Extreme correlation of international equity markets

Testing the hypothesis that international equity market correlation increases in volatile times is a difficult exercise and misleading results have often been reported in the past because of a spurious relationship between correlation and volatility. This paper focuses on extreme correlation, that is to say the correlation between returns in either the negative or positive tail of the multivariate distribution. Using "extreme value theory" to model the multivariate distribution tails, we derive the distribution of extreme correlation for a wide class of return distributions. Using monthly data on the five largest stock markets from 1958 to 1996, we reject the null hypothesis of multivariate normality for the negative tail, but not for the positive tail. We also find that correlation is not related to market volatility per se but to the market trend. Correlation increases in bear markets, but not in bull markets.International equity markets; volatility; correlation and extreme value theory

Reputation-based pricing and price improvements in dealership markets

In many security markets, dealers trade with their regular clients at a discount relative to prevailing bid and ask quotes. In this article we provide an explanation to this phenomenon. We consider a dealer and an investor engaged in a long-term relationship. The dealer assigns a reputational index to his client. This index increases (reputation decreases) when the client conducts trades which results in a loss for the regular dealer. The dealer grants a price improvement if and only if the client's index is smaller than a threshold and suspends price improvements otherwise. We show that this pricing strategy induces the investor to refrain from exploiting private information against her regular dealer. We also find that it worsens the quotes posted by other dealers. For this reason, there are cases in which the investor is better off if long-term relationships are impossible (for instance, if trading is anonymous). Our model predicts that a dealer's decision to grant a price improvement depends on his past trading profits with the trader requesting the improvement.Market microstructure; Reputation and Implicit contracts; Non-Anonymous trading

Dynamic modeling of web purchase behavior and e-mailing impact by Petri net

In this article, the authors introduce Petri nets to model the dynamics of web site visits and purchase behaviors in the case of wish list systems. They describe web site activities and their transition with probability distributions and model the sequential impact of influential factors through links that better explain web purchase behavior dynamics. The basic model, which analyzes site connections and purchases to explain visit and purchase behavior, performs better than a classical negative binomial regression model. To demonstrate its flexibility, the authors extend the wish list Petri net model to measure the impact of e-mailing intervals on visit frequency and purchase.internet; wish list; e-mail; Petri net; dynamic model

Measuring idiosyncratic risks in leveraged buyout transactions

The authors use a contingent claims analysis model to calculate the idiosyncratic risks in Leveraged Buyout transactions.Idiosyncratic Risk; LBO; Private Equity; Benchmarking; CCA

Controlling price volatility through financial innovation

In this paper, the authors study the possibility of controlling asset price volatility through financial innovation in a three-period finite competitive exchange economy with incomplete financial markets and retrading.incomplete markets; financial innovation; volatility

Continuous-Time Games of Timing

We address the question of existence of equilibrium in general timing games of complete information. Under weak assumptions, any two-player timing game has a subgame perfect e-equilibrium, for each e > 0. This result is tight. For some classes of games (symmetric games, games with cumulative payoffs), stronger existence results are established.Timing games; war of attrition; preemption games; subgame perfect equilibrium

Majority vote following a debate

Voters determine their preferences over alternatives based on cases (or arguments) that are raised in the public debate. Each voter is characterized by a matrix, measuring how much support each case lends to each alternative, and her ranking is additive in cases. We show that the majority vote in such a society can be any function from sets of cases to binary relations over alternatives. A similar result holds for voting with quota in the case of two alternatives.Case-based decision theory; voting theory; debates

Acquisition Values and Optimal Financial (In)Flexibility

In this paper, the authors analyze optimal financial structure for an incumbent and potential entrant accounting for feedback effects in secondary asset markets.Financial Flexibility; Market Entry; Acquisition; Exit Values; Predation; Financial Contracting; Product Market Competition

Making things visible : audit quality control in the UK and the definition of the professional order

Amongst professional activities, audit has increasingly departed from what the sociology of professions traditionally considered to be lying at the heart of the identity of the members of a professional body : the autonomy to judge the nature and amount of work that is necessary to treat the cases submitted to these members. Indeed, the generalisation of audit standards and the institutionalisation of means of controlling their application have in the last thirty years contributed to externalise and collectivise professional judgement. This paper tries to go back over the consequences of the process of controlling the work of auditors, both for the definition of audit itself and for the definition of the professional community. To do this, the paper takes the example of the operation of an audit monitoring unit that was set by the Institute of cartered accountants in England and Wales (in association with the Scottish and Irish Institutes of cartered accountants) to comply with the 1989 Companies act that integrated the 8th European Company Law directive in the British legislation. As what regards audit, it is shown that the result of the monitoring process was to reveal a great diversity in the ways of understanding audit practice as well as to stigmatise, not so much ill practice, but rather practices that were distant to the model that had inspired the definition of audit standardsn and the definition of the way to control their application. Regarding the professional community, it is contented that the monotoring process lead top make the hierarchical structure of this community visible whilst rendering a revision of the process necessary so as to attemps to restore order and unity in the professional body.audit; quality control

Consumers' immediate memory for prices

In this article, the authors examine the cognitive mechanics involved in keeping prices in short-terme memory for subsequent recall. Consumers code and store prices verbally, visually, and in terms of their magnitude. The encoding used influences immediate recall performance. The memorability of prices depends on their verbal length, usualness and overall magnitude. They find that the performance of consumers recall prices better than what previous digit span studies with simple numbers have suggested.consumer behavior; numerical cognition; price memory