Underpricing and Market Power in Uniform Price Auctions

In uniform auctions, buyers choose demand schedules as strategiesand pay the same "market clearing" price for units awarded.Despite the widespread use of these auctions, the extant theoryshows that they are susceptible to arbitrarily large underpricing.We make a realistic modification to the theory by letting prices,quantities, and bids be discrete. We show that underpricingcan be made arbitrarily small by choosing a sufficiently smallprice tick size and a sufficiently large quantity multiple.We also show how one might improve revenues by modifying theallocation rule. A trivial change in the design can have a dramaticimpact on prices. Our conclusions are robust to bidders beingcapacity constrained. Finally, we examine supply uncertaintyrobust equilibria.     

Return and Maturity Relationships for Treasury Auctions: Evidence from Turkey

The relationship between the interest rate and the maturity of newly issued bonds provides information on the debt dynamics of an economy as well as on the sustainability of its debt. Such information is crucial especially for countries that have debt‐rollover concerns due to financial stress and/or macroeconomic instability. This study investigates the relationship between treasury auction maturity, which also dictates the debt maturity, and auction interest rates. When the Turkish treasury auction data from 1988 to 2004 are analysed, a reciprocal linkage between auction interest rates and maturities can be observed, especially for the 1995–2000 period, when there were chronic high inflation, high political uncertainty, high public deficits and unsuccessful attempts at stabilisation. This suggests that under an adverse shock, the Treasury decreases the auction maturity in order not to increase interest rates too much. A change in this reciprocal relationship is also reported for the post‐2001 era, which is characterised by decreasing inflation, higher political stability, lower public deficits and successful stabilisation attempts.     

Evidence on Price Stabilization and Underpricing in Early IPO Returns

Using data on 560 firm-commitment initial public offerings of common stock for the 1982–1983 period, we find that the cross-sectional distribution of one-day returns is modeled better as a mixture of two distributions, with the parameter estimates of one distribution being consistent with underpricing and the other with price stabilization. Further, the evidence that early IPO returns are drawn from a mixture distribution persists for at least four weeks. The implications of these results for the analysis of IPO returns are illustrated by examining the influence of a measure of ex ante price uncertainty on IPO pricing.     

The Effect of Leverage on Bidding Behavior: Theory and Evidence from the FCC Auctions

This is an exploration of how bidding behavior of firms in variousauctions is affected by their capital structure. The theoreticalmodel considers a first-price sealed bid and an English auction.We find that as debt levels increase, firms tend to reduce theirbids. The lower bids give the competition incentives to reducetheir bids as well. These results are investigated empiricallyusing data from the 1994–1995 FCC spectrum auctions. Consistentwith the theoretical model, higher debt levels of the biddingfirm and of the competition tend to lead to lower bids. Additionaldeterminants of bidding behavior in these auctions are alsoanalyzed.     

New Measures for Inflation Uncertainty and Disagreement from Treasury Auctions: Alternative to Surveys

In this article, we propose a novel methodology to construct new uncertainty and disagreement measures for the long-term inflation rate with the use of micro data of Treasury auctions. We employ individual bids submitted in Treasury auctions for nominal and inflation indexed bonds. We argue that these newly formed indicators do not have the problems associated with the survey and market-based uncertainty and disagreement measures. We also focus on the interactions of our proposed measures for inflation rate by comparing the measures commonly used in the literature. The findings of this article are believed to enhance the effectiveness of policy-making by introducing new proxies for crucial economic variables and also by providing the opportunity for other emerging economies with inadequate surveys to construct historical uncertainty and disagreement measures for inflation rates.     

Underpricing and Firm Quality in Initial Public Offerings: Evidence from Singapore

Firms seeking initial public listings on the Stock Exchange of Singapore can choose between offering their shares at a fixed price or selling them in two tranches: the first tranche is offered at a fixed price while the issue price of the second tranche is determined via a tender system. Consistent with the existing signalling literature, tendering IPO firms underprice their fixed price tranche more than non-tendering IPO firms. The underpricing in the fixed tranche is recouped through higher proceeds from the tender tranche. Our evidence suggests that IPO firms use the tender option to signal superior firm quality.     

Strategic and Financial Bidders in Takeover Auctions

Using data on auctions of companies, we estimate valuations (maximum willingness to pay) of strategic and financial bidders from their bids. We find that a typical target is valued higher by strategic bidders. However, 22.4% of targets in our sample are valued higher by financial bidders. These are mature, poorly performing companies. We also find that (i) valuations of different strategic bidders are more dispersed and (ii) valuations of financial bidders are correlated with aggregate economic conditions. Our results suggest that different targets appeal to different types of bidders, rather than that strategic bidders always value targets more because of synergies.     

双重上市、IPO抑价与大规模融资行为——来自中国公司IPO的证据

本文以中国1993～2009年期间的1158家IPO(其中A+H公司36家)为样本,实证检验了A+H双重上市与公司IPO行为之间的关系。研究发现:A+H双重上市与单位权益发行价、IPO定价效率、融资规模效率均显著负相关,表明A+H双重上市非但没有给公司带来IPO溢价,反而导致更高的IPO抑价。进一步分析表明,A+H公司的更高IPO抑价与其大规模的股票发行数量显著正相关,正是A+H公司的大规模股票发行迫使发行人和承销商采取低价策略以保证成功IP0,并导致A+H公司具有偏好在热市期上市的择时行为。     

中国利率市场的价格发现——对国债现货、期货以及利率互换市场的研究

本文采用信息份额模型和基于向量自回归(VAR)模型的格兰杰因果检验,研究了国债现货、国债期货和利率互换三个市场之间的价格发现机制。信息份额模型表明,从整体来看利率互换相对于国债期货和国债现货都具有信息优势,而国债期货相对于国债现货具有信息优势。另外,国债期货的价格发现能力相对于另外两个市场都在随时间增强。格兰杰因果检验结果显示,利率互换在价格发现中单向引领国债期货以及国债现货,国债期货单向引领国债现货。所有结果一致表明, 利率互换和国债期货这两种利率衍生产品在引导中国利率市场价格发现中发挥了重要作用。     

Auctions vs. Bookbuilding and the Control of Underpricing in Hot IPO Markets

Market returns before the offer price is set affect the amountand variability of initial public offering (IPO) underpricing.Thus an important question is "What IPO procedure is best adaptedfor controlling underpricing in "hot" versus "cold" market conditions?"The French stock market offers a unique arena for empiricalresearch on this topic, since three substantially differentissuing mechanisms (auctions, bookbuilding, and fixed price)are used there. Using 1992–1998 data, we find that theauction mechanism is associated with less underpricing and lowervariance of underpricing. We show that the auction procedure'sability to incorporate more information from recent market conditionsinto the IPO price is an important reason.     

Cojumping: Evidence from the US Treasury bond and futures markets

The basis between spot and future prices will be affected by jump behavior in each asset price, challenging intraday hedging strategies. Using formal cojumping tests this paper considers the cojumping behavior of spot and futures prices in high frequency US Treasury data. Cojumping occurs most frequently at shorter maturities and higher sampling frequencies. We find that the probability of cojumping is altered by the presence of an anticipated macroeconomic news announcement. The probability of cojumping is particularly affected by news surprises in non-farm payrolls, CPI, GDP and retail sales. However, the two cojumping tests are also more likely to provide contradictory results in the presence of surprises in non-farm payrolls. On these occasions the market does not clearly signal its short term pricing behavior.     

Auctions with resale markets: an exploratory model of Treasury bill markets

This article develops a model of competitive bidding with aresale market. The primary market is modeled as a common-valueauction, in which bidders participate for the purpose of resale.After the auction the winning bidders sell the objects in asecondary market, and the buyers in the secondary market, receiveinformation about the bids submitted in the auction. The effectof this information linkage between the primary auction andthe secondary market on bidding behavior in the primary auctionis examined. The auctioneer's expected revenues from organizingthe primary market as a discriminatory auction versus a uniform-priceauction are compared, and sufficient conditions under whichthe uniform-price auction will yield higher expected revenuesare obtained. An example of our model, with the primary marketorganized as a discriminatory auction, is the U.S. Treasurybill market.     

核准制保荐经历与科创板IPO定价——来自保荐代表人的经验证据

本文采用保荐代表人个人层面的数据,研究保代在核准制市场的保荐经历对其科创板IPO定价的影响.我们研究发现保代的核准制保荐经历有利于提升科创板的IPO定价效率,表现为当保代承担过核准制市场的保荐业务、在核准制市场的保荐次数较多,或者核准制市场客户业绩表现较好时,其科创板客户的IPO抑价水平更低.进一步检验发现在上市中,保代的核准制保荐经历可以降低科创板客户遭受的监管问询次数,而且当核准制客户业绩表现较好时,科创板问询语调也更加偏向积极;在上市后,保代的核准制保荐经历可以降低短期股价波动率,而且能够为投资者带来更高的长期超额回报;另外,有核准制保荐经历的保代会收取一定费用作为声誉溢价.本文的研究对于当前核准制和注册制并存的市场环境,理解和提升保荐代表人在跨市场中的价值发现功能具有重要的理论价值和实践意义.     

Stock Price Behavior over Trading and Non-trading Periods: Evidence from the Taiwan Stock Exchange

This paper examines the stock price behavior in the trading and non-trading periods for stocks listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange over 1971-96. The results indicate that the trading-time return variances are higher than the non-trading-time return variances especially for the larger trading-volume quintiles. This result is consistent with the private information hypothesis. Moreover, open-to-open return variances are higher than close-to-close return variances. Since both the opening and the closing transactions are conducted by the call auction procedure, the results are consistent with the trading halt hypothesis but not with the trading mechanism hypothesis.     

Conditional volatility in affine term-structure models: Evidence from Treasury and swap markets

We study the ability of three-factor affine term-structure models to extract conditional volatility using interest rate swap yields for 1991–2005 and Treasury yields for 1970–2003. For the Treasury sample, the correlation between model-implied and EGARCH volatility is between 60% and 75%. For the swap sample, this correlation is rather low or negative. We find that these differences in model performance are primarily due to the timing of the swap sample, and not to institutional differences between swap and Treasury markets. We conclude that the ability of multifactor affine models to extract conditional volatility depends on the sample period, but that overall these models perform better than has been argued in the literature.     

Underpricing of Newly Issued Bonds: Evidence from the Swiss Capital Market

The pricing of newly issued bonds on the Swiss capital market is investigated over the years 1980–1982. The results reveal a slight underpricing of new bonds at the issue date that is roughly equal to the difference in transactions costs between the markets for new and seasoned bonds. Underpricing is no longer observed when the new bonds start to be traded on the stock exchange, that is, after about two days. Tests of several hypotheses show that unexpected changes in interest rates over the offering period explain part of the underpricing.     

The Winner's Curse and Bidder Competition in Acquisitions: Evidence from Failed Bank Auctions

This study examines the effect of bidder competition in acquisitions. We use predictions from auction theory to test whether acquirers of failed banks overpay (the “winner's curse”) when bidding in FDIC sealed-bid purchase and assumption (P&A) transactions (auctions). The empirical results indicate that winning bids tend to increase as the number of competitors increases, as predicted by theory. We also find that bid levels of all bidders increase with increased competition, which is consistent with bidders' failing to adjust for the winner's curse in a common value auction setting. However, additional tests using winning bids only are consistent with both a common value and a private values model, so this result should be interpreted with caution.     

The Market for New Issues: Impact of Offering Price on Price Support and Underpricing

Previous studies have shown that the pattern of first day returns to initialpublic offerings is consistent with the hypotheses of underpricing and price support. We examine two different periods, 1975–1984 and 1996–2002, and find that in each case the measures of price support and underpricing are substantially affected by the initial public offerings' beginning price. During the period 1975–1984, the mean and standard deviation of returns to the price supported group are nearly always zero regardless of price, whileg the mean of the returns to the underpriced group is smile-shaped: high for low-priced and high-priced stocks but lower for stocks offered at intermediate prices. The patterns are different in the most recent data: the mean and standard deviation of both the price supported and underpriced groups are smile-shaped. For the lowest priced stocks, the measures in the later period mirror those for the 1975–1984 period, but for more expensive stocks the measures are substantially higher. The results apply to the first day returns of both firm commitment and best efforts offerings. Once price is taken into account, other than the difference in the probability of price support, the differences among offering types seem to be of secondary importance in explaining first day returns. JEL Classification: 1, G12, G24     

International Evidence on Institutional Trading Behavior and Price Impact

This study characterizes institutional trading in international stocks from 37 countries during 1997 to 1998 and 2001. We find that the underlying market condition is a major determinant of the price impact and, more importantly, of the asymmetry between price impacts of institutional buy and sell orders. In bullish markets, institutional purchases have a bigger price impact than sells; however, in the bearish markets, sells have a higher price impact. This differs from previous findings on price impact asymmetry. Our study further suggests that price impact varies depending on order characteristics, firm‐specific factors, and cross‐country differences.