Financial crises in efficient markets: How fundamentalists fuel volatility

When a financial crisis breaks out, speculators typically get the blame whereas fundamentalists are presented as the safeguard against excessive volatility. This paper proposes an asset pricing model where two types of rational traders coexist: short-term speculators and long-term fundamentalists, both sharing the same information set. In this framework, excess volatility not only exists, but is actually fueled by fundamental trading. Consequently, efficient markets are more volatile with a few speculators than with many speculators. Regulators should therefore be aware that efforts to limit rational speculation might, surprisingly, end up increasing volatility.     

Individual investor perceptions and behavior during the financial crisis

Combining monthly survey data with matching trading records, we examine how individual investor perceptions change and drive trading and risk-taking behavior during the 2008–2009 financial crisis. We find that investor perceptions fluctuate significantly during the crisis, with risk tolerance and risk perceptions being less volatile than return expectations. During the worst months of the crisis, investors’ return expectations and risk tolerance decrease, while their risk perceptions increase. Towards the end of the crisis, investor perceptions recover. We document substantial swings in trading and risk-taking behavior that are driven by changes in investor perceptions. Overall, individual investors continue to trade actively and do not de-risk their investment portfolios during the crisis.     

Decision-making under uncertainty – A field study of cumulative prospect theory

The presented research tests cumulative prospect theory (CPT, [Kahneman, D., Tversky, A., 1979. Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica 47, 263–291; Tversky, A., Kahneman, D., 1981. The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. Science 211, 453–480]) in the financial market, using US stock option data. Option prices possess information about actual investors’ preferences in such a way that an exploitation of conventional option analysis, along with theoretical relationships, makes it possible to elicit investor preferences. The option data in this study serve for estimating the two essential elements of the CPT, namely, the value function and the probability weighting function. The main part of the work focuses on the functions’ simultaneous estimation under CPT original parametric specification. The shape of the estimated functions is found to be in line with theory. Comparing to results of laboratory experiments, the estimated functions are closer to linearity and loss aversion is less pronounced.     

Crises and confidence: Systemic banking crises and depositor behavior

We show that individuals who have experienced a systemic banking crisis are 11 percentage points less likely to use banks in the U.S. than otherwise similar individuals who emigrated from the same country but did not live through a crisis. This finding is robust to controlling for exposure to other macroeconomic events and to various methods for addressing potential bias due to migrant self-selection. Consistent with the view that personal experience plays an important role in decision-making, the effects are larger for individuals who were older and more likely to have had wealth entrusted to the banking system at the time of the crisis and for people who experienced crises in countries without deposit insurance.     

A tale of two regimes: Theory and empirical evidence for a Markov-modulated jump diffusion model of equity returns and derivative pricing implications

We provide closed-form solutions for a continuous time, Markov-modulated jump diffusion model in a general equilibrium framework for options prices under a variety of jump diffusion specifications. We further demonstrate that the two-state model provides the leptokurtic return features, volatility smile, and volatility clustering observed empirically for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) and its component stocks. Using 10 years of stock return data, we confirm the existence of jump intensity switching and clustering, illustrate transition probabilities, and verify superior empirical fit over competing Poisson-style models.     

Optimal smooth consumption and annuity design

We propose an optimization criterion that yields extraordinary consumption smoothing compared to the well known results of the life-cycle model. Under this criterion we solve the related consumption and investment optimization problem faced by individuals with preferences for intertemporal stability in consumption. We find that the consumption and investment patterns demanded under the optimization criterion is in general offered as annuity benefits from products in the class of ‘Formula Based Smoothed Investment-Linked Annuities’.     

Prospect theory and trading patterns

Reference dependence, loss aversion, and risk seeking for losses together comprise the preference-based component of prospect theory that sets its value function apart from the standard risk-aversion model. Using an elasticity analysis, we show that this distinctive preference component serves to underpin negative-feedback trading propensities, but cannot manifest itself in behavior directly or holistically at the individual-choice level. We then propose and demonstrate that the market interaction between prospect-theory investors and regular CRRA investors allows this preference component to dominate in equilibrium behavior and hence helps to reestablish the intuitive link between prospect-theory preferences and negative-feedback trading patterns. In the model, the interaction also reconciles the contrarian behavior of prospect-theory investors with asymmetric volatility and short-term return reversal. The results suggest that prospect-theory preferences can lead investors to behave endogenously as contrarian noise traders in the market interaction process.     

Suppliers’ and customers’ information asymmetry and corporate bond yield spreads

This study investigates the information asymmetry effects of suppliers and customers on a firm’s bond yield spreads by employing American bond market data from 2001 to 2008. This study finds that both suppliers’ and customers’ information asymmetry effects significantly explain a firm’s bond yield spreads. Besides, the information asymmetry effects of more important suppliers and customers are more significant than those of less important ones. The results are robust even after controlling for other well-known firm specific and economic variables.     

Does the media help or hurt retail investors during the IPO quiet period?

We examine how the media influences retail trade and market returns during the “quiet period” that follows a firm's IPO. We find that more media coverage during this period is associated with more purchases by retail investors and that such purchases are attention-driven, rather than information-based. Further, these retail trades are negatively associated with stock returns at the firm's first earnings announcement post-IPO. Our results suggest that media coverage, combined with market frictions that limit price efficiency in the post-IPO period, leads to worse investing outcomes for retail investors.     

Liquidity risk management and credit supply in the financial crisis

Liquidity dried up during the financial crisis of 2007-2009. Banks that relied more heavily on core deposit and equity capital financing, which are stable sources of financing, continued to lend relative to other banks. Banks that held more illiquid assets on their balance sheets, in contrast, increased asset liquidity and reduced lending. Off-balance sheet liquidity risk materialized on the balance sheet and constrained new credit origination as increased takedown demand displaced lending capacity. We conclude that efforts to manage the liquidity crisis by banks led to a decline in credit supply.     

Is local bias a cross-border phenomenon? Evidence from individual investors’ international asset allocation

Extant literature consistently documents that investors tilt their domestic equity portfolios towards regionally close stocks (local bias). We hypothesize that individual investors’ local bias is not limited to the domestic sphere but instead also determines their international investment decisions. Our results confirm the presence of a cross-border local bias. Specifically, we show (i) that the stockholdings of individual investors living within regional proximity to a foreign country display a significantly lower foreign investment bias towards investment opportunities in that country and (ii) that this drop in foreign investment bias levels is disproportionately driven by investments in regionally close neighbor-country companies. The impact of cross-border local bias on investors’ bilateral foreign equity investments is economically significant and holds even after controlling for previously identified explanations of international asset allocation.     

Funding liquidity and equity liquidity in the subprime crisis period: Evidence from the ETF market

Using index and financial exchange-traded funds (ETFs), this study explores the relation between funding liquidity and equity liquidity during the subprime crisis period. Our empirical results show that a higher degree of funding illiquidity leads to an increase in bid–ask spread and a reduction in both market depth and net buying imbalance. Such findings indicate that an increase in funding liquidity can improve equity liquidity, with a stronger effect for the financial ETFs than for the index ETFs. Our study provides a better overall understanding of the effect of the liquidity–supplier funding constraint during the subprime crisis period.     

Liquidation equilibrium with seniority and hidden CDO

The aim of our paper is to price credit derivatives written on a single name when this name is a bank. Indeed, due to the special structure of the balance sheet of a bank and to the interconnections with other institutions of the financial system, the standard pricing formulas do not apply and their use can imply severe mispricing. The pricing of credit derivatives written on a single bank name requires a joint analysis of the risks of all banks directly or indirectly interconnected with the bank of interest. Each name cannot be priced in isolation, but the banking system must be treated as a whole. It is necessary to analyze the contagion of losses among banks, especially the equilibrium of joint defaults and recovery rates at liquidation time. We show the existence and uniqueness of such an equilibrium. Then the standard pricing formulas are modified by adding a premium to capture the contagion effects.