Variations in Trading Volume,Return Volatility,and Trading Costs: Evidence on Recent Price Formation Models

Patterns in stock market trading volume, trading costs, and return volatility are examined using New York Stock Exchange data from 1988. Intraday test results indicate that, for actively traded firms trading volume, adverse selection costs, and return volatility are higher in the first half-hour of the day. This evidence is inconsistent with the Admati and Pfleiderer (1988) model which predicts that trading costs are low when volume and return volatility are high. Interday test results show that, for actively traded firms, trading volume is low and adverse selection costs are high on Monday, which is consistent with the predictions of the Foster and Viswanathan (1990) model.     

Capital Gains Taxes and Asset Prices: Capitalization or Lock‐in?

This paper demonstrates that the equilibrium impact of capital gains taxes reflects both the capitalization effect (i.e., capital gains taxes decrease demand) and the lock‐in effect (i.e., capital gains taxes decrease supply). Depending on time periods and stock characteristics, either effect may dominate. Using the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 as our event, we find evidence supporting a dominant capitalization effect in the week following news that sharply increased the probability of a reduction in the capital gains tax rate and a dominant lock‐in effect in the week after the rate reduction became effective.     

Trust and Financial Reporting Quality

Using unique survey data from Great Place to Work® Institute, we investigate the association of intraorganizational trust (i.e., employees’ trust in management) with three aspects of financial reporting: accruals quality, misstatements, and internal control quality. We find that trust is associated with better accrual quality, lower likelihood of financial statement misstatements, and lower likelihood of internal control material weakness disclosures. However, these effects are not uniform across all companies. Consistent with trust improving financial reporting quality through improved information production and information sharing, we find that trust is significantly associated with financial reporting quality in relatively decentralized firms, but not in firms that are relatively centralized. Our results are robust to several analyses that attempt to control for potential alternative explanations.     

MUNICIPAL CONSTRUCTION SPENDING: AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION

Despite widespread concern and discussion, no consensus exists concerning the causes of the "infrastructure crisis" or its implications for the efficiency of government decision-making more generally. We investigate several models of the determination of local public capital expenditures. Using Euler equation methods, we cannot reject the hypothesis that construction spending is determined by unconstrained, forward looking municipal planning. Consistent with this result, the stochastic structure of resource flows is an important feature of the determination of construction spending. Only unanticipated changes in a community's resources alter its demand for structures, with an unanticipated increase of one dollar increasing current construction spending by about 5.6 cents.     

HOW LARGE A FEDERAL BUDGET DEFICIT CAN WE SUSTAIN?

Governments may be unable to sustain large budget deficits indefinitely. Investors may impose limits on the amount of government debt—relative to gross national product (GNP)—they are willing to hold and thus limit the size of the deficit a government can sustain. The size of sustainable nominal deficits, then, would depend on the growth rate of nominal GNP. Reasonable assumptions regarding the GNP growth rate imply that the federal government can main tain its debt/GNP ratio at historically typical levels if it runs deficits of $175 billion in the near term and even larger amounts during future years.     

Empirical Tests of the Consumption-Oriented CAPM

The empirical implications of the consumption-oriented capital asset pricing model (CCAPM) are examined, and its performance is compared with a model based on the market portfolio. The CCAPM is estimated after adjusting for measurement problems associated with reported consumption data. The CCAPM is tested using betas based on both consumption and the portfolio having the maximum correlation with consumption. As predicted by the CCAPM, the market price of risk is significantly positive, and the estimate of the real interest rate is close to zero. The performances of the traditional CAPM and the CCAPM are about the same.     

EVOLUTION OF THE OIL MARKET AND ENERGY SECURITY POLICY

This paper examines a number of issues that affect the U.S. government's role in responding to future energy crises. The paper argues that we do not adequately understand why oil prices behaved as they did during the two price shocks of the 1970s, and that the market has evolved in ways that will alter future price behavior compared with that of the past. Consequently, it is unwise to formulate energy policies on the basis of specific forecasts of market conditions, or to plan to fight repetitions of past oil market crises. To be effective, energy security policy must be designed to motivate the private sector and other governments to respond in ways consistent with policy objectives.     

Dividends and Losses

An annual loss is essentially a necessary condition for dividend reductions in firms with established earnings and dividend records: 50.9% of 167 NYSE firms with losses during 1980–1985 reduced dividends, versus 1.0% of 440 firms without losses. As hypothesized by Miller and Modigliani, dividend reductions depend on whether earnings include unusual items that are likely to temporarily depress income. Dividend reductions are more likely given greater current losses, less negative unusual items, and more persistent earnings difficulties. Dividend policy has information content in that knowledge that a firm has reduced dividends improves the ability of current earnings to predict future earnings.