Financial markets reveal information through which firm managers increase the value of equity, e.g., by improving investment decisions. With debt, however, such decisions are not necessarily socially efficient. We demonstrate that investors’ endogenous information acquisition, acting through this feedback channel, attenuates risk-shifting but amplifies debt overhang. The most ex-ante inefficien...

This paper provides a dynamic rational expectations equilibrium model in which investors have heterogeneous information and investment opportunities. Informed investors privately receive advance information about future earnings that is unrelated to current earnings. In response to good advance information, stock prices increase and informed investors act as trend chasers, increasing their inve...

Internet message boards are inherently a world of cheap talk due to the anonymity of message authors. This paper investigates whether a pecuniary reputation system influences the adverse selection problem endemic to message boards. First, we find evidence that authors with high reputation scores are less likely to voluntarily offer a buy-hold-sell sentiment in a particular message. Second, we f...

Hedge funds have the most sophisticated risk management practices; however, hedge funds also appear to have a short lifetime relative to other managed funds. In this study, we investigate the failure probabilities of hedge funds—particularly the failures due to financial distress. We forecast the failure probabilities of hedge funds using both a proportional hazard model and a logistic model. B...

This article constructs an economic model of a rational trader who operates in a market with transaction costs and noise trading. The level of trading affects the rational trader’s marginal cost of transacting; as a result, trading volume (through its effect on marginal cost) is a source of risk. This engenders an equilibrium relationship between returns and volume. The model also provides a si...

This article empirically examines the relationship between order sizes and spreads in the foreign exchange market based on a FX dealer’s quotes. It is found that spreads are independent of order sizes in the inter-dealer market, but they are negatively correlated in the customer market. JEL classification: F31; G14

We examine how insiders and firms trade when arbitrage is limited. When arbitrage is costly (proxied by high idiosyncratic risk), insiders and firms earn higher absolute returns on their trades (insider trading, share repurchases, and seasoned equity offerings) in the following year. Furthermore, they initiate their trades following greater past price movements in the preceding year. These resu...

This paper studies a discrete-time financial model with or without transaction costs, in which only partial information can be observed. Partial information model means that the investors in the market can observe no more information except the stock prices. This model has been investigated in Karatzas and Xue (1991), Lakner (1995, 1998), and Cheng (2004), etc. Applying stochastic filtering the...

Using Monte Carlo simulations, I show that typical out-of-sample forecast exercises for stock returns are unlikely to produce any evidence of predictability, even when there is in fact predictability and the correct model is estimated. JEL classification: C15; C53; G14.

This questionnaire survey of fund managers in the United States, Germany and Switzerland documents a distinctly positive influence of bonus payments on investment behavior on both sides of the Atlantic. Higher bonus payments are significantly related to higher working effort but not to risk taking. They also seem to induce fund managers to rely more on fundamental information. Findings within r...