An Experimental Investigation of Asset Pricing in Segmented Markets

This article reports the results of experimental asset markets in which participants trade two assets with distinct dividend claims. Some traders are able to transact in the markets for both assets, whereas others can trade in only one market. When some are restricted from transacting in one market, the ineligible asset that cannot be traded by all commands a super risk premium. Without this premium, unrestricted investors would not hold all the available shares of the ineligible asset. In addition, we find that although unrestricted traders have the opportunity to remove all risk, few take advantage of this hedging opportunity.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Salience and the Disposition Effect: Evidence from the Introduction of “Cash‐Outs” in Betting Markets

The disposition effect describes the tendency of investors to sell assets that have increased in value since purchase, and hold those that have not. We analyze the introduction of betting market “Cash‐Outs,” which provide a continual update—and therefore increase the salience—of bettors' paper profits/losses on each bet. We find that the introduction of Cash‐Out increased the disposition effect in this market, as punters sold their profitable bets with greater frequency than before. We do not, however, find that the disposition effect has any impact on asset prices, either before or after this intervention.     

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.     

Uncertainty and Compensation Design in Strategic Interfirm Contracts

In strategic outsourcing contracts, a substantial portion of implementation occurs at the client's premises and requires integration of effort between the vendor and the client. Compensation design in such contracts involves trade-offs between the higher (lower) incentive properties of fixed-price (cost-plus) contracts and their higher (lower) ex ante contracting and ex post adaptation costs. Uncertainty influences these trade-offs and affects compensation design. We explore the compensation implications of two types of uncertainty—volatility and ambiguity—which are reflected in the client's accounting measures. Volatility reflects the unpredictability of changes in the future environment, which makes it difficult to contractually specify future contingencies. Ambiguity reflects lack of consensus about the nature, drivers, and value effects of uncertainty, which makes it difficult to contractually specify responses to contingencies if and when they occur. Volatility increases the likelihood of ex post adaptation costs, while ambiguity increases ex ante contracting costs; therefore, volatility and ambiguity decrease the attractiveness of fixed-price contracts. We use accounting and market measures to calibrate volatility and ambiguity and examine their implications for compensation design and ex post renegotiation. Analysis of archival data for 455 strategic outsourcing contracts valued over $15 million indicates that volatility and ambiguity influence contract compensation design and renegotiation likelihood. These results hold even after controlling for asset specificity, task complexity, and relational factors. We conclude that accounting measures can provide signals of volatility and ambiguity and thereby influence compensation design in strategic interfirm contracts.     

考虑有限关注的多个信息交易者竞争交易分析

文章假设在一个具有唯一风险资产的金融市场中，存在多个风险中性的信息交易者、很多噪音交易者、风险中性的做市商三类交易者，其中信息交易者是有限关注的，他们通过权衡关注和竞争两种因素选择交易量。文章首先建立了信息交易者具有不同关注度的一般模型，然后建立了具有相同关注度的模型，通过求解唯一线性均衡，推导它的均衡特征，得出结论：信息交易者的交易强度、期望收益随着其他信息交易者关注度和信息交易者数量的增大而降低，随着自身的关注度的增大而增大；信息交易者数量较少时，期望收益随着信息交易者关注度的增大而增大；而信息交易者数量较多时，期望收益随着信息交易者关注度的增大起初快速增大，然后缓慢降低。     

资产价格波动差异:由股市与房价观察

我国股票市场和住宅市场的市盈率与货币幻觉代理变量通货膨胀率、名义利率呈现明显的反向关系,即在高通胀时,市场被低估;在低通胀时,市场被高估。通货膨胀通过货币幻觉,影响资产估值高低。股市的市盈率波动幅度远大于住宅市场,股票价格波动主要来自估值倍数变化;而住宅的估值倍数波动小,房价波动更多地受到了估值倍数与租金变化的综合影响。     

资产市场对居民储蓄率影响的国际比较——兼论中美储蓄率差异

本文构建了一个居民储蓄行为函数,选取13个国家1991～2007年的面板数据研究了居民储蓄率的五大决定因素——收入和经济增长、利率与价格、外部储蓄、人口结构与资本市场发展,重点考察以股票市场为代表的资产市场的作用。采用定截距固定效应模型的不同方法得出的结论是:反映资产市场发展的3个指标中,股票价格和金融业产值比率都对居民储蓄率有显著负向影响,而股市规模比率有微弱正向影响。总体上看,资产市场发展对储蓄的综合作用仍是负向的,资产市场能够通过分流储蓄和财富效应两条作用渠道降低居民储蓄率。     

A Quantitative Assessment of the Role of Incomplete Asset Markets on the Dynamics of the Real Exchange Rate

I develop a two-country New Keynesian model with capital accumulation and incomplete international asset markets that provides novel insights on the effect that imperfect international risk-sharing has on international business cycles and RER dynamics. I find that business cycles appear similar whether international asset markets are complete or not when driven by a combination of non-persistent monetary shocks and persistent productivity (TFP) shocks. In turn, international asset market incompleteness has sizeable effects if (persistent) investment-specific technology (IST) shocks are a main driver of business cycles. I also show that the model with incomplete international asset markets can approximate the RER volatility and persistence observed in the data, for instance, if IST shocks are near-unit-root. Hence, I conclude that the nature of shocks, the extent of financial integration across countries and the existing limitations on asset trading are central to understand the dynamics of the real exchange rate and the endogenous international transmission over the business cycles.     

转移支付、对外开放与劳动力市场整合——分权下的锦标赛竞争

要素市场整合是实现规模经济效率与增长方式转变的重要途径.本文讨论了转移支付对"发达地区"与"落后地区"参与国内市场分工的差异化激励.具体来说,转移支付为落后地区提供了参与市场分工的财政补偿,促进了市场整合.但因锦标赛模式中的经济绩效导向与"零和"特性,转移支付不利于发达地区在锦标赛中胜出,从而引致其"逆市场"行为.这使...     

Executive pay in Japan: the role of bank-appointed monitors and the Main Bank relationship

A feature of tournament models is that executive compensation is not independent of the wages paid at lower levels of the corporate hierarchy. Agency models show that compensation based on firm performance is a means by which incentives can be provided to executives once a promotion tournament has been resolved. In this paper, we combine elements of both models and show that the existence of an outsider who monitors the firm’s activities will lower the sensitivity of pay to firm performance for top executives and reduce the importance of tournament-based incentives. Using panel data for 55 Japanese electronics firms, we find support for the notion that bank-appointed Board members help monitor top executives and that tournament considerations are a particularly important feature of executive compensation in Japan.     

China's grain marketing system reform in 1993–1994: empirical evidence from a rural household survey

By utilizing a rural household survey, this paper domonstrates the progress in China's grain marketing reform in 1993 and evaluates to what extent the reform was reversed in 1994. Specifically, we investigate the degree of commercialization, changes in state's contract procurement quota and changes in the marketing channels. Overall, the grain market has been liberalized to a very large extent. Participation of the private traders have already grown to a significant level, occupying more than one-third of the market share for wheat and rice and more than half for maize. For minor crops, the share of private traders were even bigger. Despite the reversal in 1994, the grain market was still very “open.” Counting all grain types, the state was controlling only about one-third of the marketed surplus. However, if the central leadership perceived any serious instability in the market for a certain grain, examples provided illustrate how the state's control could certainly be strengthened significantly.     

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.     

Option Trading,Price Discovery,and Earnings News Dissemination*

Abstract. Option market activity increases by more than 10 percent in the four days before quarterly earnings announcements. We show that the direction of this preannouncement trading foreshadows subsequent earnings news. Specifically, we find option traders initiate a greater proportion of long (short) positions immediately before “good” (“bad”) earnings news. Midquote returns to active-side option trades are positive during nonannouncement periods and are significantly higher immediately prior to earnings announcements. Bid-ask spreads for options widen during the announcement period, but traders do not gravitate toward high delta contracts. Collectively, the evidence shows option traders participate generally in price discovery (the incorporation of private information in price), and more specifically in the dissemination of earnings news.     

Commodity option pricing efficiency before Black,Scholes, and Merton

It is often thought that the arrival of the Black–Scholes–Merton (BSM) model of option pricing in the early 1970s allowed traders to understand how to price and value options with greater precision. However, our study suggests that interwar commodity options traders may have been able to intuit ‘fair’ value and to adjust their prices to changes in the market environment well before the advent of this innovative model. A scarcity of historical price data has limited empirical tests of option price efficiency well before BSM to studies of stock options in the 1870s and the early twentieth century which revealed contrasting findings. This study deals with option pricing in a different market—commodities—during the interwar period. We conclude that option prices were closer to their BSM theoretical values than prior studies suggest. Institutional differences between interwar commodity options markets and stock options markets in the 1870s and the early twentieth century may partly account for this result. Furthermore, we find that interwar option prices were no more mispriced than in modern times, and were as sensitive to changes in volatility—the key valuation parameter in the BSM model.     

The Maghribi traders: a reappraisal?1

Previous studies concluded that a private‐order institution based on a multilateral reputation mechanism was particularly important in governing agency relations among the Maghribi traders who operated in the Muslim Mediterranean. The legal system and a bilateral reputation mechanism were particularly important among the Genoese traders. Initial cultural, social, and political factors led to this institutional distinction, while the incorporation of culture in the resulting institutions influenced subsequent institutional developments. In particular, the particularities of the late medieval European institutions contributed to the rise of the modern—impersonal—markets in Europe. The analysis also substantiates the contention that private‐order institutions can support sophisticated exchange and market‐promoting policies should take this into account, particularly in countries lacking an effective court system. An article by Edwards and Ogilvie challenges this analysis. It alleges that the Maghribis, like European traders, relied on court enforcement and a bilateral reputation mechanism in which a narrow social circle responded to opportunism. This article shows that Edwards and Ogilvie's analysis and conclusions are wrong. It refutes each of their empirical claims and presents additional pieces of evidence supporting the institutional distinction conjecture. The discussion is structured around the methodological challenge associated with comparative and historical institutional analysis.     

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.     

基于国际化视野的融资融券业务思考

文章通过对2008—2012年间券商经营收入的研究分析和券商主要业务的收入比较,以揭示目前融资融券业务在券商经营中的地位。并通过分析融资融券业务收入占券商经营总收入的比重变化趋势,结合日本、美国等成熟市场数据来预测未来融资融券业务的发展趋势和前景,并提出一些政策上的建议。