Fee Waivers in Money Market Mutual Funds

It is a widespread practice among mutual fund managers to voluntarily waive fees they have a contractual right to claim. The effective fee charged may be substantially less than indicated in expense ratios and may vary over the year despite a constant contractual fee. Retail fund managers use fee waivers to strategically adjust net advisory fees to current realizations in performance and expected fund flows. The paper finds differences in waiving between retail and institutional funds because of differences in the effectiveness of waivers in advancing performance.

Dating the Turning Points of Nordic Business Cycles.

When were the significant turning points in business activity in the Nordic countries during the last fourty years? How frequent, long, and sharp were the contractions? This paper provides answers to these questions by applying the Bry and Boschan (1971) algorithms, which have been used to analyze business cycle turns in several countries, in particular the United States. Applying the same methods for Nordic countries it is found that contractions were unusually long and frequent in Sweden, while expansions were unusually long in Finland and Norway. However, contractions were not necessarily sharper in Sweden when compared with the other Nordic countries. Surprisingly, not much evidence of a common Nordic cycle is found. It appears instead that Sweden and Denmark tend to mimic the downturns in the G-7 countries more closely than Finland and Norway.

The Importance of the Loss Function in Option Pricing

Which loss function should be used when estimating and evaluating option pricing models? Many different fucntions have been suggested, but no standard has emerged. We do not promote a partidular function, but instead emphasize that consistency in the choice of loss functions is crucial. First, for any given model, the loss function used in parameter estimation and model evaluation should be identical, otherwise suboptimal parameter estimates will be obtained. Second, when comparing models, the estimation loss function should be identical across models, otherwise unfair comparisons will be made. We illustrate the importance of these issues in an application of the so-called Practitioner Black-Scholes (PBS) model to S&P500 index options. We find reductions of over 50 percent in the root mean squared error of the PBS model when the estimation and evaluation loss functions are aligned. We also find that the PBS model outperforms a benchmark structural model when the estimation loss functions are identical across models, but otherwise not. The new PBS model with aligned loss functions thus represents a much tougher benchmark against which future structural models can be compared. Quelle fonction de pertes devrait être utilisée pour l'estimation et l'évaluation des modèles d'évaluation d'options? Plusieurs fonctions différentes ont été suggérées,0501s aucune norme ne s'est imposée. Nous ne promouvons aucune fonction,0501s soutenons que la cohérence dans le choix des fonctions est cruciale. Premièrement, pour n'importe quel modèle donné, la fonction de pertes utilisée dans l'estimation des paramètres et dans l'évaluation du modèle devrait être la même, sinon on obtient des estimations de paramètres sous-optimales. Deuxièmement, lors de la comparaison de modèles, la fonction de pertes pour l'estimation devrait être la même pour chaque modèle, autrement les comparaisons sont injustes. Nous illustrons l'importance de ces questions dans une application du modèle appelé Black-Scholes du praticien (PBS) aux options de l'index S&P500. Nous trouvons des réductions de plus de 50 pourcent de la racine de l'erreur quadratique moyenne du modèle PBS lorsque les fonctions de pertes d'estimation et d'évaluation sont alignées. Nous trouvons également que le modèle PBS dépasse un modèle de benchmark structurel quand les fonctions de pertes d'estimation sont identiques pour tous les modèles,0501s pas dans les autres cas. Le nouveau modèle PBS à fonctions de pertes alignées représente dès lors un benchmark bien plus robuste auquel les futurs modèles structurels pourront être comparés.Option pricing, implied volatility, practitioner Black-Scholes approach, pricing errors, loss functions, out-of-sample forecasting, parameter stability, Évaluation des options, volatilité implicite, approche Black-Scholes du praticien, erreurs d'évaluation, fonctions de perte, prévisions hors-échantillon, stabilité des paramètres

Financial asset returns, direction-of-change forecasting, and volatility dynamics

We consider three sets of phenomena that feature prominently - and separately - in the financial economics literature: conditional mean dependence (or lack thereof) in asset returns, dependence (and hence forecastability) in asset return signs, and dependence (and hence forecastability) in asset return volatilities. We show that they are very much interrelated, and we explore the relationships in detail. Among other things, we show that: (a) Volatility dependence produces sign dependence, so long as expected returns are nonzero, so that one should expect sign dependence, given the overwhelming evidence of volatility dependence; (b) The standard finding of little or no conditional mean dependence is entirely consistent with a significant degree of sign dependence and volatility dependence; (c) Sign dependence is not likely to be found via analysis of sign autocorrelations, runs tests, or traditional market timing tests, because of the special nonlinear nature of sign dependence; (d) Sign dependence is not likely to be found in very high-frequency (e.g., daily) or very low-frequency (e.g., annual) returns; instead, it is more likely to be found at intermediate return horizons; (e) Sign dependence is very much present in actual U.S. equity returns, and its properties match closely our theoretical predictions; (f) The link between volatility forecastability and sign forecastability remains intact in conditionally non-Gaussian environments, as for example with time-varying conditional skewness and/or kurtosis

Demand Curves and the Pricing of Money Management

Recent studies (e.g. Gruber (1996)) conclude that a subset of investors allocates away from funds with relatively worse prospects, and toward funds with better prospects. The implication for a given fund is that good prospects increase the density of performance-sensitive investors, and bad prospects increase the density of performance-insensitive investors. Since fees come out of performance, this has a straightforward pricing implication: investors remaining in the funds with bad prospects should be charged more, whether by the same fund or by a different fund that absorbs the investors. This dynamic is apparent from several angles in a sample of retail money-funds.

Bureaucratic Tax-Seeking: The Danish Waste Tax

Two main results in traditional tax theory states the following. First, general taxes minimize the welfare loss from changed relative prices. Second, because the total public budget tends to exceed the optimal size, a leader (here named ‘troop leader’) is needed in the budget process to prevent over-taxation. Nevertheless, differentiated taxes initiated by individual ministries generate a still larger proportion of total tax revenue, in particular under cover of taxing externalities such as environmental pollution. We suggest that this situation leads to over-taxation for two reasons. First, the absence of a strong and fully informed troop leader prevents rational coordination of collective action. Second, budget maximization leads to overwhelming fiscal pressure because bureaucracies are competing about resources just like fishermen or hunters (here named ‘bureaucratic tax-seeking’). Taxing citizens or firms is like harvesting rents from a natural resource and therefore we apply a common-pool resource model. Because bureaucracies compete about maximizing their share of tax payers‘ money, this leads to over-taxation and an irrational outcome for both bureaucrats and society. These suggestions are strongly confirmed by the case of the Danish waste tax. Thus, we recommend that bureaucratic institutions should coordinate their tax-seeking efforts to maximize budgets in the long run and that the ministries that collect green tax revenues should not be allowed to control these revenues. Such a budget maximization opportunity would kick off a new self-destructive fiscal race among competing tax-seeking bureaucracies.Bureaucratic tax-seeking; Troop leader; Common-pool resource model; Green taxation; Waste tax

How Relevant is Volatility Forecasting for Financial Risk Management?

It depends. If volatility fluctuates in a forecastable way, then volatility forecasts are useful for risk management; hence the interest in volatility forecastability in the risk management literature. Volatility forecastability, however, varies with horizon, and different horizons are relevant in different applications. Existing assessments are plagued by the fact that they are joint assessments of volatility forecastability and an assumed model, and the results vary not only with the horizon, but also with the model. To address this problem, we develop a model-free procedure for measuring volatility forecastability across horizons. Perhaps surprisingly, we find that volatility forecastability decays quickly with horizon. Volatility forecastability, although clearly of relevance for risk management at the very short horizons relevant for, say, trading desk management, may not be important for risk management more generally.e conclude in Section VI by discussing some limitations of our analysis, and offer some recommendations for implementation.

Option Valuation with Long-run and Short-run Volatility Components

This paper presents a new model for the valuation of European options. In our model, the volatility of returns consists of two components. One of these components is a long-run component, and it can be modeled as fully persistent. The other component is short-run and has a zero mean. Our model can be viewed as an affine version of Engle and Lee (1999), allowing for easy valuation of European options. We investigate the model through an integrated analysis of returns and options data. The performance of the model is spectacular when compared to a benchmark single-component volatility model that is well-established in the literature. The improvement in the model’s performance is due to its richer dynamics which enable it to jointly model long-maturity and short-maturity options Ce papier présente un nouveau modèle d’évaluation d’options européennes. Dans notre modèle, la volatilité des rendements se décompose en deux parties. Une des composantes est une composante de long terme, et elle peut être modélisée comme permanente. L’autre composante porte sur le court terme et est de moyenne nulle. Notre modèle peut être considéré comme la version affine de Engle & Lee (1999), permettant l’évaluation simple d’options européennes. Nous étudions le modèle à travers une analyse intégrée de données de rendements et d’options. La performance du modèle est spectaculaire comparée à un benchmark tel qu’un modèle à une seule composante de volatilité bien connu dans la littérature. L’amélioration de la performance du modèle est due à une dynamique plus riche qui permet de modéliser conjointement des options à maturité longue et à maturité courteoption valuation, long-run component, short-run component, unobserved components, persistence, GARCH, out-of-sample, évaluation d’option, composante long terme, composante court terme, composantes non observables, persistance, GARCH, hors échantillon

The demographics of fund turnover

This article documents various demographic factors which influence mutual fund turnover including managerial experience, location, education, and gender. On average, funds in financial centers trade more but this excess turnover declines with experience. While most extra trading is concentrated among less experienced managers in financial centers, they do not outperform inexperienced managers located in smaller towns. Furthermore, managers in financial centers increase trading after good performance. This result is particularly strong for inexperienced, more educated male fund managers investing in growth stocks and located in New York. Our results provide strong evidence that demographic factors influence fund manager trading behavior.Labor market; Mutual funds; Overconfident trading; Performance evaluation

Optimal prediction under asymmetric loss

Prediction problems involving asymmetric loss functions arise routinely in many fields, yet the theory of optimal prediction under asymmetric loss is not well developed. We study the optimal prediction problem under general loss structures and characterize the optimal predictor. We compute it numerically in less tractable cases. A key theme is that the conditionally optimal forecast is biased under asymmetric loss and that the conditionally optimal amount of bias is time-varying in general and depends on higher-order conditional moments. Thus, for example, volatility dynamics (e.g., GARCH effects) are relevant for optimal point prediction under asymmetric loss. More generally, even for models with linear conditional-mean structure, the optimal point predictor is in general nonlinear under asymmetric loss, which provides a link with the broader nonlinear time series literature.Forecasting