The values of the famous Subscription Shares issued by the South Sea Company in 1720 have to be split into two components before they can be understood. One component was a fractional claim upon one original share in the firm. The other component, however, was a bundle of share warrants. The...

We propose double bootstrap methods to test the mean-variance efficiency hypothesis when multiple portfolio groupings of the test assets are considered jointly rather than individually. A direct test of the joint null hypothesis may not be possible with standard methods when the total number of...

The paper analyzes the integration of euro area sovereign bond markets during the European sovereign debt crisis. It tests for contagion (i.e., an intensification in the transmission of shocks across countries), fragmentation (a reduction in spillovers) and flight-to-quality patterns, exploiting...

Following theory, we check that funding risk connects illiquidity, volatility and returns in the cross-section of stocks. We show that the illiquidity and volatility of stocks increase with funding shocks, while contemporaneous returns decrease with funding shocks. The dispersions of...

Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this paper studies household stock market participation and trading behavior in 2007 - 09, a period that saw a major stock market downswing. The stock market participation rate fell after the market crash. We find evidence that less-educated households,...

The end result of major sporting events has been shown to affect next-day stock returns through shifts in investor mood. By studying the soccer matches that led to the elimination of France and Italy from the 2010 FIFA World Cup, we show that moodrelated pricing effects can materialize as...

Entrepreneurs need cash to finance their real investments. Since cash is costly to hold, entrepreneurs will underinvest. If entrepreneurs can access financial markets prior to learning about an investment opportunity, they can sell some of their less liquid assets for cash and, as a result,...

We decompose total variance into its bad and good components and measure the premia associated with their fluctuations using stock and option data from a large cross-section of firms. The total variance risk premium (VRP) represents the premium paid to insure against fluctuations in bad variance...

We use relative value to measure limits to arbitrage in fixed-income markets. Relative value captures apparent deviations from no-arbitrage relationships. It is simple, intuitive and can be computed model-free for any bond. A pseudo-trading strategy based on relative value generates higher...