Shoppers' Reactions to Supermarket Price Scanning and Shopper Price Marking

Supermarkets are starting to adopt price scanning checkouts. Other supermarkets, both scanner equipped and non-scanner equipped, are removing individual item prices. Although much has been written, especially in the retail trade press, about the advantages to retailers of scanner check-outs little attention has been paid to shopper reactions. This study sought to determine the attitudes and behavior of shoppers at scanner equiped supermarkets. Some user reactions to self-price marking of purchases was also determined.     

R2

Even with hindsight, the ability to explain stock price changes is modest. $R^2$s were calculated for the returns of large stocks as explained by systematic economic influences, by the returns on other stocks in the same industry, and by public firm-specific news events. The average adjusted $R^2$ is only about .35 with monthly data and .20 with daily data. There is little relation between explanatory power and either the firm's size or its industry. There is little improvement in $R^2$ from eliminating all dates surrounding news reports in the financial press. However, the sample kurtosis is quite different when such news events are eliminated, thereby revealing a mixture of return distributions. Non-news dates also indicate the presence of a distributional mixture, perhaps due to traders acting on private information.     

Nonsynchronous Security Trading and Market Index Autocorrelation

The theoretical portfolio autocorrelation due solely to nonsynchronous trading is estimated from a derived model. This estimated level is found to be substantially less than that observed empirically. The theoretical and empirical relationship between portfolio size and autocorrelation also is investigated. The results of this study suggest that other price-adjustment delay factors in addition to nonsynchronous trading cause the high autocorrelations present in daily returns on stock index portfolios.     

The Effect of Sequential Information Arrival on Asset Prices: An Experimental Study

A complete understanding of security markets requires a simultaneous explanation of price behavior, trading volume, portfolio composition (ie., asset allocation), and bid-ask spreads. In this paper, these variables are observed in a controlled setting—a computerized double auction market, similar to NASDAQ. Our laboratory allows experimental control of information arrival—whether simultaneously or sequentially received, and whether homogeneous or heterogeneous. We compare the price, volume, and share allocations of three market equilibrium models: telepathic rational expectations, which assumes that traders can read each others minds (strong-form market efficiency); ordinary rational expectations, which assumes traders can use (some) market price information, (a type of semi-strong form efficiency); and private information, where traders use no market information. We conclude 1) that stronger-form market models predict equilibrium prices better than weaker-form models, 2) that there were fewer misallocation forecasts in simultaneous information arrival (SIM) environments, 3) that trading volume was significantly higher in SIM environments, 4) and that bid-ask spreads widen significantly when traders are exposed to price uncertainty resulting from information heterogeneity.     

The Evolution of Security Designs

We consider a competitive and perfect financial market in which agents have heterogeneous cash flow valuations. Instead of assuming that agents are endowed with rational expectations, we model their behavior as the product of adaptive learning. Our results demonstrate that adaptive learning affects security design profoundly, with securities mispriced even in the long run and optimal designs trading off underpricing against intrinsic value maximization. The evolutionary dominant security design calls for issuing securities that engender large losses with a small but positive probability, but that otherwise produce stable payoffs, almost the exact opposite of the pure state claims that are optimal in the rational expectations framework.     

Initial Public Offerings and Underwriter Reputation

This paper examined the returns earned by subscribing to initial public offerings of equity (IPOs). Rock (1986) suggests that IPO returns are required by uninformed investors as compensation for the risk of trading against superior information. We show that IPOs with more informed investor capital require higher returns. The marketing underwriter's reputation reveals the expected level of “informed” activity. Prestigious underwriters are associated with lower risk offerings. With less risk there is less incentive to acquire information and fewer informed investors. Consequently, prestigious underwriters are associated with IPOs that have lower returns.