This study examines how family ownership affects the performance and capital structure of 613 Canadian firms using a panel dataset from 1998 to 2005. In particular, we distinguish the effect of family ownership from the use of control-enhancing mechanisms. We find that freestanding family-owned...

In this paper we look at the relative information content of cash and futures prices for Canadian Government bonds. We follow the information-share approaches introduced by Hasbrouck (1995) and Harris et al (1995), applying the techniques in Gonzalo-Granger (1995), to evaluate the relative...

Differences in market structures may affect the manner in which fundamental information is incorporated into prices. High levels of quote and trade transparency plus substantial quoting obligations in European government securities markets ensure that prices are informationally efficient. The...

Explanations of changes in asset prices as being due to exogenous changes in risk appetite, although arguably controversial, have been popular in the financial community and have also received some attention in attempts to account for recent financial crises. Operational versions of these...

The authors examine the ability of economic models with regime shifts to rationalize and explain the risk-aversion and pricing-kernel puzzles put forward in Jackwerth (2000). They build an economy where investors' preferences or economic fundamentals are state-dependent, and simulate prices for...

We investigate the macroeconomic determinants of corporate spreads using a no-arbitrage technique. Structural shocks are identified by a New-Keynesian model. Treasury bonds are priced in an affine model with time-varying risk premia. Corporate bonds are priced in a reduced-form credit risk model...

In a recent attempt to account for the equity-premium puzzle within a representative-agent model, Cecchetti, Lam, and Mark (2000) relax the assumption of rational expectations and in its place use the assumption of distorted beliefs. The author shows that the explanatory power of the distorted...

Since 2002, spreads on emerging market sovereign debt have fallen to historical lows. Given the close links between sovereign spreads, capital flows to emerging markets, and economic growth, understanding the factors driving these spreads is very important. We address this issue in two stages....

The observed predictability of excess returns in equity and foreign exchange markets has largely been attributed to the presence of time-varying risk premiums in these markets. For example, excess equity returns were found to be explained by various financial and economic variables. Similarly,...

We examine large price changes, known as jumps, in the U.S. Treasury market. Using recently developed statistical tools, we identify price jumps in the 2-, 3-, 5-, 10-year notes and 30-year bond during the period of 2005-2006. Our results show that jumps mostly occur during prescheduled...