Previous empirical studies of mutual fund performance relative to market performance were conducted using two- and three-moment analysis. This study has applied first-, second-, and third-degree stochastic dominance principles to investigate the same question. Our results support the earlier Sharpe study and oppose the recent Arditti work. From the investor's standpoint, mutual fund performance was inferior to market performance over the period 1954–1963.

In this paper, insider trading is viewed as a signal of managements' assessments of firms' future prospects and its information content is compared to that in managements' earnings forecasts. These forecasts are explicit statements of managements' assessments of future prospects. A number of measures of insider trading designed to capture the information aspect of trading are investigated. The results indicate that the insider trading measures do not capture the information conveyed in earnings forecasts, although there is evidence that insider trading measures that take into account the timing of trades relative to the date of the release of the forecast are informative.

We zero in on the expected returns of long-short portfolios based on 204 stock market anomalies by accounting for i) effective bid–ask spreads, ii) post-publication effects, and iii) the modern era of trading technology that began in the early 2000s. Net of these effects, the average anomaly’s expected return is a measly 4 bps per month. The strongest anomalies net, at best, 10 bps after controlling for data mining. Several methods for combining anomalies net around 20 bps. Expected returns are negligible despite cost mitigations that produce impressive net returns in-sample and the omission of additional trading costs, like price impact.

A proposition is proved which shows that each member of an important class of investment and financing projects has a unique nonnegative internal rate of return. Nonuniqueness of the internal rate of return is thus shown to occur less frequently than formerly believed. The correspondence between the proposition and previous results on the uniqueness of the internal rate of return is briefly indicated.

Standard tests of portfolio efficiency neglect the existence of illiquid wealth. The most important illiquid asset in household portfolios is housing: if housing stock adjustments are infrequent, optimal portfolios in periods of no adjustment are affected by housing price risk through a hedge term and tests for portfolio efficiency of financial assets must be run conditionally upon housing wealth. We use Italian household portfolio data and time series on financial assets and housing stock returns to assess whether actual portfolios are efficient. We find that housing wealth plays a key role in determining whether portfolios chosen by homeowners are efficient.

This study employs a non-parametric approach to investigate the volatility risk premium in the over-the-counter currency option market. Using a large database of daily delta-neutral straddle quotes in four major currencies—the British pound, the euro, the Japanese yen, and the Swiss franc—we find that volatility risk is priced in all four currencies across different option maturities. We find that the volatility risk premium is negative, with the premium decreasing in maturity. Finally, we also find evidence that jump risk may be priced in the currency option market.

To “ensure depth and liquidity,” the European Central Bank intervened in sovereign debt markets through its Securities Markets Programme (SMP), providing a unique opportunity to estimate the effects of large-scale asset purchases on sovereign bond liquidity premia. From reduced-form estimates, we find robust, economically significant impact and lasting reductions in sovereign bonds’ liquidity premia in response to official purchases. We develop a search-based asset-pricing model to understand our empirical results. The theory implies that bond liquidity premia fall in response to both official purchases and rising sovereign default probabilities, as seen in the data.

A diversified firm can trade at a discount to a matched portfolio of single-segment firms if the diversified firm has either lower expected cash flows or higher expected returns than the single-segment firms. We study whether firms with diversification discounts have higher expected returns in order to compensate investors for offering less upside potential (or skewness exposure) than focused firms. Our empirical tests support this hypothesis. First, we find that focused firms offer greater skewness exposure than diversified firms. Second, we find that diversified firms have significantly larger discounts when the diversified firm offers less skewness than matched single-segment firms. Finally, we find that up to 53% of the excess returns received on diversification-discount firms relative to diversification-premium firms can be explained by differences in exposure to skewness.

It has been suggested by many [1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 10 and more] and denied by few that, ceteris paribus, a well-informed risk-averse investor should prefer investments which have positively skewed distributions of rates of return. Passing over the models which underlie such assertions, the question is addressed empirically here. Do (as opposed to “should”) investors prefer investments that are positively skewed, ceteris paribus?

Dominant investors can influence the publicly available information about firms by affecting the cost of information collection. Under strategic competition, transparency results in higher variability of profits and output. Thus, lenders prefer less transparency, since this protects firms when in a weak competitive position, while equity holders prefer more. Market interaction creates strategic complementarity in gathering information on competing firms, thus entry by transparent competitors will improve price informativeness. Moreover, as the return to information gathering increases with liquidity, increasing global trading may undermine the ability of bank control to keep firms opaque.

We show how firm-level real options lead to idiosyncratic skewness in stock returns. We then document empirically that growth option variables are positive and significant determinants of idiosyncratic skewness. The real option impact on skewness is more significant in firms with lottery-type features, small size, high volatility, distressed, low return on assets, and low book-to-market ratio. We also find that expectation on idiosyncratic skewness is associated with lower Sharpe ratios. This suggests investors are willing to sacrifice mean-variance portfolio efficiency for greater skewness deriving from real options. Furthermore, financial flexibility has a positive incremental effect, enhancing the beneficial role of asset flexibility on idiosyncratic skewness.

Our work provides refined tests of the source of merger gains in a neglected industry: utilities. Utilities offer fertile ground for analysis of traditional theories: synergy, collusion, hubris, and anticipation. Utility mergers create wealth for the combined firm, consistent with both the synergy and collusion hypotheses. To distinguish between these hypotheses, we study rival stock returns across dimensions related to collusion: deregulation, geography, and horizontal and withdrawn deals. We also find that the impact of mergers on consumer prices is consistent with synergy rather than collusion. Analysis of industry rivals that become targets also rejects collusion and is consistent with anticipation.

We investigate how financial contracting interacts with lending-channel effects by tracing the anatomy of a credit supply shock using micro-level data from a multinational bank. Borrowers with stronger lending relationships, higher nonlending revenues, and those that pledge collateral, especially outside assets and real estate, experience less credit rationing. Consistent with a tightening of financing constraints post shock, borrower composition shifts toward larger and less risky firms, and loans exhibit higher collateralization rates. Our analysis highlights the value of relationships and suggests that relationship banking is a channel through which borrowers can mitigate lending-channel effects.

Using a novel data set that links individual investment bankers to the acquisition deals they advise on, we find that individual investment bankers with greater deal experience are associated with higher acquisition returns and post-acquisition operating performance, particularly for acquirers in complex and more opaque industries. The advisory fee on acquisitions is also positively associated with the investment banking team’s experience. Finally, when more experienced investment bankers switch to a new bank, acquirers are more likely to move with them. Overall, our results suggest that the human capital of individual investment bankers is valuable to acquirers.

Determining the market values of streams of future returns is a task common to many sorts of economic analysis. The literature on this subject is extensive at all levels of abstraction. However, most work has not taken uncertainty into account in a meaningful way.

Mimicking portfolios have long been useful in asset pricing research. In most empirical applications, the portfolio weights are assumed to be fixed over time, while in theory they may be functions of the economic state. This paper derives and characterizes mimicking portfolios in the presence of predetermined state variables, or conditioning information. The results generalize and integrate multifactor minimum variance efficiency (Fama (1996)) with conditional and unconditional mean-variance efficiency (Hansen and Richard (1987), Ferson and Siegel (2001)). Empirical examples illustrate the potential importance of time-varying mimicking portfolio weights and highlight challenges in their application.

In a general equilibrium model of risky assets, prices would be determined by the interaction of the supply and demand. Unpredictable events would impact one or both sides of the asset market and thereby influence the return on assets. The probability distribution of returns would thus be endogenous. Since expectations as to subsequent asset returns influence asset demand, the probability distribution of returns is a crucial element in the general equilibrium system; it is the consequence of the demand and supply of assets and, at the same time, a central determinant of expectations and, hence, of the demand for assets. Nevertheless, it is possible to undertake a partial equilibrium analysis in which the behavior of asset demand, conditional upon a postulated probability distribution of returns, is examined. In such a limited context, it is natural to postulate a “convenient” probability distribution of returns, namely, one that facilitates the analysis of demand. A leading assumption has been that returns are serially independent and obey a stationary distribution.

One of the phenomena on Wall Street during the sixties was the new issues market. During the decade new issues became a popular investment alternative, particularly in the bull markets of 1962, 1966, and 1968. The height of enthusiasm occurred in the hot new issues market of the fiscal year 1968–1969 when 2,171 issues were offered to the public. This interest in new issues was followed by studies such as Reilly and Hatfield [12], McDonald and Fisher [9], the SEC [13], and others, all of which show that there is a downward bias in the issue price of new issues. Why this downward bias is present was treated later by Logue [5]. Although these studies also suggest that there is a difference in the pricing behavior by individual underwriters, none of the previous studies has addressed itself specifically to this point.

Focusing on takeover bids for which the outcome can be predicted in advance with certainty, Grossman and Hart established the proposition, which subsequent work accepted, that successful bids must be made at or above the expected value of minority shares. This proposition provided the basis for Grossman and Hart's identification of a free-rider problem and became a major premise for the analysis of takeovers. This paper shows that this important proposition does not always hold once we drop the assumption that the only successful bids are those whose success could have been predicted with certainty. In particular, it is shown that any unconditional bid that is below the expected value of minority shares but above the independent target's per share value will succeed with a positive probability, that the bidder's expected payoff from such a bid (not counting the transaction costs of making the bid) is always positive, and that bidders might elect to make such bids. These results have implications for the nature of the free-rider problem and for the operation of takeovers; in particular, it is shown that, when a raider can increase the value of a target's assets, the raider might elect to bid even if no dilution of minority shares is possible and it holds no initial stake in the target.

This paper examines the impact of financial sponsor competition on corporate buyers. We find that corporate acquirers who purchase targets that financial buyers also bid on outperform corporate acquirers who buy targets bid on by corporate firms only. Deal characteristics, acquirer abilities, and observable target characteristics cannot explain this difference in returns. Corporate acquirers have higher returns when they follow a first bid by a financial buyer rather than a first bid by another corporate buyer. The results suggest that financial bidders identify targets with high potential for value improvement and winning corporate bidders are competent in exploiting this potential.