The bond event study methodology since 1974

In the spirit of methodology reviews for stock event studies, like the one prepared by Binder (Rev Quant Financ Account 11:111–137, 1998), this paper discusses the development of the event study methodology for corporate bonds since its first application with Katz (J Financ 29:551–559, 1974). The motivation to conduct this review stems from two sources: First, the methodology utilized for stocks cannot simply be applied to bonds, as bonds present several features that strongly distinguish them from stocks. An erroneous model could lead to false conclusions about the impact of new information on a firm’s debt. Second, the availability of new sources for bond data enables the application of bond event studies for an increasing number of research frameworks. Thus, future research ought to be interested in the selection of the proper methodology. Consequently, this paper illustrates past and present event study methods utilized to calculate abnormal bond returns and reviews the applied parametric and non-parametric test statistics. Besides, insight on how the availability of corporate bond data has evolved through the last four decades, as well as the impact on prevailing methodology is provided. Altogether, this paper provides a first extensive snapshot of the current bond event study methodology and offers guidance for future research.     

Merger policy and tax competition: the role of foreign firm ownership

In many situations, governments have sector-specific tax and regulation policies at their disposal to influence the market outcome after a national or an international merger has taken place. In this paper we study the implications for merger policy when countries non-cooperatively deploy production-based taxes and firms may be partly owned by foreigners. We find that when foreign firm ownership is low in the pre-merger situation, non-cooperative tax policies are more efficient after a national merger, and smaller synergy effects are needed for this type of merger to be proposed and cleared. In contrast, cross-border mergers dominate when the degree of foreign firm ownership is high initially. These results suggest a link between increasing international portfolio diversification and the rising share of cross-border mergers.     

Portfolio management without probabilities or statistics

Considered here is on-line portfolio management aimed at maximizing the long-run growth of financial wealth. The portfolio is repeatedly rebalanced in response to observed returns on diverse assets. Suppose statistical information and related methods are not available—or deemed too difficult. On that assumption this paper explores how an adaptive procedure, which totally dispenses with statistics and associated competence, nonetheless may solve the problem over time.     

Multidimensional Screening in a Monopolistic Insurance Market

We consider a population of individuals who differ in two dimensions, their risk type (expected loss) and their risk aversion, and solve for the profit-maximising menu of contracts that a monopolistic insurer puts out on the market. Our findings are threefold. First, it is never optimal to fully separate all the types. Second, if heterogeneity in risk aversion is sufficiently high, then some high-risk individuals (the risk-tolerant ones) will obtain lower coverage than some low-risk individuals (the risk-averse ones). Third, because women tend to be more risk averse than men (in that the risk aversion distribution for women first-order stochastically dominates that for men), gender discrimination may lead to a Pareto improvement.     

Banking competition and welfare

We develop a simple general equilibrium model in which investment in a risky technology is subject to moral hazard and banks can extract market power rents. We show that more bank competition results in lower economy-wide risk, higher social welfare, lower bank capital ratios, more efficient production plans and Pareto-ranked real allocations. Perfect competition supports a second best allocation and optimal levels of bank risk and capitalization. These results are at variance with those obtained by a large literature that has studied a similar environment in partial equilibrium, they are empirically relevant, and carry significant implications for policy guidance.     

Risk measurement distortion: an improved model of return smoothing

We examine the effects of smoothed hedge fund returns on standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis of return and on correlation of returns using a MA(2)-GARCH(1,1)-skewed-t representation instead of the traditional MA(2) model employed in the literature. We present evidence that our proposed representation is more consistent with the behavior of hedge fund returns than the traditional MA(2) representation and that the traditional method tends to overstate the degree of smoothing observed in hedge fund returns. We examine methods for correcting the distortive effects of smoothing using our representation.     

Two-Period Duopolies with Forward Markets

Review of Industrial Organization - We experimentally consider a dynamic multi-period Cournot duopoly with a simultaneous option to manage financial risk and a real option to delay supply. The...