Beliefs regarding fundamental value and optimal investing

Standard optimal portfolio selection models take no account of the special information that active investors believe they possess. For example, active investors who believe they can place bounds on the price of a security will want to use that information when assessing risk and expected return in order to construct an optimal portfolio. In this paper, we use two continuous-time models to analyze how placing boundaries on the price of a stock affects assessed risk, expected returns, and the optimal holdings of an active investor, and how those vary as a function of the relation between the stock price and the boundaries. In particular, the optimal strategy takes significant long/short positions as the price nears its lower/upper boundary.     

What Is Common Among Return Anomalies? Evidence from Insider Trading

For a broad set of anomalies, we establish a common pattern of underreaction to information contained in preceding insider trading activity. Our main analysis focuses on the anomalies' short legs, which generate persistent negative abnormal returns. For stocks in the short legs, future returns are systematically related to the information signal contained in preceding insider trading activity, indicating underreaction. For insider trading information, we consider the possibility of net buying, net selling, and no trading (or silence). The underreaction effect is economically significant, with the most negative signal accounting for an average of 71% of short-leg returns. This underreaction effect survives numerous robustness checks and remains important after accounting for investor sentiment, information environment, and limits to arbitrage.     

Construction of a class of forward performance processes in stochastic factor models,and an extension of Widder’s theorem

Finance and Stochastics - We consider the problem of optimal portfolio selection under forward investment performance criteria in an incomplete market. Given multiple traded assets, the prices of...     

Entry costs, industry structure, and cross-country income and TFP differences

Entry costs vary dramatically across countries. To assess their impact on cross-country differences in output and TFP, we construct a model with endogenous entry and operation decisions by firms. We calibrate the model to match the U.S. distribution of employment and firms by size. Higher entry costs lead to greater misallocation of productive factors and lower TFP and output. In the model, countries in the lowest decile of the entry costs distribution have 1.32 to 1.45 times higher TFP and 1.52 to 1.75 times higher output per worker than countries in the highest decile. As in the data, higher entry costs are associated with lower entry rates and business density.     

Cross-country income convergence revisited

We reassess convergence of income across countries and its determinants. The ergodic distribution of output per worker features multiple modes. In contrast to previous findings, productivity in the long run is unimodal. The long-run distribution of human capital is multimodal.     

The Reaction of Real Estate–Related Industries to the Monetary Policy Actions

We study the impact of changes in U.S. monetary policy on the equity returns of real estate–related industries. We find that, over the 1989–2005 sample period covered in our study, a hypothetical unexpected rate cut of 25 basis points (bps) is associated with an increase of about 170 bps in the value‐weighted returns of real estate–related industries. We find that monetary policy impacts the stock prices in real estate–related industries through its impact on the future expected stock returns and not on real interest rates or expected future dividends. There is also some evidence of asymmetry in the responses of the industry returns to the monetary policy actions. A strong stock price response to reversals in the direction of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy is reported.     

Non-performing loans, prospective bailouts, and Japan's slowdown

The delay in the government bailout of the financial sector played a key role in Japan's slowdown during the 1990s and early 2000s. This argument is articulated in a general equilibrium model in which the government provides deposit insurance to the financial sector. The existence of non-performing loans, combined with a delay in the bailout, leads to a persistent decline in economic activity. Consistent with Japan's experience, the decline in output is caused not only by a fall in investment, but also by a decline in labor and total factor productivity.     

Institutions and growth in limited access societies

We build a dynamic political economy model with a two-class society, workers and the elite, in which the elite formation, the innovation rate and fiscal policy are endogenous. The model generates a mapping between institutions and patterns of growth consistent with empirical evidence. Ex ante, when facing constraints in choosing institutions, the elite may delegate policy control to some of its members, even though such delegation exacerbates the conflict within the elite and causes policy failures. Committing to such institutional arrangements prevents more harmful outcomes, such as rapid entry and subsequent deterioration of the elite?s economic and political power.     

Entry costs and cross-country differences in productivity and output

This paper contributes to the literature on cross-country income differences by studying the effect of entry barriers on productivity and output. Using instrumental variable regressions I show that higher entry costs significantly reduce output per worker and that they do so by lowering total factor productivity. In particular, an increase in entry costs by 80% of income per capita, which is one half of their standard deviation in my sample, is estimated to decrease total factor productivity and output per worker by 22% and 29%, respectively.      

Tailored financial literacy education: An indigenous perspective

Governments around the world agree that financial literacy education (FLE) is of the utmost importance, with the current economic times having led to a ‘teachable moment’ for financial education. However, caution should be taken when viewing education as the sole solution to the world’s economic problems as there is little evidence to support a causal link between FLE and financial behaviour/decision making. Furthermore, others conclude that FLE is not a single, value-neutral curriculum, and thus current approaches must recognise gender and cultural differences. This article examines the usefulness of mainstream FLE programmes adapted to suit Indigenous communities in terms of the delivery model, the content and the logistics of the programmes. This is achieved by examining the outcomes of four FLE programmes run in Indigenous communities and explores the need for diverse approaches to be applied to FLE in this context. We find that contextualised FLE based on an experiential group-learning model provides self-reported benefits to the participants. We also report on a range of practical issues that arise in Indigenous FLE. Finally, we recommend the exploration of sustainable FLE based on these principles.