Signaling in Takeover Auctions with Flexible Reserve Price

This paper develops a model of takeover auctions with a two‐step information acquisition process. It shows that the threat of extra information acquisition allows the existence of the signaling jump‐bidding equilibrium even when the seller is able to change its reserve price on the basis of the bidding history. The paper shows that although a higher cost of the secondary information leads to a higher expected price, the precision of the preliminary information has an ambiguous effect on the target's expected profit and that such an effect depends on the number of potential acquirers. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Consistent price systems and arbitrage opportunities of?the?second kind in models with transaction costs

In contrast with the classical models of frictionless financial markets, market models with proportional transaction costs, even satisfying usual no-arbitrage properties, may admit arbitrage opportunities of the second kind. This means that there are self-financing portfolios with initial endowments lying outside the solvency region but ending inside. Such a phenomenon was discovered by M. Rásonyi in the discrete-time framework. In this note, we consider a rather abstract continuous-time setting and prove necessary and sufficient conditions for a property which we call no free lunch of the second kind, NFL2. We provide a number of equivalent conditions elucidating, in particular, the financial meaning of the property B which appeared as an indispensable “technical” hypothesis in previous papers on hedging (superreplication) of contingent claims under transaction costs. We show that it is equivalent to another condition on the “richness” of the set of consistent price systems, close to the condition PCE introduced by Rásonyi. In the last section, we deduce the Rásonyi theorem from our general result by using specific features of discrete-time models.     

Accounting and the formation of share market prices over time: a mathematical institutional economic analysis through simulation and experiment

This article develops a heterogeneous agents-based model to examine the emergent dynamic properties of share market price formation over time, with a view on financial market stability under alternative accounting regimes. In the model, individual heterogeneous investors interact with each other and with institutional devices which are an accounting system (related to the business firm) and a price system (related to the Share Exchange). These interactions provide mechanisms for transmission through which firm-specific (accounting signal) and market-driven (aggregate price) factors can act. A baseline simulation analysis assesses the financial market stability under three alternative accounting designs, namely two kinds of historical cost accounting regime and one kind of fair-value (mark-to-market) accounting regime. The former prove to better stabilize the financial system in terms of market volatility and exuberance in perfectly balanced conditions between speculative and fundamentalist beliefs and intentions. An evolutionary analysis is then developed by varying the relative degree of speculative attitudes between the two sides of the market. Historical cost accounting regimes further prove to make the financial system more resilient to speculative waves occurring at inter-individual level. Baseline findings are further corroborated through experimental analysis in twelve artificial financial systems. This mathematical institutional economic analysis has general implications for both designing accounting systems aimed at enhancing financial market stability and preventing procyclicality, and the study of accounting information process in the formation of share market prices over time.     

A comparison of determinants of consumer satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the performance of apparel products between South Korea and the United States

The purpose of the present study was to identify the determinants of consumer satisfaction and dissatisfaction (CS/D) with the performance of apparel products at the purchase and product-consumption stages for Korean consumers, and to examine if these determinants were similar to those for US consumers. Results showed that at the purchase stage, the three variables, found significantly related to CS/D at purchase for US consumers, were also significant for Korean consumers. These three at-purchase variables were: perceived at-purchase performance, performance expectation and experience-based norm disconfirmation (i.e. the discrepancy between consumers’ experience-based norm and their perception of product performance at purchase). When the variables related to CS/D at the product-consumption stage were examined, both similarities and differences were found between Korean and US consumers. For both countries, perceived consumption performance and satisfaction at purchase were significantly related to CS/D at the product-consumption stage. Differences were found in the effects of expectancy disconfirmation and performance expectation on CS/D at the product-consumption stage. Expectancy disconfirmation is the discrepancy between consumers' performance expectation and their perception of product performance after consumption. Expectancy expectation was found to be a significant determinant of CS/D for US consumers, but was not a determinant for Korean consumers. Performance expectation, which was found not to be a significant determinant of CS/D for US consumers, was a significant determinant for Korean consumers.     

Investment in vintage capital

We study an economy in which firms use labor and various vintages of capital in a CES production function for the final good. We explicitly solve for the investment in capital of a given vintage as a function of its age, and for the resulting stocks of capital. We show that for reasonable parameter values, inverted-U-shaped dynamics of investment and S-shaped dynamics for capital arise in equilibrium. We view the model as an explanation of intra-firm adoption lags, i.e., the observation that firms adopt innovations over time and not instantaneously.     

Mean square error for the Leland–Lott hedging strategy: convex pay-offs

Leland’s approach to the hedging of derivatives under proportional transaction costs is based on an approximate replication of the European-type contingent claim V _T using the classical Black–Scholes formula with a suitably enlarged volatility. The formal mathematical framework is a scheme of series, i.e., a sequence of models with transaction cost coefficients k _n =k ₀ n ^−α , where α∈[0,1/2] and n is the number of portfolio revision dates. The enlarged volatility [^(s)]_n\widehat{\sigma}_{n} in general depends on n except for the case which was investigated in detail by Lott, to whom belongs the first rigorous result on convergence of the approximating portfolio value Vⁿ_TV^{n}_{T} to the pay-off V _T . In this paper, we consider only the Lott case α=1/2. We prove first, for an arbitrary pay-off V _T =G(S _T ) where G is a convex piecewise smooth function, that the mean square approximation error converges to zero with rate n ^−1/2 in L ² and find the first order term of the asymptotics. We are working in a setting with non-uniform revision intervals and establish the asymptotic expansion when the revision dates are t_iⁿ=g(i/n)t_{i}^{n}=g(i/n), where the strictly increasing scale function g:[0,1]→[0,1] and its inverse f are continuous with their first and second derivatives on the whole interval, or g(t)=1−(1−t) ^β , β≥1. We show that the sequence n^1/2(V_Tⁿ-V_T)n^{1/2}(V_{T}^{n}-V_{T}) converges in law to a random variable which is the terminal value of a component of a two-dimensional Markov diffusion process and calculate the limit. Our central result is a functional limit theorem for the discrepancy process.     

Income repatriation decision for multinational corporations: Tax issues

This paper analyzes the existing asymmetry in the US corporate tax law governing the determination of foreign tax credits earned by US firms with foreign subsidiaries. The existing asymmetry results in the US government de facto holding foreign currency put options against US firms with foreign subsidiaries. Combined with the exchange rate volatility, this tax law asymmetry reduces the effective foreign after-tax rate of return and, thus, makes it profitable for US firms to repatriate their foreign source income earlier even when the foreign after-tax rate of return is higher than the domestic rate. Although this paper identifies this asymmetry in the tax law and analyzes its potential effect on the timing of foreign source income repatriation, it is an open question as to the economic significance of this tax code feature provided the firms’ ability to curry the unused tax credit forward for up to 10 years.