

Bank Capital and Risk: Is Voluntary Disclosure Enough?

This paper considers whether banks have an incentive to disclose accurate information concerning their risk and capital adequacy. State-of-the-art capital regulation relies on quantitative capital requirements, bank supervision, and public disclosure of information to the markets. Is voluntary regulatory disclosure of risk information sufficient to achieve policy objectives? The game-theoretic model of this paper suggests that voluntary disclosure can be usefully supplemented with other regulatory tools, in particular with direct supervision and financial market discipline.     

Banks’ intraday liquidity management during operational outages: Theory and evidence from the UK payment system

We investigate how settlement banks in the United Kingdom’s large-value payment system deal with intraday liquidity and operational risk. In particular, we are interested in payments behaviour towards a bank that is, for operational reasons, unable to make but able to receive payments. If other banks did not sufficiently monitor their outgoing payments, these operational shocks could impact the entire payment system because the affected bank could absorb liquidity from the system. Our game-theoretic model predicts that only early in the day, when they are uncertain about the payment instructions they might have to execute, banks stop sending payments to a counterparty which is unable to make payments. Using a non-parametric method, we find that this prediction is supported by the data, implying that banks effectively contain the disruption caused by the operational outage: payment flows between healthy banks remain unaffected.     

Setting a fox to keep the geese — Does the comply-or-explain principle work?

The German Corporate Governance Code works according to the comply-or-explain principle. One of its recommendations was to publish the remuneration of the members of the executive board on an individual basis. We examine the characteristics of the firms that complied with the code requirement. Our results indicate that firms that paid higher average remunerations to their management board members were less likely to comply, whereas firms with higher Tobin's Q were more likely to comply. We also document a non-monotonic relation between ownership concentration and the probability of compliance that is consistent with standard corporate governance arguments.Due to the fact that the number of firms complying with the disclosure requirement was low, a new law was passed that mandates disclosure unless the shareholders' meeting (with a 75% majority) decides otherwise. We find that this “loophole” in the new legislation is exploited by smaller firms, firms with comparatively high levels of executive remuneration, and firms with concentrated ownership. We discuss the implications of our results for the effectiveness of the comply-or-explain regulation.     

The impacts of Net Stable Funding Ratio requirement on Banks’ choices of debt maturity

In this paper, we study the impacts of the Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR) requirement on banks’ choices of debt maturity and asset structures, with consequences for banks’ profitability and social welfare. We develop a model in which the manager of a bank determines both debt maturity structure (short-term vs. long-term debt) and asset composition (cash vs. risky assets). To address the incongruence of goals between the bank manager and the bank stakeholders, in our model we assume that the manager receives only a proportion of the bank’s profit in her pay schedule. We demonstrate that the optimal choices of the manager regarding debt maturity and asset structure lead to socially inefficient (second-best) outcomes because the manager internalizes only part of the social benefit. We then study the implications of the NSFR requirement on the manager’s choices and demonstrate that the NSFR requirement can enhance social welfare and reach an efficient (first-best) outcome, if a sufficiently low weight of short-term debt as available stable funding is required by regulation. Further, we find that under the same conditions the NSFR requirement reduces banks’ use of short-term financing and thus increases the probability of banks’ survival and profits from the ex ante point of view, while it decreases banks’ profits from the ex post point of view, since it reduces the threshold for banks’ survival. Our main results have some interesting empirical implications: under certain conditions, the NSFR requirement may reduce both bank failures and banks’ observed profits.     

Engagement partner specialization and corporate disclosure transparency

This paper explores the association of audit partners' industry specialization with corporate disclosure transparency and the latter's informativeness. The distinctive institutional designs of partner signature requirement and Information Disclosure and Transparency Ranking System (IDTRS) adopted in Taiwan allow us to empirically address the issue. We posit and find that the rankings from the IDTRS are higher for firms audited by industry specialist engagement partners than for firms audited by non-specialist engagement partners. Additionally, the results show that the probability of informed trade (PIN) proxy for information asymmetry is negatively associated with the rankings for clients of industry specialist engagement partners, but not for clients of industry non-specialist engagement partners. The results are robust with respect to alternative estimation method and alternative measures of industry specialization. Overall, the evidence suggests that industry specialist engagement partners enhance the credibility of corporate disclosure transparency, through which information asymmetry is further declined. The evidence provides policy implications to the partner signature requirement adopted in Taiwan and China.     

LIBOR and swap market models and measures

A self-contained theory is presented for pricing and hedging LIBOR and swap derivatives by arbitrage. Appropriate payoff homogeneity and measurability conditions are identified which guarantee that a given payoff can be attained by a self-financing trading strategy. LIBOR and swap derivatives satisfy this condition, implying they can be priced and hedged with a finite number of zero-coupon bonds, even when there is no instantaneous saving bond. Notion of locally arbitrage-free price system is introduced and equivalent criteria established. Stochastic differential equations are derived for term structures of forward libor and swap rates, and shown to have a unique positive solution when the percentage volatility function is bounded, implying existence of an arbitrage-free model with such volatility specification. The construction is explicit for the lognormal LIBOR and swap “market models”, the former following Musiela and Rutkowski (1995). Primary examples of LIBOR and swap derivatives are discussed and appropriate practical models suggested for each.