The purpose of this paper is to provide an explanation for relative pricing of futures contracts with respect to underlying stocks based on short sales constraints and informational lags between the two markets. In this model stocks and futures are perfect substitutes, except that short sales...

One fundamental issue in the study of market microstructures is that of price discovery. While most existing studies focus on the trading period, little is known whether and how much the non-trading period contributes to the price discovery. This paper offers a new perspective on the price...

Latin America has a rich history of financial crises. However, it was relatively unharmed by the 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). This paper investigates why, and in particular the role of commodity prices and its institutional framework - in line with the fourth generation financial...

This paper develops a real options framework to analyze the behavior of stock returns in mergers and acquisitions. In this framework, the timing and terms of takeovers are endogenous and result from value-maximizing decisions. The implications of the model for abnormal announcement returns are...

This paper develops a default-risky bond pricing model, which assumes that the default intensity is driven by a Markov chain and which accounts for default and liquidity risk. A representation of the bond price dynamics, which separates three different types of risk, was obtained. Introducing...

In this paper, we extend the earlier results of Jeanblanc and Valchev (2003) in the single name case to the case of multiple defaults of the issuers in a concentrated industry or homo- geneous bond market. We provide solutions for the pairwise default correlations and credit spreads in an...

This paper presents a new method to detect informed trading activities in the options markets.An option trade is identified as informed when it is characterized by an unusual largeincrement in open interest and volume, induces large gains, and is not hedged in the stock market.For the period...

The use of equilibrium models in economics springs from the desire for parsimonious models of economic phenomena that take human reasoning into account. This approach has been the cornerstone of modern economic theory. We explain why this is so, extolling the virtues of equilibrium theory; then...

In theory, prices of current-month federal funds futures contracts should reflect market expectations of near-term movements in the Federal Reserve's target level for the federal funds rate. However, empirical results show that such measures of market expectations are too noisy to predict...

We build a simple model of leveraged asset purchases with margin calls. Investment funds use what is perhaps the most basic financial strategy, called "value investing," i.e., systematically attempting to buy underpriced assets. When funds do not borrow, the price fluctuations of the asset are...