Liquid markets and competition

A market is liquid if no individual's actions have a big effect on the prices of goods traded in that market. Perfectly competitive markets are therefore perfectly liquid. It is well known that market liquidity can be achieved by increasing the number of traders so that individual trades are small compared to total trades. We show that even when there are only few traders, market liquidity can be achieved through large short sales in which net trades are small relative to gross trades. In particular, for a natural variant of the market game which permits unlimited short sales, we show that there is always a Nash equilibrium allocation arbitrarily close to a competitive equilibrium allocation. Of course, not all NE are near competitive. Only the large-short-sales NE are nearly liquid and hence close to CE.     

融券约束和市场定价效率*——基于我国股票市场转融通的准自然实验证据

本文从融券约束的视角出发，研究我国股票市场融券机制对标的股票价格发现效率的影响。相比于融券交易量，融券约束可以更好地识别融券机制的作用。因为它可以从交易渠道、信息渠道、外部监管渠道对股价产生影响。笔者利用转融通的实施作为准自然实验，识别出了融券约束放松后标的股票价格发现效率的变化。实证结果显示融券约束放松后：（1）在市场下跌的情况下股价的共同趋势增强，意味着此时股价中包含的个股特质性信息含量降低，而市场上涨时则不存在这种效应；（2）股价对市场信息的反应速度增快；（3）股价更加接近随机游走，即股价的可预测性降低。本文的政策启示是，适当降低融券约束、扩大机构投资者比例、保持较高的融券交易准入门槛以及加强投资者教育可以促进融券机制发挥积极作用。     

Asset illiquidity and market shutdowns in competitive equilibrium

This paper introduces asymmetric information in a competitive asset market into a dynamic general-equilibrium model with borrowing constraints. In the presence of borrowing constraints, asset sales become a crucial means for agents to finance opportunities to invest in new assets. In this environment, reduced asset sales due to asymmetric information lower the economic growth rate if agents invest in new assets. The volume of asset trade, however, becomes zero if and only if agents stop investing in new assets because of sufficiently low aggregate productivity. A low economic growth rate with a market shutdown is solely due to low aggregate productivity without any role of the market shutdown.     

The role of short selling threat in corporate environmental disclosure strategies: Evidence from China

Using staggered deregulation of short sales constraints in the Chinese capital market, this study investigates how short selling threat related to corporate environmental disclosure strategies. Our study finds that pilot firms experience a larger increase in hard disclosures, and a larger decrease in soft disclosures after short selling deregulation. Specifically, the increase in hard disclosure is found primarily at good environmental performers, whereas the decrease in soft disclosure is primarily found at poor environmental performers. Further analysis shows that the increase in hard disclosure and the decrease in soft disclosure is significantly more pronounced at firms that are covered by small number of media and analysts, with low institutional ownership and stock liquidity. Overall, our findings suggest that firms might change the type of environmental disclosure to mitigate their exposures to short selling threat, and provide evidence of the disciplining effect of short sales on environmental disclosures.     

Collateral constraints and rental markets

We study a benchmark model with collateral constraints and heterogeneous discounting. Contrarily to a rich literature on borrowing limits, we allow for rental markets. By incorporating this missing market, we show that impatient agents choose to rent rather than to own the collateral in the neighborhood of the deterministic steady state. Consequently, impatient agents are not indebted and borrowing constraints play no role in local dynamics.     

Rigid labour markets with trade and capital mobility: theory and evidence

Abstract We develop a multi‐country model with imperfect labour markets to study the effect of labour market frictions on bilateral trade flows. We use a framework that allows for goods trade and capital mobility and show that labour market imperfections exert opposite effects in the absence of capital mobility (the short run) and its presence (the long run), respectively. In the short run, a higher degree of labour market rigidity decreases the value of total trade, but increases the share of intra‐industry trade for a country that is larger than its trading partner. The reverse effects are observed when capital is allowed to cross country borders. Using data on unemployment and income distribution for 23 OECD countries, we compute the central parameter in our theoretical model that describes the degree of labour market rigidity. We use this new empirical concept to provide evidence for our theoretical findings by means of reduced‐form regressions as well as simulation results of a calibrated general equilibrium model.     

Contracting for the second best in dysfunctional electricity markets

Power pools constitute a set of sometimes complex institutional arrangements for efficiency-enhancing coordination among power systems. In many developing countries, where such institutional arrangements can’t be established over the short term, there still can be scope for voluntary electricity-sharing agreements among power systems. Using a particular type of efficient risk-sharing model with no commitment we demonstrate that second-best coordination improvements can be achieved with low to moderate risks of participants leaving the agreement. In the absence of an impartial market operator who can observe production fluctuations in connected power systems, establishing quasi-markets for trading excess electricity helps to achieve some cooperation in mutually beneficial electricity sharing.     

Intraday return and volatility relationships between the Ibex 35 spot and futures markets

This paper analyses the intraday lead-lag relationships between returns and volatilities in the Ibex 35 spot and futures markets. Using hourly data, we jointly analyze the interactions between markets, estimating a bivariate error correction model with GARCH perturbations which captures stochastically the presence of an intraday U-shaped curve for both spot and futures market volatility. Our findings show a bidirectional causal relationship between market volatilities, with a positive feedback. This two-way transmission of volatility is consistent with market prices evolving according to a long-run equilibrium relationship, and shocks affecting both markets in the same direction. Our empirical results also support a unidirectional cross interaction from futures to spot market returns. This pattern suggests that the futures market leads the spot market in order to incorporate the arrival of new information.     

Wealth effects on the housing markets: Do market liquidity and market states matter?

This paper analyzes the effect of household wealth (including housing and financial wealth) on housing sales and probes their long-run and short-run dynamic relationships. We further examine the short-run effect of financial wealth on housing sales by employing quantile regressions, restricted upon different liquidity (quantile) levels and up-down housing markets, from which the differences between the early and late stages of an uptrend/downtrend can be respectively exhibited. We find that housing wealth, income, and mortgage rates have long-run influences on housing sales. Looking at the short run, we find that housing sales only respond to housing wealth and mortgage rates. When we distinguish the effects of financial wealth on housing sales in up-down housing markets, we note a positive influence of financial wealth on housing sales in down markets, but not in up markets. Particularly, our results show an impact of housing liquidity on the short-run relationships.     

The impact of financial constraints on firm survival and growth

We propose a new approach for identifying and measuring the degree of financial constraint faced by firms and use it to investigate the effect of financial constraints on firm survival and development. Using panel data on French manufacturing firms over the 1996–2004 period, we find that (1) financial constraints significantly increase the probability of exiting the market, (2) access to external financial resources has a positive effect on the growth of firms in terms of sales, capital stock and employment, (3) financial constraints are positively related with productivity growth in the short-run. We interpret this last result as the sign that constrained firms need to cut costs in order to generate the resources they cannot raise on financial markets.     

Cointegration and price discovery in US corn cash and futures markets

Using prices from 182 cash markets from seven states and the Chicago Board of Trade futures, we investigate cointegration and price discovery for corn. Analysis based on cash–futures pairs reveals that cointegration holds for 52 cash markets and failures tend to happen farther away from futures delivery locations. Cash generally are as important as futures prices as information sources in the long run and cash to futures information flow is most likely in the short run. Contributions to price discovery also are measured quantitatively for cointegrated cases. Analysis based on state-level cash prices indicates bidirectional information flow between cash and futures prices under a bivariate model, and futures to cash information flow under the octavariate model with all cash and the futures series. Comparisons of the two models show that including local cash markets in a price relationship model highlights cointegration and the futures’ price discovery role and could benefit cash price forecasting. Finally, evidence of nonlinear causality is found.     

Optimal taxation with endogenously incomplete debt markets

Empirical analyses of labor tax and public debt processes provide prima facie evidence for imperfect government insurance. This paper considers a model in which the government's inability to commit to future policies or to report truthfully its spending needs renders government debt markets endogenously incomplete. A method for solving for optimal fiscal policy under these constraints is developed. Such policy is found to be intermediate between that implied by the complete insurance (Ramsey) model and a model with exogenously incomplete debt markets. In contrast to optimal Ramsey policy, optimal policy in this model is consistent with a variety of stylized fiscal policy facts such as the high persistence of labor tax rates and debt levels and the positive covariance between government spending and the value of government debt sales.     

Computable general equilibrium with financial markets

Summary. There are a wide variety of theoretical general equilibrium models with incomplete security markets. In this paper we give a general recipe for using homotopy algorithm to compute equilibria in these models. In many models, taxes, transaction-costs or other market frictions introduce the additional difficulty that equilibrium prices or choices (but not equilibrium allocations) may be undetermined. In order to demonstrate how these difficulties can be dealt with, we develop a globally convergent algorithm to compute equilibria in a model with cash-in-advance constraints, several goods and incomplete financial markets. Furthermore we describe how to implement the algorithm using a publicly available suite of subroutines for homotopy-pathfollowing. Received: October 1, 1999; revised version: December 16, 2000     

Pricing and price competition in consumer markets

This paper offers a simple model of the price mechanism in markets where buyers take prices as given and prices are set by sellers, as in most consumer markets. It explains price competition by arguing that a market price goes down if—and only if—a price cut appears profitable to a firm even if its competitors follow suit. It also explains why markets do not always clear, that is, why production can be restricted by sales and not capacity at prices set by firms.     

Pre‐sale information and hammer prices for Australian Indigenous art

Using sales data from 1987–2011 we investigate the role that pre‐sale price information plays in determining hammer prices for Australian Indigenous artworks. Importantly, we control for the degree of market concentration as this might influence buyers’ perceptions of fairness in relation to price estimates which are provided by auction houses. Auction houses therefore act as important intermediaries between art sellers and art buyers. The results suggest that pre‐sale estimates and market concentration have a differential impact on hammer prices, depending on the point in the conditional realised price distribution under examination.     

Feedback effects between credit ratings and financial markets

Credit rating agencies often make sharp adjustments in their pronouncements during times of stress in financial markets. These adjustments typically happen with a delay relative to shocks in market prices. Since prices convey information about what market participants are doing and thinking, it is likely that rating agencies take into account market prices when issuing their pronouncements.In order to understand the relationship between credit ratings and financial prices, we develop a model of debt roll-over in which rating agencies incorporate information publicly available in financial markets. We find that (1) rating agencies respond to market prices, i.e. nonfundamental price volatility can shift financing conditions from a low risk spread and high credit rating equilibrium to an equilibrium with high spread and low rating, and (2) rating agencies can anchor expectations about the equilibrium in financial markets, thus serving as an antidote to nonfundamental price volatility.     

Explaining foreign bank entrance in emerging markets

This paper provides a theoretical framework that can explain the empirical observation that foreign banks from industrialized countries tend to increase their involvement in emerging markets in periods of market instability. In this model, domestic banks have (through past lending operations) more soft information on their borrowers available compared to foreign banks. Foreign banks, however, have a superior screening technology that allows them to obtain more hard information about their borrowers’ investment projects. The model has an important implication: Foreign banks increase their market share when credit market conditions deteriorate. The rationale for this finding is that the comparative advantage of the domestic bank loses value in unstable credit market conditions. Thus, the advantage of having a screening technology becomes more important and allows the foreign bank to increase market share. In times of crisis hard information on projects is relatively more important than soft information on the borrower’s history.     

Uncertainty assessment in socially responsible and Islamic stock markets in the short and long terms: an ARDL approach

This study measures financial uncertainty for two classes of alternative financial assets (Dow Jones Islamic and Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes) and the conventional US stock market (Dow Jones Industrial Index) for the period of 1999–2017, using an asymmetric exponential GARCH model. Using an ARDL model, we propose an intertemporal dynamic analysis of uncertainty for Islamic and socially responsible stock markets. Our findings show that, first, conventional and ethical investments present high comparable levels of uncertainty for which the dynamics is time-varying. Second, uncertainty in the conventional US stock market has a significant and positive effect on the uncertainty in alternative stock markets. Thus, uncertainty characterizes conventional and ethical stock markets both in the short and long terms. In particular, while the short-term uncertainty of ethical markets might be associated with their characteristics, the long-term aspect of uncertainty for ethical funds is rather associated with the effect of the conventional stock market environment. Although these findings show mean-reversion and uncertainty spillovers from the alternative stock markets to the conventional US one, they suggest lack of safety and certainty for investments in ethic markets, which remain fragile and closely dependent on the conventional market.     

Acquisition of Information and Share Prices: An Empirical Investigation of Cognitive Dissonance

Abstract. This paper deals with the determinants of agents' acquisition of information. Our econometric evidence shows that the general index of Italian share‐prices and the series of Italy's financial newspaper sales are cointegrated, and the former series Granger‐causes the latter, thereby giving support to the cognitive dissonance hypothesis: (non‐professional) agents tend to buy the newspaper when share prices are high and not to buy it when share prices are low. Instead, we do not find support for the hypothesis that the agents acquire information in order to trade in the stock market: we find no relationship between quantities exchanged in the market and newspaper sales, nor between stock market volatility and newspaper sales.     

A note on the use of businessmen as subjects in sealed offer markets

Using the data from sealed offer laboratory markets, we compare the price and quality choices of student subjects with those of businessmen subjects. The businessmen subjects were public accounting firm partners and corporate financial officers. This is of interest since the financial officer-auditor relationship is one particular application of the elementary principal-agent model which the laboratory environment was designed to test. Using several different performance measures we are unable to reject the null hypothesis that the average performance of the two subject pools were the same. However, the market using businessmen subjects generally exhibited greater variance than the market using students.