Call and Continuous Trading Mechanisms Under Asymmetric Information: An Experimental Investigation

I examine the relative performance of call and continuous auctions under asymmetric information by manipulating trading rules and information sets in laboratory asset markets. I find significant differences in an environment that extends the Kyle (1985) framework to permit the exogenous liquidity trading motive to have a natural economic interpretation. The adverse selection costs incurred by noise traders are significantly lower under the call auction, despite no significant reduction in average price efficiency. This result suggests that discussions of the costs and benefits of insider trading should take place within the context of a specific trading mechanism.     

TAXING HEALTH INSURANCE: HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?

The Reagan administration has again proposed in 1984 to limit the tax exemption on health-insurance premiums. Objectives of the proposal are to curtail rising health costs by reducing insurance coverage—and hence medical-care use—and to raise revenues to offset the large federal deficit. The change would have little effect on either dimension. Most likely, consumer response would reduce dental, drug, and eyeglass insurance, but would leave coverage for hospital and doctor care—the most bothersome health-cost sectors—essentially unaffected. Larger tax changes which are structured differently possibly could reduce health costs dramatically and raise up to $27 billion a year in new tax revenues.     

Predicting Stock Returns in an Efficient Market

An intertemporal general equilibrium model relates financial asset returns to movements in aggregate output. The model is a standard neoclassical growth model with serial correlation in aggregate output. Changes in aggregate output lead to attempts by agents to smooth consumption, which affects the required rate of return on financial assets. Since aggregate output is serially correlated and hence predictable, the theory suggests that stock returns can be predicted based on rational forecasts of output. The empirical results confirm that stock returns are a predictable function of aggregate output and also support the accompanying implications of the model.     

Fiscal Multipliers under an Interest Rate Peg of Deterministic versus Stochastic Duration

This paper revisits the size of the fiscal multiplier. The experiment is a fiscal expansion under the assumption of a pegged nominal rate of interest. We demonstrate that a quantitatively important issue is the articulation of the exit from the policy experiment. If the monetary‐fiscal expansion is stochastic with a mean duration of T periods, the fiscal multiplier can be unboundedly large. However, if the monetary‐fiscal expansion is for a fixed T periods, the multiplier is much smaller. Our explanation rests on a Jensen's inequality type argument: the deterministic multiplier is convex in duration, and the stochastic multiplier is a weighted average of the deterministic multipliers. The quantitative difference in the two multipliers also arises in a model with capital, and in the baseline nonlinear model. However, the differences between the two are less pronounced in the nonlinear models. The errors from a linear approximation are much larger for the stochastic exit model then for the deterministic exit model.     

Does Macro‐Prudential Regulation Leak? Evidence from a UK Policy Experiment

The regulation of bank capital as a means of smoothing the credit cycle is a central element of forthcoming macro‐prudential regimes internationally. For such regulation to be effective in controlling the aggregate supply of credit it must be the case that: (i) changes in capital requirements affect loan supply by regulated banks, and (ii) unregulated substitute sources of credit are unable to offset changes in credit supply by affected banks. This paper examines micro evidence—lacking to date—on both questions, using a unique data set. In the UK, regulators have imposed time‐varying, bank‐specific minimum capital requirements since Basel I. It is found that regulated banks (UK‐owned banks and resident foreign subsidiaries) reduce lending in response to tighter capital requirements. But unregulated banks (resident foreign branches) increase lending in response to tighter capital requirements on a relevant reference group of regulated banks. This “leakage” is substantial, amounting to about one‐third of the initial impulse from the regulatory change.     

Macro Credit Policy and the Financial Accelerator

This paper studies macro credit policies within the financial accelerator model of Bernanke, Gertler, and Gilchrist (1999). The focus is on borrower‐based restrictions on lending such as loan‐to‐value (LTV) ratios. We find that the efficacy of cyclical taxes on LTV ratios depends upon the nature of the underlying loan contract. If the loan contract contains equity‐like features such as indexation to aggregate conditions, then there is little role for cyclical taxation. But if the loan contract is not indexed to aggregate conditions, then there are substantial gains to procyclical taxes on LTV ratios.     

Asset Market Participation and Portfolio Choice over the Life‐Cycle

Using error‐free data on life‐cycle portfolio allocations of a large sample of Norwegian households, we document a double adjustment as households age: a rebalancing of the portfolio composition away from stocks as they approach retirement and stock market exit after retirement. When structurally estimating an extended life‐cycle model, the parameter combination that best fits the data is one with a relatively large risk aversion, a small per‐period participation cost, and a yearly probability of a large stock market loss in line with the frequency of stock market crashes in Norway.