Arbitrage pricing theory and risk-neutral measures

Abstract We consider a market with countably many risky assets and finite factor structure, as in the “arbitrage pricing theory” of Ross (1976). We prove necessary and sufficient conditions in terms of parameters for the existence of an equivalent risk-neutral measure, i.e., a measure under which each asset return has zero expected value. We relate these conditions to a certain absence of arbitrage property of the model. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 91B24, 91B28 Journal of Economic Literature Classification: G10, G12     

Tests of risk premia in linear factor models

We show that statistical inference on the risk premia in linear factor models that is based on the Fama–MacBeth (FM) and generalized least squares (GLS) two-pass risk premia estimators is misleading when the β$\beta$’s are small and/or the number of assets is large. We propose novel statistics, that are based on the maximum likelihood estimator of Gibbons [Gibbons, M., 1982. Multivariate tests of financial models: A new approach. Journal of Financial Economics 10, 3–27], which remain trustworthy in these cases. The inadequacy of the FM and GLS two-pass t$t$/Wald statistics is highlighted in a power and size comparison using quarterly portfolio returns from Lettau and Ludvigson [Lettau, M., Ludvigson, S., 2001. Resurrecting the (C)CAPM: A cross-sectional test when risk premia are time-varying. Journal of Political Economy 109, 1238–1287]. The power and size comparison shows that the FM and GLS two-pass t$t$/Wald statistics can be severely size distorted. The 95% confidence sets for the risk premia in the above-cited work that result from the novel statistics differ substantially from those that result from the FM and GLS two-pass t$t$-statistics. They show support for the human capital asset pricing model although the 95% confidence set for the risk premia on labor income growth is unbounded. The 95% confidence sets show no support for the (scaled) consumption asset pricing model, since the 95% confidence set of the risk premia on the scaled consumption growth consists of the whole real line, but do not reject it either.     

A dynamic CAPM with supply effect: Theory and empirical results

Breeden [Breeden, D. T. (1979). An intertemporal asset pricing model with stochastic consumption and investment opportunities. Journal of Financial Economics 7, 265–196] and Grinols [Grinols, E. L. (1984). Production and risk leveling in the intertemporal capital asset pricing model. The Journal of Finance 39, 5, 1571–1595] and Cox et al. [Cox, J. C., Ingersoll, J. E., Jr., & Ross, S. A. (1985). An intertemporal general equilibrium model of asset prices. Econometrica 53, 363–384] have described the importance of supply side for the capital asset pricing. Black [Black, S. W. (1976). Rational response to shocks in a dynamic model of capital asset pricing. American Economic Review 66, 767–779] derives a dynamic, multiperiod CAPM, integrating endogenous demand and supply. However, Black's theoretically elegant model has never been empirically tested for its implications in dynamic asset pricing. We first theoretically extend Black's CAPM. Then we use price, dividend per share and earnings per share to test the existence of supply effect with U.S. equity data. We find the supply effect is important in U.S. domestic stock markets. This finding holds as we break the companies listed in the S&P 500 into ten portfolios by different level of payout ratio. It also holds consistently if we use individual stock data.     

Cross-sectional tests of asset pricing models with full-rank mimicking portfolios

In the standard tests of asset pricing models, factor risk premia are estimated on a test asset span so that models are tested with degrees of freedom reduced by the number of factors. Risk premia of traded factors can be further restricted to be equal to their expected returns, but such restrictions cannot be imposed on models with nontraded factors, which may create a problem of testing without full restrictions or on unequal asset spans across models. We propose a full-rank mimicking portfolio approach by projecting nontraded factors onto a combined span of test assets and benchmark traded factors. Under the Hansen-Jagannathan distance framework, we demonstrate that full-rank mimicking portfolios can provide improved power and fair performance comparison against a benchmark model in both specification and model comparison tests.     

The role of an illiquidity risk factor in asset pricing: Empirical evidence from the Spanish stock market

The main purpose of this study is to construct an illiquidity risk factor for the Spanish stock market over the 1994–2002 period. Because of the absence of consensus in empirical research about the most appropriate liquidity measure, we applied the Amihud [Amihud, Y. (2002). Illiquidity and stock returns: Cross-section and time-series effects. Journal of Financial Markets 5, 31–56] illiquidity ratio that shows the price response associated with one euro of trading volume. Moreover, we generated an illiquidity factor using the Fama and French [Fama, E. F., & French, K. R. (1993). Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds. Journal of Financial Economics 33, 3–56] orthogonal approach and analyzed whether it enters the stochastic discount factor as an additional state variable. We conclude that systematic illiquidity should be a key ingredient of asset pricing.     

Post-Earnings Announcement Drift in Spain and Behavioural Finance Models

Our study examines whether behavioural theories can explain post-earnings announcement drift (i.e. earnings momentum) in the Spanish market. In particular, we test models proposed by Barberis et al. (Journal of Financial Economics, 49, pp. 307–343, 1998), Daniel et al. ( Journal of Finance, 53(6), pp. 1839–1885, 1998) and Hong and Stein (Journal of Finance, 54(6), pp. 2143–2184, 1999). Each of these behavioural models draws on two premises – cognitive biases and limits to arbitrage – that we assume will vary with a given country's cultural and institutional features. Therefore, we must exercise caution when extrapolating the favourable results observed in the US market to markets outside of the USA. Our results provide little evidence in support of the hypothesis used to test whether these models can indeed explain the earnings momentum anomaly in the Spanish market. We believe some characteristics of the Spanish market, such as its lower score on the Individualism Index, lower levels of investor protection and code-law-based legal system, may explain why our results differ from those obtained in the USA.     

Top finance journals: Do they add value?

This paper develops a methodology for determining the value added by journals to articles they publish and uses this methodology to study five leading finance journals in the period 1990 through 2002. The quality of an article is disaggregated into two components—a component inherent to the article and a component added by the journal. Inherent article quality is proxied by author reputation and the reputation of the author's school, while journal value added is proxied by editorial board quality, journal age, and journal readership characteristics. Our Tobit regression analysis results show that theJournal of Finance, theJournal of Financial Economics, and theReview of Financial Studies add significant value over and above inherent article quality.     

Monday returns and asset pricing

The seasonal patterns observed on Monday stock returns are still unexplained by different asset pricing models. We attempt to fill this gap in the finance literature by using the Fama-French (Journal of Financial Economics 33:3–56, 1993) risk factors to explain the Monday seasonal. The results in the study show that Monday returns are explained by risk factors such as the market return, the size of the firms, and the book-to-market ratios of firms.     

Collateral,loan guarantees,and the lenders’ incentives to resolve financial distress

This paper proposes that the timing for when collateral is pledged will affect the lenders’ incentives to resolve financial distress. It demonstrates that, if the amount of collateral pledged in a loan contract exceeds a critical value, the borrower's project may be inefficiently liquidated once he becomes financially distressed. It also shows that a fairly priced loan guarantee provided by a third party can partially alleviate this inefficient liquidation problem. This paper predicts that riskier borrowers will pledge more collateral, which is consistent with the empirical findings of Berger and Udell [Berger, A. N., & Udell, G. F. (1990). Collateral, loan quality, and bank risk. Journal of Monetary Economics, 25, 21–42] and Leeth and Scott [Leeth, J. D., & Scott, J. A. (1989). The incidence of secured debt: evidence from the small business community. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 24, 379–394].     

Value Relevance of Accounting Information for Intangible-Intensive Industries and the Impact of Scale: The US Evidence

Abstract

The structural shift in the USA from a tangible- to an intangible-intensive economy raises a concern that reporting based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) might have lost its usefulness to investors. Amir and Lev [(1996) Value relevance of nonfinancial information: the wireless communications industry, Journal of Accounting and Economics, 22(1–3), pp. 3–30] argue that accounting information is not useful for intangible-intensive firms. In contrast, Collins et al. [(1997) Changes in the value relevance of earnings and book values over the past forty years, Journal of Accounting and Economics, 24(1), pp. 39–67] find that the value relevance (measured by R-squared) of accounting information has increased over time and that value relevance for intangible-intensive industries is as high as that for tangible-intensive industries. In this article, we attempt to resolve the above discrepancy by examining the impact of scale on R-squared (Brown, S., Lo, K. and Lys, T. (1999) Use of R² in accounting research: measuring changes in value relevance over the last four decades, Journal of Accounting and Economics, 28(2), pp. 83–115). We find that, after controlling for scale, R-squared is lower for intangible-intensive industries than for non-intangible-intensive industries and has declined over time for intangible-intensive industries but remained stable for non-intangible-intensive industries. Interestingly, the declining trend ended with the demise of the ‘New Economy’ period (NEP) (Core, J. E., Guay, W. R. and Van Buskirk, A. (2003) Market valuations in the New Economy: an investigation of what has changed, Journal of Accounting and Economics, 34(2–3), pp. 43–67), and value relevance for both industry groups appears to be restored in the post-NEP to the pre-NEP level. We also find that R&D capitalisation increases value relevance for intangible-intensive industries, but does not completely eliminate the gap between the two groups.     

Bootstrap inference for impulse response functions in factor‐augmented vector autoregressions

In this study, we consider residual‐based bootstrap methods to construct the confidence interval for structural impulse response functions in factor‐augmented vector autoregressions. In particular, we compare the bootstrap with factor estimation (Procedure A) with the bootstrap without factor estimation (Procedure B). Both procedures are asymptotically valid under the condition , where N and T are the cross‐sectional dimension and the time dimension, respectively. However, Procedure A is also valid even when with 0 ≤ c < ∞ because it accounts for the effect of the factor estimation errors on the impulse response function estimator. Our simulation results suggest that Procedure A achieves more accurate coverage rates than those of Procedure B, especially when N is much smaller than T. In the monetary policy analysis of Bernanke et al. (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2005, 120(1), 387–422), the proposed methods can produce statistically different results.     

Do fixed income mutual fund managers have managerial skills?

Motivated by Berk and Green [Berk, J., & Green, R. (2004). Mutual fund flows and performance in rational markets. Journal of Political Economy, 112, 1269–1295] and Chevalier and Ellison [Chevalier, J., & Ellison, G. (1999). Career concerns of mutual fund managers. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 114, 389–432] who show theoretically that performance persistence may be short-lived, we complement Bollen and Busse [Bollen, N., & Busse, J. A. (2004). Short-term persistence in mutual fund performance. Review of Financial Studies, 18, 569–597] and examine performance persistence in high-quality corporate-bond mutual funds over short horizons. Empirically, we find supporting evidence of performance persistence over shorter horizons. Our empirical tests also suggest that the performance persistence we document may be at least partly due to managerial skills.     

Investigating the effectiveness of convertible bonds in reducing agency costs: A Monte-Carlo approach

Simulation and option pricing techniques are used to value the marginal effect of asset risk on stock value. I find the optimal mix of stock, debt and convertible bonds that reduces this marginal effect to zero. At this optimal point the agency costs of debt are minimized. The incentive to add risky projects that arises from ordinary debt is offset by the incentive to ignore risky projects that arises from convertible debt.     

Price support and spreads in the IPO aftermarket: An empirical microstructure study

Using the inventory components of spreads as a measure of inventory holding-risk, we test the hypothesis of Hanley et al. [Hanley, K. W., Kumar, A., & Seguin, P. J. (1993). Price stabilization in the market for new issues. Journal of Financial Economics, 34, 177–197] that price supports reduce market makers’ inventory holding-risk in the aftermarket of initial public offerings (IPOs). We find that both spreads and their inventory components are significantly smaller in the earlier periods of the IPO aftermarket than those in the later periods. More importantly, the inventory components of spreads are significantly smaller for stocks without over-allotment options (OAOs) exercised, and for stocks with lower or negative initial returns which are more likely to have price supports. The results are consistent with the price support hypothesis.     

Weak convergence of tree methods,to price options on defaultable assets

Abstract We discuss a practical method to price and hedge European contingent claims on assets with price processes which follow a jump-diffusion. The method consists of a sequence of trinomial models for the asset price and option price processes which are shown to converge weakly to the corresponding continuous time jump-diffusion processes. The main difference with many existing methods is that our approach ensures that the intermediate discrete time approximations generate models which are themselves complete, just as in the Black-Scholes binomial approximations. This is only possible by dropping the assumption that the approximations of increments of the Wiener and Poisson processes on our trinomial tree are independent, but we show that the dependence between these processes disappears in the weak limit. The approximations thus define an easy and flexible method for pricing and hedging in jump-diffusion models using explicit trees for hedging and pricing. Mathematics Subject Classification (2000): 60B10, 60H35 Journal of Economic Literature Classification: G13     

Audit Fees in a Joint Audit Setting

Abstract

This paper uses the uniqueness of the French audit environment to conduct an in-depth study of audit pricing issues associated with the requirement to hire two independent auditors (joint audit). I use a model derived from Simunic's [(1980). The pricing of audit services: Theory and evidence. Journal of Accounting Research, 18(1), 161–190] seminal work to examine to what extent audit fees are influenced by the number of Big 4 joint auditors (zero, one, or two). After controlling for well-known drivers of audit fees that are specific to audit client firms (size, complexity, and risk), for governance characteristics and for auditor selection, the paper shows that the decision to hire two Big 4 auditors as joint auditors does not require the payment of a higher Big 4 premium compared to the choice of one Big 4 auditor paired with a smaller auditor, other things being equal. The choice of two Big 4 auditors thus appears to be a rational economic choice for large and international firms.     

THE TERM STRUCTURE OF INTEREST RATES: EVIDENCE AND THEORY

Abstract. The term structure of interest rates is an old topic. Over the years, both the hypotheses debated and the research techniques used have changed considerably. Two fairly recent developments which distinguish current research are the widespread adoption of rational expectations and the integration of the term structure with the general theory of asset pricing. This survey reviews previous work from this perspective. The main objective is to catalogue available evidence about term premia and to interpret this evidence in light of alternative models of term premia determination.     

Cointegration Testing in Panels with Common Factors*

Panel unit‐root and no‐cointegration tests that rely on cross‐sectional independence of the panel unit experience severe size distortions when this assumption is violated, as has, for example, been shown by Banerjee, Marcellino and Osbat [Econometrics Journal (2004), Vol. 7, pp. 322–340; Empirical Economics (2005), Vol. 30, pp. 77–91] via Monte Carlo simulations. Several studies have recently addressed this issue for panel unit‐root tests using a common factor structure to model the cross‐sectional dependence, but not much work has been done yet for panel no‐cointegration tests. This paper proposes a model for panel no‐cointegration using an unobserved common factor structure, following the study by Bai and Ng [Econometrica (2004), Vol. 72, pp. 1127–1177] for panel unit roots. We distinguish two important cases: (i) the case when the non‐stationarity in the data is driven by a reduced number of common stochastic trends, and (ii) the case where we have common and idiosyncratic stochastic trends present in the data. We discuss the homogeneity restrictions on the cointegrating vectors resulting from the presence of common factor cointegration. Furthermore, we study the asymptotic behaviour of some existing residual‐based panel no‐cointegration tests, as suggested by Kao [Journal of Econometrics (1999), Vol. 90, pp. 1–44] and Pedroni [Econometric Theory (2004a), Vol. 20, pp. 597–625]. Under the data‐generating processes (DGP) used, the test statistics are no longer asymptotically normal, and convergence occurs at rate T rather than as for independent panels. We then examine the possibilities of testing for various forms of no‐cointegration by extracting the common factors and individual components from the observed data directly and then testing for no‐cointegration using residual‐based panel tests applied to the defactored data.     

Q‐FACTORS IN EMPIRICAL ASSET PRICING: A REVIEW AND SYNTHESIS

The latest development in the asset pricing literature is the emergence of empirical asset pricing models comprising q‐factors (profitability and investment factors) in conjunction with other factors. However, as in the case of the older empirical models, there is scepticism regarding the application of these newer factor models consisting of q‐factors because of the debate surrounding the explanatory power of these empirically inspired asset pricing models. This review attempts to synthesize studies pertaining to the four alternative explanations of the asset pricing models comprising the q‐factors (profitability and investment) – the data snooping hypothesis, the risk‐based explanation, the irrational investor behaviour explanation and the interpretation that suggest that the combination of the risk‐free asset and the factors comprising the model span the mean‐variance efficient tangency portfolio that prices the universe of assets.     

On optimal investiment strategies

Suppose an investor has a fixed decision horizon and an appropriate utility function for measuring his or her utility of wealth. If there are only two investment vehicles, a risky and a risk-free asset, then the optimal investment strategy is such that, at any time, the amount invested in the risky asset must be the product of his or her “current risk tolerance” and the risk premium on the risky asset, divided by the square of the diffusion coefficient of the risky asset. In the case of more than one risky asset, the optimal investment strategy is similar, with the ratios of the amounts invested in the different risky assets being constant over time.