When No Law is Better than a Good Law

This paper argues, both theoretically and empirically, that sometimes no security law may be better than a good security law that is not enforced. The first part of the paper formalizes the sufficient conditions under which this happens for any law. The second part of the paper shows that a specific security law - the law prohibiting insider trading - may satisfy these conditions, which implies that our theory predicts that it is sometimes better not to have an insider trading law than to have an insider trading law but not enforce it. The third part of the paper takes this prediction to the data. We revisit the panel data set assembled by Bhattacharya and Daouk (2002), who showed that enforcement, not the mere existence, of insider trading laws reduced the cost of equity in a country. We find that the cost of equity actually rises when a country introduces an insider trading law, but does not enforce it.

When No Law is Better than a Good Law

This paper argues, both theoretically and empirically, that sometimes no securities law may be better than a good securities law that is not enforced. The first part of the paper formalizes the sufficient conditions under which this happens for any law. The second part of the paper shows that a specific securities law - the law prohibiting insider trading - may satisfy these conditions. The third part of the paper takes this prediction to the data. We find that the cost of equity actually rises when some countries enact an insider trading law, but do not enforce it.insider trading, cost of capital, emerging markets, securities law, enforcement, International Development, G15, G18, K22, K42,

Is Unlevered Firm Volatility Asymmetric?

Asymmetric volatility refers to the stylized fact that stock volatility is negatively correlated to stock returns. Traditionally, this phenomenon has been explained by the financial leverage effect. This explanation has recently been challenged in favor of a risk premium based explanation. We develop a new, unlevering approach to document how well financial leverage, rather than size, beta, book-to-market, or operating leverage, explains volatility asymmetry on a firm-by-firm basis. Our results reveal that, at the firm level, financial leverage explains much of the volatility asymmetry. This result is robust to different unlevering methodologies, samples, and measurement intervals. However, we find that financial leverage does not explain index-level volatility asymmetry, which is consistent with theoretical results in Aydemir, Gallmeyer and Hollifield (2006).Volatility asymmetry, Financial leverage, Financial Economics, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods, G12,

Do Investors Learn About Analyst Accuracy?

We study the impact of analyst forecasts on prices to determine whether investors learn about analyst accuracy. Our test market is the crude oil futures market. Prices rise when analysts forecast a decrease (increase) in crude supplies. In the 15 minutes following supply realizations, prices rise (fall) when forecasts have been too high (low). In both the initial price action relative to forecasts and in the subsequent reaction relative to realized forecast errors, the price response is stronger for more accurate analysts. These price reactions imply that investors learn about analyst accuracy and trade accordingly.Financial Economics, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, Political Economy,

When an event is not an event : the curious case of an emerging market

Shares trading in the Bolsa mexicana de Valores do not seem to react to company news. Using a sample of Mexican corporate news announcements from the period July 1994 through June 1996, this paper finds that there is nothing unusual about returns, volatility of returns, volume of trade or bid-ask spreads in the event window. This suggests one of five possibilities: our sample size is small; or markets are inefficient; or markets are efficient but the corporate news announcements are not value-relevant; or markets are efficient and corporate news announcements are value-relevant, but they have been fully anticipated; or markets are efficient and corporate news announcements are value-relevant, but unrestricted insider trading has caused prices to fully incorporate the information. The evidence supports the last hypothesis. The paper thus points towards a methodology for ranking emerging stock markets in terms of their market integrity, an approach that can be used with the limited data available in such markets

An Econometric Evaluation of A Geopolitical Theory of Oil Price Behavior

WP 2005-27 December 2005Previous work on crude oil price modeling has generally focused on two theoretical approaches, either the optimal control analysis of pricing of a depletable resource, or OPEC as a partial monopolist setting oil prices to maximize net present value. Neither has been wholly satisfactory. We consider a different perspective, a game theory based framework in which political and military factors interact with economic considerations for oil exporters and importers to define a target price zone (TPZ). We analyze several issues in this context: monthly vs. annual average prices, beginning and ending dates for TPZs, degree of stability in several price series (WTI, Brent, etc.), FOB and landed prices, real or nominal prices, OPEC behavior, and effect of the Euro exchange rate on dollar denominated oil prices. We conclude that a TPZ system was in operation from 1986 through 2003 and that OPEC acted as a political cartel exercising market power by controlling production in order to seek to maintain prices within the TPZ. The TPZ worked imperfectly but with a substantial degree of predictability for 18 years. In 2004 and 2005 the TPZ system deteriorated for several reasons, and has not yet been re-established

Conditional Skewness of Aggregate Market Returns

WP 2009-22 June 2009JEL Classification Codes: G12; C1The skewness of the conditional return distribution plays a significant role in financial theory and practice. This paper examines whether conditional skewness of daily aggregate market returns is predictable and investigates the economic mechanisms underlying this predictability. In both developed and emerging markets, there is strong evidence that lagged returns predict skewness; returns are more negatively skewed following an increase in stock prices and returns are more positively skewed following a decrease in stock prices. The empirical evidence shows that the traditional explanations such as the leverage effect, the volatility feedback effect, the stock bubble model (Blanchard and Watson, 1982), and the fluctuating uncertainty theory (Veronesi, 1999) are not driving the predictability of conditional skewness at the market level. The relation between skewness and lagged returns is more consistent with the Cao, Coval, and Hirshleifer (2002) model. Our findings have implications for future theoretical and empirical models of time-varying market return distributions, optimal asset allocation, and risk management

Switching Asymmetric GARCH and Options on a Volatility Index

WP 2003-05 February 2003Few proposed types of derivative securities have attracted as much attention and interest as option contracts on volatility. Grunbichler and Longstaff (1996) is the only study that proposes a model to value options written on a volatility index. Their model, which is based on modeling volatility as a GARCH process, does not take into account the switching regime and asymmetry properties of volatility. We show that the Grunbichler and Longstaff (1996) model underprice a 3-month option by about 10%. A Switching Regime Asymmetric GARCH is used to model the generating process of security returns. The comparison between the switching regime model and the traditional uni-regime model among GARCH, EGARCH, and GJR-GARCH demonstrates that a switching regime EGARCH model fits the data best. Next, the values of European call options written on a volatility index are computed using Monte Carlo integration. When comparing the values of the option based on the Switching Regime Asymmetric GARCH model and the traditional GARCH specification, it is found that the option values obtained from the different processes are very different. This clearly shows that the Grunbichler-Longstaff model is too stylized to be used in pricing derivatives on a volatility index

Is Unlevered Firm Volatility Asymmetric?

WP 2009-23 June 2009JEL Classification Codes: G12Asymmetric volatility refers to the stylized fact that stock volatility is negatively correlated to stock returns. Traditionally, this phenomenon has been explained by the financial leverage effect. This explanation has recently been challenged in favor of a risk premium based explanation. We develop a new, unlevering approach to document how well financial leverage, rather than size, beta, book-to-market, or operating leverage, explains volatility asymmetry on a firm-by-firm basis. Our results reveal that, at the firm level, financial leverage explains much of the volatility asymmetry. This result is robust to different unlevering methodologies, samples, and measurement intervals. However, we find that financial leverage does not explain index-level volatility asymmetry, which is consistent with theoretical results in Aydemir, Gallmeyer and Hollifield (2006)

Do Investors Learn About Analyst Accuracy?

WP 2008-19 September 2008We study the impact of analyst forecasts on prices to determine whether investors learn about analyst accuracy. Our test market is the crude oil futures market. Prices rise when analysts forecast a decrease (increase) in crude supplies. In the 15 minutes following supply realizations, prices rise (fall) when forecasts have been too high (low). In both the initial price action relative to forecasts and in the subsequent reaction relative to realized forecast errors, the price response is stronger for more accurate analysts. These price reactions imply that investors learn about analyst accuracy and trade accordingly