Financial Innovation and Russian Government Debt Before 1918

In this paper I describe debt instruments issued by the Russian Imperial Government. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian government was the largest borrower in the world. Russian government bonds were traded in all major financial centers, including London, Paris, Amsterdam, and New York. Russia was integrated into the world financial system. In 1913 foreign investors held 49.7% of Russian government debt. Innovative financial instruments were developed to attract foreign and domestic investors

Preferences Toward Risk and Asset Prices: Evidence From Russian Lottery Bonds

This paper studies the relationship between investor risk preferences and asset returns. The paper provides direct evidence on the risk aversion of participants in a securities market. It uses the prices of lottery bonds issued by the Imperial Russian Government in 1864 and 1866 to estimate investor risk aversion and to study changes in preferences toward risk. Time variation in investor risk preferences is then compared to the dynamics of the Russian bond market over the period 1889 to 1904. Increases in risk aversion are positively associated with increases in the price of a risk-free asset. This result is in accord with economic intuition that higher risk aversion is associated with higher demand for a safe asset, and hence, higher equilibrium price of a risk-free security and a lower risk-free rate. Implications of a Consumption CAPM model for a relationship between changes in interest rates and changes of risk aversion are tested. Evidence supporting the model is found. The paper provides evidence on the role of risk aversion in securities market dynamics

Differential Evolution: A Tool for Global Optimization

This report describes a tool for global optimization that implements the Differential Evolution optimization algorithm as a new Excel add-in. The tool takes a step beyond Excel’s Solver add-in, because Solver often returns a local minimum, that is, a minimum that is less than or equal to nearby points, while Differential Evolution solves for the global minimum, which includes all feasible points. Despite complex underlying mathematics, the tool is relatively easy to use, and can be applied to practical optimization problems, such as establishing pricing and awards in a hotel loyalty program. The report demonstrates an example of how to develop an optimum approach to that problem

Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to Be Justified by Changes in Cash Flows? New Evidence from Parallel Asset Markets

We take advantage of two parallel markets for a set of cash flows to show that better cash flow measurement improves the performance of a dividend discount model. Unlike previous literature, we use out-of-sample estimation. We construct a natural laboratory, by using a unique dataset of commercial real estate and augmenting the dividend information for REITs with cash flow information from this parallel market. The results improve dramatically when information from direct property cash flows is added. These findings suggest that the performance of dividend pricing models improves greatly with better measurement of cash flows, and thus contribute to the resolution of the excess volatility puzzle

Tips Predict Restaurant Sales

An analysis of seven years of monthly charge-card sales and tip data from a multi-regional restaurant chain in the United States found that tip percentages predicted food sales in the following month. Thus, restaurant executives, managers, and owners are encouraged to add tip percentages to their sales forecasting models

Do Stock Prices Move too Much to be Justified by Changes in Dividends? Evidence from Real Estate Investment Trusts

A central issue in asset pricing is whether asset prices move too much in relation to cash flows. We take advantage of the existence of two parallel markets for a set of cash flows to show that better measurement of cash flows can dramatically improve the performance of a dynamic dividend discount model. We apply this model to returns on Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and REIT dividends. Unlike previous literature, we use out-of-sample estimation. We use a unique data set of directly held commercial real estate and augment information in REIT dividends with information from cash flows from this parallel market. When only information from REIT dividends is used, the model performs somewhat better than was previously found for the stock market (Campbell and Shiller (1988a)), which is congruous with the nature of REITs and the information content of their dividends. The results, however, further improve dramatically when information from direct property cash flows is added to the model. These findings suggest that the performance of dividend pricing models improves greatly with better measurement of cash flows, and thus contribute to the resolution of the excess volatility puzzle

Individual vs. Aggregate Preferences: The Case of a Small Fish in a Big Pond

We study the relationship between the risk preferences of individuals and the risk preferences of the aggregate economy. To emphasize the vast differences that can occur between individual and market preferences brought about through aggregation, we assume an economy consisting entirely of risk seekers. We show that such individuals can lead to an aggregate economy that is risk averse. The converse is also true. An aggregate economy that exhibits risk aversion does not imply an economy of individual risk averters. An economy demanding a risk premium can be formed from individuals who do not demand such compensation. Understanding the relationship between the preferences of individuals and the preferences of the aggregate economy is crucial for understanding the connection between the behavioral finance literature, which focuses on individual preferences, and the asset-pricing literature, which focuses on aggregate prices. We discuss empirical implications of these results

Financial Globalization and Risk Sharing: Welfare Effects and the Optimality of Open Markets

To study the welfare effects of investment barriers and the opening of markets to foreigners, we construct an equilibrium model of international asset pricing without agency costs that allows endogenous market participation among heterogeneous agents. Equilibrium prices and the set of participating and non-participating agents are jointly determined in equilibrium and the ability of agents to choose to participate in the market affects prices of domestic and foreign assets. We examine the welfare effects of non-participation and find that when a country moves from complete segmentation to open markets for foreigners, the cost of capital falls in the domestic market. This is consistent with empirical findings in the international asset pricing literature. Through the endogenous participation mechanism, our model is able to capture sources of economic growth. Contrary to previous models, however, we show that opening markets is not Pareto-optimal and we identify a class of domestic agents whose welfare is lower after the opening of markets. These finding have political economy interpretations and policy implications

What is common among return anomalies? Evidence from insider trading decisions

Conventional wisdom suggests that insiders buy shares on positive, and sell on negative, information. Under regulations of insider trading, however, insiders keep silent while possessing extreme information. We find that this phenomenon of insider silence is systematically related to a broad set of anomalies, particularly in the short legs. Specifically, among firms in the short legs, those whose insiders kept silent in the past experience significant negative future returns, which are even lower than when insiders net sold. On average, insider silence accounts for 64% of the short-leg abnormal returns. Our paper provides quantitative evidence of mispricing for return anomalies

Is Trading Behavior Stable Across Contexts? Evidence from Style and Multi-Style Investors

In this paper we study priming of identity within the context of inherent vs. contextual financial decision making. We use a sample of individual trading accounts in equity-style funds taken from one fund family to test the hypothesis that trading styles are inherent vs. contextual. Our sample contains investors who invest either in a growth fund, a value fund, or both. We document behavioral differences between growth fund investors and value fund investors. We find that their trades depend on past returns in different ways: growth fund investors tend towards momentum trading and value fund investors tend towards contrarian trading. These differences may be due to inherent clientele characteristics, including beliefs about market prices, specific personality traits and cognitive strategies that cause them to self-select into one or the other style. We use a sample of investors that trade in both types of funds to test this proposition. Consistent with the contextual hypothesis, we find that investors who hold both types of funds trade growth fund shares differently than value fund shares