Margin,Short Selling,and Lotteries in Experimental Asset Markets

The robustness of bubbles and crashes in markets for assets with finite lives is perplexing. This paper reports the results of experimental asset markets in which participants trade two assets. In some markets, price bubbles form. In these markets, traders pay higher prices for the asset with lottery characteristics (i.e., a claim on a large, unlikely payoff). However, institutional design has a significant impact on deviations in prices from fundamental values, particularly for an asset with lottery characteristics. Price run-ups and crashes are moderated when traders finance purchases of the assets themselves and are allowed to short sell.     

Earnings Quality and the Equity Risk Premium: A Benchmark Model*

This paper solves a model that links earnings quality to the equity risk premium in an infinite‐horizon consumption capital asset pricing model (CAPM) economy. In the model, risk‐averse traders hold diversified portfolios consisting of risk‐free bonds and shares of many risky firms. When constructing their portfolios, traders rely on noisy reported earnings and dividend payments for information about the risky firms. The main new element of the model is an explicit representation of earnings quality that includes hidden accrual errors that reverse in subsequent periods. The model demonstrates that earnings quality magnifies fundamental risk. Absent fundamental risk, poor earnings quality cannot affect the equity risk premium. Moreover, only the systematic (undiversified) component of earnings‐quality risk contributes to the equity risk premium. In contrast, all components of earnings‐quality risk affect earnings capitalization factors. The model ties together consumption CAPM and accounting‐based valuation research into one price formula linking earnings quality to the equity risk premium and earnings capitalization factors.     

Allocative Efficiency of Agrifood Traders: Shrimp Traders in Indonesia

Shrimp is one of Indonesia's most important agricultural export commodities, with an annual export value exceeding $1 billion. If this high-value sector is to remain competitive and continue to grow, rural traders must be able to efficiently allocate scarce labour and factor inputs to trade shrimp. This study tests for factors leading to allocative inefficiency in the shrimp trade, by estimating a stochastic cost frontier on the basis of data from a survey of 200 shrimp traders in Central Java and South Sulawesi. Our results show that larger firms have a distinct cost advantage in trade and, owing in part to greater access to factor markets, are more efficient in allocating factors. Small firms can improve their allocative efficiency and become more competitive by specialising in trading one shrimp variety and by using output contracts to mitigate risk in the output market.     

Bubbles and experience: An experiment with a steady inflow of new traders

We revisit the effect of traders' experience on price bubbles by introducing either one‐third or two‐thirds steady inflow of new traders in each of four consecutive experimental asset markets. We find that bubbles are still reduced in the treatments with a steady inflow of new traders, but at a slower pace compared to the baseline treatment in which new traders are only introduced in the last market. Our analysis of individual trading behavior shows that the slower abatement of bubbles in the inflow treatments can be attributed mainly to the inexperienced traders who make more mistakes than experienced traders.     

Competition,asset build up and export incentives: The role of imperfect credit market

This paper studies the export incentive of credit rationed, competitive and homogenous firms through asset build up highlighting the generic trade-off between competition and asset value in an imperfect credit market where poor and rich firms have different levels of assets. It is a contribution to the issues related to finance and trade in developing countries as raised first in Jones and Marjit (2001, AER). Our theoretical and empirical results indicate that although firms in more competitive industries are likely to be exporters, history of greater local competition before the entry of firms into export market i.e. under autarky, hurts export incentive by limiting cash flows and asset build up. In our set up more intense local competition hence lower price is an advantage to access global markets, but associated low profits and hence lower assets acts a detriment.     

Boundaries of the Tournament Pricing Effect in Asset Markets: Evidence from Experimental Markets

Tournament compensation of asset traders has been shown to promote deconvergence from intrinsic value pricing in an experimental asset market where all traders are so compensated (James and Isaac 2000). This paper explores the extent of this effect as experimental design parameters—proportion of traders facing tournament compensation, details of the tournament contract, and time horizon of the asset being traded—are varied. We find that the original results are replicated using the original parameters, that a tournament contract modified to provide a penalty for underperformance does not necessarily eliminate the effect, and that reducing the proportion of traders facing tournament compensation to half the market largely eliminates the effect.     

Experience and Confidence in an Internet‐Based Asset Market Experiment

The experience effect in asset markets is one that was thought to be settled. As subjects gained experience with the interface and each other, they typically exhibit fewer instances of mispricing and at lower magnitudes. But questions regarding trading experience are not easy to address in the lab with the typical subject pool since the kind of experience one can typically generate in the lab is experience with the experimental environment itself—not with external environments. However, in virtual worlds asset markets are highly evolved, providing a subject pool with skilled and experienced traders that can be accessed via the Internet. This study compares experimental asset markets with participants recruited from virtual world trading groups to experimental markets with participants recruited from the virtual world at large. I further examine trader performance and trading behavior within markets. The findings indicate that asset markets with virtual world participants recruited from trading groups are more prone to exhibit bubbles than are markets with virtual world participants recruited at large. Within condition, experienced traders are less likely to follow fundamentals and more likely to engage in strategies that result in loss of earnings. Excess confidence is rejected as an explanation for this pattern, as confidence is found to be related to higher earnings and fundamental value trading strategies.     

Testing for the uncovered interest parity condition in a small open economy: A state space modelling approach

Do interest rate differentials smoothly mirror the changes in the exchange rate between a small open economy and a large emerging market economy? The literature provides conflicting views on the validity of the uncovered interest parity condition (UIP), including its size and factors influencing the risk premium. We examine the validity of the UIP condition between Nepal and India using time-series data covering the period 1989 – 2019. A state space modelling approach based on the Kalman filter analysis is applied to simulate the risk premium. We find that the UIP condition does not hold for the Nepalese Rupee. A time-varying persistent negative risk premium that dominantly explains interest rate differentials is, instead, found. These findings imply that Nepalese residents prefer to hold foreign assets and continually expect future devaluations of the domestic currency. These present obstacles to developing domestic financial markets and the implementation of a market oriented monetary policy.     

Absence of safe assets and fiscal crisis

This paper develops a fiscal crisis model that explains a mechanism under which low interest rates can coexist with Japan's large outstanding debt. The key idea is that when there is a strong home bias in the asset portfolio of domestic bondholders, these investors turn out to have no access to any assets that hedge fiscal risk. This explains why domestic investors do not request a risk premium on government bonds. In this environment, the interest rate and the default probability are low, and the government can sustain its large debt even under adverse fiscal conditions. As the interest rate does not rise fully to reflect the risk premium, the low interest rate is not always a signal of sound fiscal conditions. The welfare implications of financial market reform are mixed. This reform can improve welfare so long as the government can sustain the debt, but at the same time, it makes it difficult to sustain the debt because the interest rate rises. Quantitative easing is effective in lowering the risk premium.     

Price and Volume Reactions to Public Information Releases: An Experimental Approach Incorporating Traders' Subjective Beliefs*

This paper examines how market prices, volume, and traders' dividend expectations respond to public information releases in laboratory markets for a long-lived financial asset. The objective is to study deviations from the symmetric information risk-neutral rational expectations (RE) benchmark, which predicts no trade in such settings. The results of a series of double-auction and call markets are reported in which traders manage a portfolio of cash and asset shares over 15 rounds of trading. A public signal regarding the value of the liquidating dividend is released every third round, and traders' subjective expectations of the liquidating dividend are elicited each round as cash-motivated forecasts. We find that, despite the public dividend signal, traders' dividend forecasts are heterogeneous. Forecasts and prices both underreact to the public signals, with prices under-reacting more than forecasts. In general, price changes are not closely associated with public signals, and there is greater excess price volatility in double auctions than in call markets. Forty-three percent of trades are inconsistent with the trader's forecasts, and inconsistent trades occur more frequently in the double-auction markets. On average, approximately 10 percent of the outstanding shares are traded in each round, and trading volume is increasing in the mean absolute forecast revision and decreasing in the contemporaneous dispersion in forecasts. These results suggest that differential processing of the public signal and/or speculative trading for short-term gain may help to explain why symmetric information RE predictions are often not supported in empirical and experimental settings. They also suggest that market reactions to public information releases may be influenced by market microstructure.     

Trader Participation in Disclosure: Implications of Interactions with Management

Technological advances are creating a shift in the information disclosure environment allowing more investors to interact with management. We examine three key levels of trader-management interaction to assess the accuracy of traders' market-tested value estimates and resulting market price. These data require an engaging experiment and a complex, contextually rich asset, which we create by playing a popular gaming app before the experiment. Participants view financial information, ask management questions, estimate value, and trade. We find that receiving non-personalized question responses improves trader estimates of value and market price efficiency relative to when traders ask questions but do not expect a response. This occurs because traders exert more effort estimating value and trading. However, receiving personalized versus non-personalized responses harms value estimates and market efficiency. This occurs because traders receiving personalized responses fixate on the interaction with management, dividing their attention and diverting it away from valuing and trading the asset.     

A Closer Look at the Size and Value Premium in Emerging Markets: Evidence from the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange

In this study of asset pricing in emerging markets, two questions are asked. First, Is there a size and value premium in markets outside the USA? Second, Can the multifactor model of Fama and French (1996) capture the cross–section of average stock returns for the Malaysian setting? The answers from this study suggest that size and value premium exist in markets outside the USA. We find that the two mimic portfolios, ‘small minus big’ (SMB) and ‘high minus low’ (HML), generate a return of 17.70% and 17.69% per annum, respectively, while the market generates a return of 1.92% per annum. Our findings suggest that the multi–factor model of Fama and French (1996) is a parsimonious representation of the risk factors for Malaysia, explaining returns in an economically meaningful manner. Our findings also reject the claim that the multifactor model results can be explained by the turn–of–the–year effect.     

上海期货交易所期货价格有效性的实证检验

本文在风险溢价理论框架下,借助协整分析法对上海期货交易所铜、铝期货价格的有效性进行了规范的实证检验。结果显示:距最后交易日前7、14、28天的铝期货市场支持风险溢价假说,在风险溢价条件下具有长期效率;而距最后交易日前7、14天的铜期货市场亦在风险溢价条件下呈有效状态,当距最后交易日28天时,铜期货市场不支持风险溢价假说,但并不能就此得出此时的铜期货市场没有效率的结论。     

The Impact of Macroeconomic Risk on Asset Prices in Ghana, 1997–2002

Abstract: The dwindling nature of overseas development assistance in the early part of the 1990s called for the establishment of capital markets in some African countries, including Ghana, with the view to increasing foreign direct investments and achieving sustainable inflows, growth and development. One important factor which affects the determination of prices and the growth of capital markets is macroeconomic risk which is quite high in developing countries. Following works done on advanced stock markets, this study seeks to investigate the impact of six macroeconomic risk factors on asset pricing in the various industrial classification — financial, manufacturing, food and beverages, distribution and mining under the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) for the period January 1997 to December 2002. Using the arbitrage pricing methodology developed by Ross (1976) and Chen et al. (1986) , the study revealed that investors in Ghana considered three main macroeconomic risk factors — short‐term interest rate risk, inflation risk and the term structure of the country's interest rate in the determination of the various industrial asset prices during the period under consideration. Analysis of the risks and returns profile of the industries also shows that financial assets made the best gains on the market. Both general and specific policy recommendations aimed at improving the performance of the GSE are explored.     

Risk management with interdependent choice

Risks faced by traders from price movements are sometimes magnifiedby the actions of other traders. Risk-management systems whichneglect this feature may give a seriously misleading pictureof the true risks. The hazards arising from this potential blindspotare at their most dangerous when the prevailing conventionalwisdom lulls traders into a false sense of security on the attractivenessof a trading position. The efforts of one trader to reversehis trade makes more acute the need to follow suit on the partof others. For markets dominated by traders with short timehorizons, such interdependence leads to exaggerated price movements.Estimates of 'value at risk' which recognize such interdependenceof actions can diverge substantially from those given by conventionaltechniques.     

Interaction between Foreign and Domestic Investors in the Korean Stock and Futures Markets*

The present paper analyzes the behavioral relations of major investor groups in the stabilized Korean stock and futures markets after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Investor groups cannot be classified as positive or negative feedback traders on market returns when both stock and futures markets are considered, which is inconsistent with the results in Ghysels and Seon (2005). Foreign investors and domestic institutions tend to take opposite positions in both markets. The impact of foreign investors on the basis change is significantly negative in the futures market, whereas domestic institutions have a negative relation in the stock market. This supports the view that selling activity of foreign investors in the futures market pulls the futures price down compared with the index value and, consequently, induces the reverse cash‐and‐carry trade of domestic institutions. This relationship, which negatively influenced the Korean economy during the crisis, as shown in Ghysels and Seon (2005), still exists in the Korean financial markets.     

Facilitating the Provision of Farm Credit: The Role of Interlocking Transactions Between Traders and Zamindars in Crop Marketing Systems in Sindh

Formal credit institutions in Pakistan have largely failed to provide access to farm credit to small and medium-scale landowners, or zamindars. This paper examines interlocked transactions between traders and landowners in the cotton and wheat markets in Sindh that facilitate the provision of credit by traders. It is concluded that the case examined provides an example where traders lend to landowners in a segment of the credit market that approximates competitive behavior, without surplus extraction by traders. Key conditions resulting in this favorable outcome are the existence of both competition for market share and information sharing on borrowers between traders. Whether this outcome is also beneficial for other rural groups who may borrow from landowners, in particular sharecropping tenants, is independent of market relations between landowners and traders and is not determined here.     

数字普惠金融发展影响家庭资产配置结构了吗

2016年,我国政府提出发展数字普惠金融,倡导利用数字化技术提高金融体系的普惠水平。文章以数字普惠金融发展为切入点,研究了其对家庭资产配置的影响。使用2017年CHFS调查数据、北京大学数字普惠金融指数和中国城市统计年鉴数据,实证发现数字普惠金融能显著提高家庭参与金融市场和股票市场的概率,提高配置风险资产和股票资产的比例,此结果经过多种稳健性检验后保持一致。这一影响在城镇地区的家庭和使用第三方支付的家庭中更显著。这一影响的作用机制是数字金融降低了家庭参与成本、增加了金融可得性和扩宽了信息渠道。文章为数字普惠金融发展影响家庭金融行为提供了实证证据。