Business Commons^™

Household Financial Ratios: A Review Of Literature, Nathan Harness, Michael Finke, Swarn Chatterjee

Swarn Chatterjee

The literature on household financial ratios provides insight into the characteristics related to meeting common investment asset, debt, and liquidity guidelines. We know much about the contemporaneous relation between ratios and household characteristics, but the literature exploring the impact of meeting ratio thresholds on subsequent financial success is in its infancy. Ratios can be useful heuristics that efficiently provide information about financial status as well as a prescriptive guideline to motivate more efficient financial behavior. While the existing literature provides some insight into which households have adequate ratios, there are opportunities for additional empirical scrutiny and application of household resource …

Migration Of Trading And The Introduction Of Single Stock Futures On The Underlying Us Stocks, Thomas Henker

Thomas Henker

This study investigates where liquidity and informed trading takes place following the introduction of single stock futures (SSF) contracts on the OneChicago futures exchange. Specifically, we analyze the size and composition of proportional spreads for two sets of stocks, those that have single stock futures contracts and a matched control sample that does not have such contracts. We find that, after controlling for changes in spread determinants, the average proportional spreads, on average, decrease significantly after SSF are introduced. For NYSE stocks, while the average daily trading volume in the cash market is reduced by 389,000 shares, we find a …

Auctions For Injecting Bank Capital (Addendum To 'A Troubled Asset Reverse Auction'), Peter Cramton, Lawrence M. Ausubel

Peter Cramton

Public discussion has turned, in the past few days, toward using some of the $700 billion in rescue funds for the injection of government money into banks in return for ownership stakes. The purpose of this short note, an addendum to “A Troubled Asset Reverse Auction,” is to describe an auction mechanism suitable for injections of capital into banks. The auctions would price the equity purchases through a competitive process.

Quashing The Financial Firestorm, Aaron S. Edlin

Aaron Edlin

Start the financial rescue with containment, establish unlimited deposit insurance and continuous access to funds, then move to a well thought-out plan to quash the financial flames.

The Short-Term Dynamics Of Information Risk, Thomas Henker, Shah A. H. Shah-Idil, Jianxin Wang

Thomas Henker

We introduce an informational approach (IA) for exploring association between variables, an alternative to the prevalent parametric, thus restrictive, regression analysis. The IA uses data to (non-parametrically) construct the joint distribution of variables. Then, it uses theory to develop restrictions on the joint distributions. These restrictions will typically be orderings of functions of conditional distributions induced by the joint distribution. Finally, it attempts refuting the restrictions. We implement IA examining the relation between trading sizes and spreads, a main concern. Following insights and results of Milgrom (1981), Feldman (2004), and Feldman and Winer (2004), we use NYSE data and kernel …

A Troubled Asset Reverse Auction, Peter Cramton, Lawrence M. Ausubel

Peter Cramton

The US Treasury has proposed purchasing $700 billion of troubled assets to restore liquidity and solve the current financial crisis, using market mechanisms such as reverse auctions where appropriate. This paper presents a high-level design for a troubled asset reverse auction and discusses the auction design issues. We assume that the key objectives of the auction are to: 1) provide a quick and effective means to purchase troubled assets and increase liquidity; 2) protect the taxpayer by yielding a price for assets related to their value; and 3) offer a transparent rules-based process that minimizes discretion and favoritism. We propose …

Pre-Test Assessment, Thomas D. Berry

Thomas D Berry

Price Discovery And Liquidity In Basket Securities, Thomas Henker, Martin Martens

Thomas Henker

Basket securities enable investors to purchase a broad portfolio of securities in a single transaction. We examine the link between HOLDRS, a basket security comprising stocks from an industry or sector, and the underlying stocks. We find that the price of the portfolio of underlying securities leads and is more informative than the basket price. Our results are contrary to the findings of empirical studies that use futures, which are basket securities with features less like those of the underlying equities. Our findings suggest uninformed investors can minimize adverse selection costs by trading basket securities rather than the underlying stocks.

Complexity Of Information And Trading Behavior: The Case Of Dividend Increase Announcements, Ali M. Fatemi, Sanjay Deshmukh, Iraj Fooladi

Ali M Fatemi

We examine the intraday trading response of participants in the common stock market and in the preferred stock market to announcements of dividend increases on common stock. We find that participants in the preferred stock market respond more slowly to the announcement than those in the common stock market. Our results are consistent with the implications of Heiner’s model of behavior under uncertainty, which suggest that investors who face a more complicated environment respond more slowly to new information. Participants in the preferred stock market face a more complicated environment because they have to determine the source of financing of …