The effect of asymmetric information on product market outcomes

We explore how asymmetric information in financial markets affects outcomes in product markets. Difference-in-difference tests around brokerage house merger/closure events (which increase asymmetric information through reductions in analyst coverage) indicate worse industry-adjusted sales growth for shocked firms than for their peers. Our results are consistent with Bolton and Scharfstein's (1990) tradeoff between investor agency concerns and predation risk. Further support is found in stronger treatment effects among firms with ex ante greater agency concerns, financing constraints, asymmetric information, and those operating in ex ante more competitive (fluid) product market spaces. Our results are concentrated in industries where we can clearly identify either net firm entry or exit.     

Hurst exponent behavior and assessment of the MENA stock markets efficiency

In this paper, we test the evolving efficiency of MENA stock markets. Our empirical approach is founded on the behavior of the Hurst exponent over time. We computed the Hurst exponent using a rolling sample with a time window of 4 years. The empirical investigation has been conducted on the major Middle East and North African stock markets. The sample data covers in daily frequency the period (January 1997 to December 2007). Our empirical results show that all MENA stock returns exhibit long-range memory and certain markets are becoming more efficient. Ranking MENA stock markets by efficiency with our measures of long-range dependence have shown that Israel's, Turkey's and Egypt's markets are the less inefficient markets in this region. Furthermore, we have founded evidence of statistically significant rank correlation between the measure of long-range dependence and average trading costs, market capitalization and anti-self-dealing index, which suggests that these variables play a role in explaining these differences in the stage of inefficiency.     

Biased information weight processing in stock markets

The concepts of over- and underreaction are frequently used in behavioral financial research to explain investor behavior and resulting market phenomena. This research often makes arbitrary assumptions about which of the two biases is prevalent in a specific situation although psychological research offers more explicit insights. Investors overreact towards information of low weight and underreact if the information has high weight (high reliability). We propose a model that transfers these experimental findings to a financial market setting. Our time-series and cross-sectional empirical analyses support the hypothesis that investors misperceive information weight, which leads to short-term predictability in returns.     

The jump component of S&P 500 volatility and the VIX index

Much research has investigated the differences between option implied volatilities and econometric model-based forecasts. Implied volatility is a market determined forecast, in contrast to model-based forecasts that employ some degree of smoothing of past volatility to generate forecasts. Implied volatility has the potential to reflect information that a model-based forecast could not. This paper considers two issues relating to the informational content of the S&P 500 VIX implied volatility index. First, whether it subsumes information on how historical jump activity contributed to the price volatility, followed by whether the VIX reflects any incremental information pertaining to future jump activity relative to model-based forecasts. It is found that the VIX index both subsumes information relating to past jump contributions to total volatility and reflects incremental information pertaining to future jump activity. This issue has not been examined previously and expands our understanding of how option markets form their volatility forecasts.     

A productivity analysis of Central and Eastern European banking taking into account risk decomposition and environmental variables

This paper develops a Luenberger productivity index that is applied to a technology where desirable and undesirable outputs are jointly produced and are possibly negative. The components of this Luenberger productivity index - the efficiency change and the components of the technological shift - are then decomposed into factors determined by the technology, adjusted and then for ‘risk and environment’, ‘risk management’ and ‘environmental effects’. The method is applied to Central and Eastern European banks operating during 1998-2003 utilising three alternative input/output methodologies (intermediation, production and profit/revenue). Additionally, the comparative analysis of the sensitivity of the productivity indices in the choice of the methodologies is undertaken using statistical and kernel density tests. It is found that the main driver of productivity change in Central and Eastern European banks is technological improvement. That is, in the beginning of the analysed period, the results hinged on the banks ability to capitalise on advanced technology and successfully take into account ‘risk and environmental’ factors. Whereas, in later periods, one of the most important factors of technological improvement/decline was ‘risk management’. Finally, the tests employed confirm previous findings, such as Pasiouras (2008)in this journal, that different input/output methodologies produce statistically different productivity results. Finally, we find that external factors, such as ‘risk in the economy’ and banking production, and a ‘corruption perception’ affect the productivity of banks.     

Shareholder Coordination,Information Diffusion and Stock Returns

We show that the quality of information‐sharing networks linking firms’ institutional investors has stock return predictability implications. We find that firms with high shareholder coordination experience less local comovement and less post‐earnings announcement drift, consistent with the notion that information‐sharing networks facilitate information diffusion and improve stock price efficiency. In support of the view that coordination acts as an information diffusion channel, we document that the stock return performance of firms with high shareholder coordination leads that of firms with low shareholder coordination.     

Do Decomposed Financial Ratios Predict Stock Returns and Fundamentals Better?

We investigate the prediction of excess returns and fundamentals by financial ratios, which include dividend‐price ratios, earnings‐price ratios, and book‐to‐market ratios, by decomposing financial ratios into a cyclical component and a stochastic trend component. We find both components predict excess returns and fundamentals. Cyclical components predict increases in future stock returns, while stochastic trend components predict declines in future stock returns in long horizons. This helps explain previous findings that financial ratios in the absence of decomposition find weak predictive power in short horizons and some predictive power in long horizons. We also find both components predict fundamentals.     

Predictability of the simple technical trading rules: An out‐of‐sample test

In a true out-of-sample test based on fresh data we find no evidence that several well-known technical trading strategies predict stock markets over the period of 1987 to 2011. Our test safeguards against sample selection bias, data mining, hindsight bias, and other usual biases that may affect results in our field. We use the exact same technical trading rules that Brock, Lakonishok, and LeBaron (1992) showed to work best in their historical sample. Further analysis shows that this poor out-of-sample performance most likely is not due to the market becoming more efficient – instantaneously or gradually over time – but probably a result of bias.     

Can mispricing explain the value premium?

Empirical research finds that stocks with low market-to-book (MTB) ratios outperform stocks with high MTB ratios. Rhodes-Kropf, Robinson, and Viswanathan separate the MTB ratio into mispricing and growth options components. We report that the mispricing component, but not the growth options component, predicts abnormal returns for up to 5 years. We also find that the mispricing component, but not the growth options component, provides incremental information relative to existing asset pricing models. Moreover, after controlling for mispricing, value no longer beats growth. Overall, our evidence is consistent with a behavioral explanation of the value premium.     

Systematic liquidity risk and stock price reaction to shocks

This study examines the relationship between systematic liquidity risk and stock price reaction to large 1‐day price changes (or shocks). We base our analysis on a yearly updated constituents list of the FTSE All share index. Our overall results are consistent with the price continuation hypothesis, which suggests that positive (negative) shocks will be followed by positive (negative) abnormal returns. However, further analysis indicates that stocks with low systematic liquidity risk react efficiently to both positive and negative shocks, whereas stocks with high systematic liquidity risk underreact to both positive and negative shocks. Our results are valid irrespective of various robustness tests such as size of the shock, size of the firm, month‐of‐the‐year and day‐of‐the‐week effects. We conclude that trading on price patterns following shocks may not be profitable, as it involves taking substantial liquidity exposure.     

Economic significance of predictability in Australian equities

This paper examines evidence of predictability in Australian equities using both statistical and economic metrics of significance. A probit‐based predictive model is used to forecast the probability that the 1 month ahead excess market return will be positive. Funds under management are then switched between equities and fixed income on the basis of this forecast. Although the statistical evidence of the model's predictive ability is mixed, the results suggest convincing evidence of an economically significant degree of return predictability. A $A1 investment in the switching strategy (market) in January 1980 grows to over $A55 ($A39) by June 2007. Although the economic significance of the switching strategy remains even in the presence of high transaction costs, robustness checks suggest that the seemingly impressive full‐sample results might be sample specific. The apparent superiority of the portfolio‐switching strategy can be traced to a handful of observations early in the study during which the predictive model provides a timely signal to exit equities. There is little evidence that the predictive model has forecasting ability across the entire sample. As such, this paper serves both to illustrate how alternate metrics of return predictability can lead to divergent conclusions, and to emphasize the importance of subjecting apparent findings of predictability to robustness checks.     

Short‐Horizon Return Predictability in International Equity Markets

This study measures the degree of short‐horizon return predictability of 50 international equity markets and examines how its variation is related to the indicators of equity market development. Two multiple‐horizon variance ratio tests are employed to measure the degree of return predictability. We find evidence that return predictability is negatively correlated with publicly available indicators of equity market development. Our cross‐sectional regression analysis shows that the per capita gross domestic product, market turnover, investor protection, and absence of short‐selling restrictions are correlated with cross‐market variations in return predictability.     

Us knows us in the UK: On director networks and CEO compensation

We analyze the relation between CEO compensation and networks of executive and non-executive directors for all listed UK companies over the period 1996-2007. We examine whether networks are built for reasons of information gathering or for the accumulation of managerial influence. Both indirect networks (enabling directors to collect information) and direct networks (leading to more managerial influence) enable the CEO to obtain higher compensation. Direct networks can harm the efficiency of the remuneration contracting in the sense that the performance sensitivity of compensation is then lower. We find that in companies with strong networks and hence busy boards the directors' monitoring effectiveness is reduced which leads to higher and less performance-sensitive CEO compensation. Our results suggest that it is important to have the ‘right’ type of network: some networks enable a firm to access valuable information whereas others can lead to strong managerial influence that may come at the detriment of the firm and its shareholders. We confirm that there are marked conflicts of interest when a CEO increases his influence by being a member of board committees (such as the remuneration committee) as we observe that his or her compensation is then significantly higher. We also find that hiring remuneration consultants with sizeable client networks also leads to higher CEO compensation especially for larger firms.     

Index arbitrage and the pricing relationship between Australian stock index futures and their underlying shares

This paper examines the mispricing of Australian stock index futures. Exogenous and endogenous price volatility is confirmed to have a positive impact on the mispricing spread, after filtering out predictable time series components. More accurate pricing associated with surprise trading volume in the underlying stocks is consistent with arbitrageurs acting to narrow price disparities relative to the futures market. Ex‐ante interest rate volatility is the primary source of risk faced by arbitrageurs and fluctuations in the transaction cost of opening index arbitrage positions influence the extent to which they drive prices towards theoretical fair values.     

Momentum and post-earnings-announcement drift anomalies: The role of liquidity risk

This paper investigates the components of liquidity risk that are important for understanding asset-pricing anomalies. Firm-level liquidity is decomposed into variable and fixed price effects and estimated using intraday data for the period 1983–2001. Unexpected systematic (market-wide) variations of the variable component rather than the fixed component of liquidity are shown to be priced within the context of momentum and post-earnings-announcement drift (PEAD) portfolio returns. As the variable component is typically associated with private information [e.g., Kyle, 1985. Econometrica 53, 1315–1335], the results suggest that a substantial part of momentum and PEAD returns can be viewed as compensation for the unexpected variations in the aggregate ratio of informed traders to noise traders.     

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.     

DO DEALERS INFER INFORMATION FROM ORDER FLOW?

I examine strategic behavior among dealers in the NASDAQ market and document that there is a lead quote‐setting dealer in each security and that the quotes posted by this leader are informative. Other dealers free‐ride this information by following the lead quote‐setting dealer. The lead dealer can be identified by two information signals: (1) percentage of time spent on the inside market (i.e., posting inside quotes), and (2) trade volume transacted. Dealers that free‐ride the leader's quotes quickly update their posted quotes in the same direction as the leader's quote change. My findings suggest that directing trade to the lead dealer may be more advantageous than randomly routing trade.     

Settlement delays in the money market

We track 38,000 money market trades from execution to delivery and return, and provide a first empirical analysis of settlement delays in financial markets. In accord with the predictions of recent models of strategic settlement of financial claims, we document a tendency by lenders to delay delivery of loaned funds until the afternoon hours. We find banks to follow a simple strategy to manage the risk of account overdrafts, by delaying settlement of large payments relative to that of small payments. More sophisticated strategies such as increasing delays when own liquid balances are low and when dealing with small trading partners play a marginal role. We find evidence of strategic delay also when returning borrowed funds, although we can explain a smaller fraction of the dispersion in delays in the return than in delivery leg of money market lending.     

Single Market effects on productivity in the German insurance industry

The Single Market project of the European Commission was supposed to foster productivity growth in the financial service industry. We assess its consequences on productivity development in the German insurance industry, one of the largest insurance markets within the European Union, by applying Data Envelopment Analysis to a panel of German insurance companies. We estimate standard and bootstrapped efficiency scores for the years 1991 through 2006 and apply a test on scale efficiency based on bootstrapped statistics. Furthermore, we compute a Malmquist index and test for different types of productivity convergence across firms.     

Hidden Gems: Do market participants respond to performance expectations revealed in compensation disclosures?

We find that a new compensation disclosure item on expected payouts from performance-based stock grants reveals unique information regarding future firm performance. Extracting inferred performance expectations from the disclosures, we find that firms disclosing the highest expected grant payout significantly outperform in ROA, Q, sales growth, and profit margin over the next two years, while those disclosing the lowest expected payout underperform. The embedded information is not captured by other information channels, such as managerial earnings guidance, 10-K sentiment, insider selling activities, unexplained CEO pay, and analyst forecasts. Investors and analysts do not fully incorporate the information and are later surprised around earnings announcement days. A portfolio that buys firms with the highest performance expectation and shorts firms with the lowest expectation earns significantly positive abnormal returns. Our findings suggest that the enhanced compensation disclosure contains valuable information, but investors underreact to information that is difficult to collect and process.