The demise of the rights issue

This article suggests that the lack of use of rights offeringsin the United States, a phenomenon referred to as the equityunderwriting paradox, can be explained by transaction-cost conditions.A sample of underwritten rights offerings provides support forthe explanation. Firms making underwritten rights offeringspaid lower underwriter fees but incurred significantly largerprice drops just prior to the offering than did firms makingunderwritten public offerings. Further analysis reveals thatthe underwritten-rights-offering price concessions are a formof transaction cost that is not found in under-written publicofferings.     

Will Open Supply Lower Retail Gasoline Prices?

Retail gasoline lessee-dealers have lobbied for the right to purchase their gasoline supplies from sources other than the lessor-refiners with whom they have contracted. This article examines a unique data set of gasoline prices in Los Angeles, along with corresponding market- and station-level characteristics, to gain some insights into whether the proposed "open-supply" legislation would likely lower the prices charged to consumers. Controlling for market- and station-level characteristics, the authors find that stations with the most alternative sources of gasoline supplies have significantly higher retail prices, casting serious doubt on the claims made by open-supply proponents. (JEL L0 , L1 , L4 )     

Partial anticipation, the flow of information and the economic impact of corporate debt sales

Corporate debt sales have been regarded as 'no news' eventsbecause there is no significant price reaction on average totheir announcement. We explore the hypothesis that this lackof average price reaction to debt sale announcements is explainedby the partial anticipation of debt offers. Theory suggeststhat the demand for debt capital is fundamentally related tochanges in the sources and uses of funds, and we find evidencethat earnings are significantly lower, investment growth issignificantly bigger, and, for some issuers, debt refundingrequirements are significantly greater in the period immediatelyprior to issue than in periods well before and after the issue.We find that this preissue information conditions investors'expectations of issue, thereby affecting the cross-sectionalannouncement date price reaction to debt sales in two ways.First, announcement date price reactions are negative, on average,for unanticipated offers or for those offers where prior informationsuggests that an issue is unlikely. Second, holding the probabilityof issue constant, announcement date price reactions are significantlymore negative for offers that raise more capital than investorsexpected. These results are consistent with cash flow signalingand asymmetric information models of corporate financings.     

An intertemporal analysis of the shifting of FHA discount points to buyers

In this paper, hedonic regressions are used to analyze a seven-year sample of monthly sales of bungalows in Chicago. Even when sales are considered within individual sections of Chicago, the FHA dummyindependent variable and the ‘points’-independent variable usually have negative coefficients. In certain areas of Chicago there is an absence of conventional loans and conventionally qualified buyers. Consequently, sellers in these neighborhoods must sell using FHA-insured mortgages and may be prevented from fully shifting points to the FHA buyer in the absence of competing financing alternatives. The use of FHA mortgages in these transactions means that the standard hedonic approach cannot correctly measure the extent of point-shifting because the housing/demographic characteristics decrease sales-prices at the same time the point-shifting increases them. The estimated FHA coefficients reflect the net result of these effects.     

A stochastic dominance analysis of the turnover related performance of mutual funds

Mutual fund performance relative to portfolio turnover is examined for funds in different investment categories using non-parametric, stochastic dominance criteria. We find that, in general, high-turnover funds are at least equally preferable to those with low turnover. This suggests that the costs of obtaining and exploiting information are, on average, compensated for by the subsequent return distribution. The exception is maximum capital gains funds. Here, high-turnover funds clearly dominate those with low turnover and the information gathering function is profitable.We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of an anonymous referee and the comments of Art Gudikunst of Bryant College.     

From the general to the specific: The demand for M2 in three European countries

This paper examines the demand for broad money in West Germany, the Netherlands and France. We give an exposition of and apply the “general to specific” econometric modelling methodology which has been successful in modelling the demand for money in the U.K. We find stable short-run demand functions for each of the three countries examined, using a consistent data base previously published by other researchers. Each of the estimated short-run equations has a long-run or steady-state solution which is consistent with economic theory. For West Germany and the Netherlands we find long-run income elasticities of unity, which constrasts with the results of earlier studies.