Download or read book Three Essays on Firm specific Volatility written by Maria Gabriela Schutte and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central objective of my dissertation is to study the behavior of firm-specific volatility in countries around the world. Consistent with existing literature, I use firm-specific volatility to measure two important concepts: the information content of stocks and firm-specific risk. In Chapter One I hypothesize that the institutional environment in a country has direct consequences on firm-specific risk. A stronger institutional environment results in higher product market competition, higher firm turnover, and higher rates of technological innovation. Consistent with my predictions, I find that creative destruction explains a significant proportion of the cross-sectional differences in firm specific volatility in 40 countries. In Chapter Two I look at the cyclical fluctuations of comovement in the US and 27 other countries during the period 1980-2005. I find that, in general, comovement tends to be countercyclical. Additionally, I find wide cross-sectional variation in the strength of association between comovement and the business cycle. This strength of association positively correlates to a measure of variability in information production. In turn, I find that the information environment can reduce variability in information production and reduce cyclical fluctuations in stock return correlations. Finally, in Chapter I find that idiosyncratic risk has explanatory power on the cross-section of expected returns in international markets. I find strong support to the theory in all countries under study. In eight of the fifteen countries surveyed the relation is significantly positive while in the remaining seven countries the relation is zero. In no instance do I find the relation to be negative. In addition, the results from my analysis are economically significant. I find that after controlling for stock characteristics (beta, size, and momentum) the response in excess returns to a 1% increase in monthly-expected idiosyncratic risk ranges across countries between zero and one half of a percent.
Download or read book Three Essays on Idiosyncratic Volatility written by Anas Aboulamer and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis consists of three essays. The first essay (chapter two) examines the relationship between idiosyncratic volatility and future returns in the Canadian market. The negative relationship between realized idiosyncratic volatility (RIvol) and future returns uncovered by Ang et al. (2006) for the US market has been attributed to return reversals. For the Canadian market where return reversals have considerably less importance, we find that RIvol is positively related to future returns, even after controlling for risk loadings, illiquidity and reversals. Unlike the findings of Bali et al. (2011) for the US market, we find for the Canadian market that the relationship between extreme positive returns and future returns is positive and that idiosyncratic volatility is consistently positively related to future returns. The second essay (chapter three) discusses the relationship between closed end fund discounts and the level of uncertainty about its holdings. Our trade-off model states that the intrinsic premium of a closed-end fund (CEF) is equal to the CEF’s price minus both its NAVPS (net asset value per share) and the net present value (NPV) of its future benefits from liquidity, managerial abilities and leverage minus its managerial costs. Any additional premium will persist to the extent that arbitrage between these two price series is both costly and risky. We find that arbitrage incompleteness due to the uncertainties about this NPV and the CEF’s holdings, as captured by idiosyncratic risk and other proxies, explains over two-thirds of the variation in CEF premiums or their changes. As expected, we find that the CEF premium is negatively related to gross leverage, management fees, cash and bond holdings, and positively related to liquidity enhancement, CEF performance and net leverage. These results are consistent with our finding that changes in CEF prices and NAVPS are more integrated than segmented using the Kappa test of Kapadia and Pu (2012). The third essay (chapter four) investigates the information content of idiosyncratic volatility around the public release of M&A rumors. We examine the releases of hand-collected initial rumors about potential M&A for 2250 firms. Unlike previous research, we find that a strategy of investing in firms with rumors of lower (greater) credibility yields negative (positive) changes in idiosyncratic volatilities around the rumor dates and subsequent returns. We argue that this asymmetric effect on idiosyncratic volatilities is linked to asymmetric changes in the heterogeneity of the probabilities of actual M&A when conditioned on rumor credibility. Changes in idiosyncratic volatilities are positively related to the market implicit probabilities of M&A as measured by the ratio of the market values at the M&A announcement and rumor dates.
Download or read book Three Essays on Stock Market Volatility written by Chengbo Fu and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three essays on stock market volatility. In the first essay, we show that investors will have the information in the idiosyncratic volatility spread when using two different models to estimate idiosyncratic volatility. In a theoretical framework, we show that idiosyncratic volatility spread is related to the change in beta and the new betas from the extra factors between two different factor models. Empirically, we find that idiosyncratic volatility spread predicts the cross section of stock returns. The negative spread-return relation is independent from the relation between idiosyncratic volatility and stock returns. The result is driven by the change in beta component and the new beta component of the spread. The spread-relation is also robust when investors estimate the spread using a conditional model or EGARCH method. In the second essay, the variance of stock returns is decomposed based on a conditional Fama-French three-factor model instead of its unconditional counterpart. Using time-varying alpha and betas in this model, it is evident that four additional risk terms must be considered. They include the variance of alpha, the variance of the interaction between the time-varying component of beta and factors, and two covariance terms. These additional risk terms are components that are included in the idiosyncratic risk estimate using an unconditional model. By investigating the relation between the risk terms and stock returns, we find that only the variance of the time-varying alpha is negatively associated with stock returns. Further tests show that stock returns are not affected by the variance of time-varying beta. These results are consistent with the findings in the literature identifying return predictability from time-varying alpha rather than betas. In the third essay, we employ a two-step estimation method to separate the upside and downside idiosyncratic volatility and examine its relation with future stock returns. We find that idiosyncratic volatility is negatively related to stock returns when the market is up and when it is down. The upside idiosyncratic volatility is not related to stock returns. Our results also suggest that the relation between downside idiosyncratic volatility and future stock returns is negative and significant. It is the downside idiosyncratic volatility that drives the inverse relation between total idiosyncratic volatility and stock returns. The results are consistent with the literature that investor overreact to bad news and underreact to good news.
Download or read book Three Essays in Volatility Change and Private and Government Investment written by Namsuk Kim and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Three Essays on Volatility written by Stefano Mazzotta and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This dissertation is in the form of one survey paper and three essays on the topic of volatility. The unifying feature that permeates the entire thesis is the focus on the measurement and use of conditional second moment of equities and currencies as a measure of risk for asset pricing and policy purposes in the context of international markets." --
Download or read book Three Essays on Volatility Issues in Financial Markets written by George Panayotov and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Three Essays on Volatility written by Peilin Hsieh and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My dissertation focuses on economic studying of volatility issues. Three essays are contained in my dissertation. Essay 1 extends a microstructure model to explain the change of volatility and thus links traders' belief to the volatility change. Our model shows that when market is more uncertain about the value of the stock, the higher the (return) volatility. Essay 2 turns to explore more economic factors that could cause volatility regime switch. We find that US stock return processes, including drift, diffusion, and jump, differ along with US political cycle. Our results imply that the presidency in different parties has distinct policy making processes and thus influence the way information flows into the market, altering the return processes. In the final essay, we document and explain a volatility Bid-Ask spread pattern that increases as time to maturity decreases. Our research develops a model that explains the volatility spread pattern. We show that, as time passes, the required hedging uncertainty premium charged by the liquidity providers decays more slowly while the premium contained in the quoted options price decays at an increasingly higher rate which is determined by the option pricing model. Therefore, liquidity providers need to increase asking and decrease bidding volatility to maintain the profit necessary to compensate slowly decaying hedging uncertainty premium. Our results strongly suggest that studies on volatility spread should detrend the data to make the estimation models correct as well as the series stationary. Without adjusting the trend and autocorrelation problems, statistical results are inaccurate and misleading. More importantly, based on our theoretical model, we also find that: (a) the implied volatility spread does not increase in proportion to the increase of implied volatility, and (b) the increase of volatility uncertainty is not a sufficient condition for an increase in the percentage spread. Finally, to augment the validity of our claims, we provide rigorous econometric tests which support our propositions.
Download or read book Three Essays in Financial Economics written by Biplab K. Ghosh and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Three Essays in the Financial Economics of Conditional Volatility written by Jingyi Liu (Ph.D.) and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Three Essays in Empirical Asset Pricing written by Stephen Szaura and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This thesis comprises three essays in empirical asset pricing. My first essay entitled "Are stock and corporate bond markets integrated? A Big Data Approach" I document the existence a growing Factor Zoo of discovered characteristics and factors that predict the cross-section of corporate bond returns and generate a significant high minus low portfolio alpha. I determine a higher statistical benchmark, by accounting for those characteristics and factors that have been discovered in published and working papers and find that in cross-sectional regressions and portfolio sorts of over a hundred characteristics and factors, on average 2.4% predict the cross-section of corporate bond returns when adjusting for higher benchmarks. A multivariate horse-race of all characteristics and factors in cross-sectional regressions finds a higher number of corporate bond, rather than stock, characteristics and factors that predict the cross-section of corporate bond returns when adjusting for higher benchmarks. In addition to the lower number of corporate bond characteristics and factors that predict the cross-section of stock returns, my results show that the stock and corporate bond markets are more segmented than previously documented.My second essay is based on a joint working paper entitled "Do Option Implied Measures of Stock Mispricing Find Investment Opportunities or Market Frictions" where we find that existing option implied stock mis-pricing measures, the portfolios identified as being the most mispriced (highest quintile), typically have the highest shorting fee. When those stocks are omitted, the average abnormal returns of the long-short stock portfolios are insignificant or greatly reduced in economic magnitude. We propose a new measure, IPD, using a novel intra-day options trades data set, circumvents this and does not require shorting hard to borrow firms.My third essay is based on a joint working paper entitled "Accounting Transparency and the Implied Volatility Skew". We show theoretically and empirically that firms with higher accounting transparency have an implied volatility smirk that is more sensitive to leverage (vice versa). The more clear the accounting information the more skewed the implied volatility smirk. Our theoretical predictions rely on extending the Duffie and Lando [2001] credit risk model to stock option pricing whereby incomplete accounting information and the risk of bankruptcy together act as an economic source of jump risk for stocks. Empirical tests confirm the theoretical predictions of the model and the model can be solved in closed form solution up to Bivariate Standard Normal Cumulative Distribution Function"--
Download or read book Three Essays in Finance written by Haimanot Kassa and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation consists of three loosely related essays. In Essay I, I study the relationship between firm specific risk and return. In Essay II, I study the managerial and investor short-termism. And in Essay III, I study investors heterogeneous preference for skewness and its effect on the idiosyncratic volatility puzzle. Essay I: A spurious positive relation between EGARCH estimates of expected month t idiosyncratic volatility and month t stock returns arises when the month t return is included in estimation of model parameters. We illustrate via simulations that this look-ahead bias is problematic for empirically observed degrees of stock return skewness and typical monthly return time series lengths. Moreover, the empirical idiosyncratic risk-return relation becomes negligible when expected month t idiosyncratic volatility is estimated using returns only up to month t - 1. Essay II: The paper considers a model in which (1) managers allocate effort to both short and long-term projects, and (2) there is feedback between the managerial incentive contract and the number of speculators collecting information on each type of project. More weight placed on near-term price results in more speculation based on information about the short-term project, which induces further increases in the weight placed on near-term price. This feedback effect can result in short-term speculation crowding out the collection of long-term information, which in turn results in the withdrawal of incentives aimed at inducing effort in more profitable long-term projects. The paper shows that the equilibrium that obtains depends upon adjustment costs and initial conditions and is, in general, not efficient. Such outcomes are consistent with concerns about managerial and investor short-termism recently expressed by policy makers and market participants (e.g., the Aspen Institute). The paper considers the efficacy of various corporate and public policy remedies. Essay III: Consistent with models that incorporate investors heterogeneous preference for skewness, I show that (1) high skewness stocks are primarily held by investors with the strongest affinity for lottery-like payoff, (2) the negative skewness-return relation is the strongest for those stocks primarily held by agents with the strongest affinity for lottery-like payoff, (3) the idiosyncratic volatility-return relation is the strongest for those stocks held by agents with the strongest affinity for lottery-like payoff, and (4) investors heterogeneous preference for skewness help explain the idiosyncratic volatility puzzle. Taken together, the results provide evidence for the importance of investors heterogeneous preference for skewness in asset pricing and its implication on the idiosyncratic volatility puzzle.
Download or read book Three Essays in the Financial Economics of Conditional Volatility written by J. Liu and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Three Essays in Empirical Asset Pricing written by Ali Shahrad and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This thesis consists of three essays in empirical asset pricing. In the first essay, I study momentum crashes in emerging equity markets. In particular, I investigate that the momentum crashes are related to volatility, unconditional of the market state. I use emerging stock markets as a laboratory because of their high volatility in both bear and bull markets. My main finding is that momentum crashes are not limited to bear markets, and in fact, one third are experienced in bull markets. These crashes do not fit into the optionality model of Daniel and Moskowitz (2016). Instead, I provide evidence that momentum crashes are linked to the market volatility. In volatile states, the optionality payoff of momentum increases and momentum skewness decreases. Furthermore, I show that the poor performance of momentum in EMs is due to the high volatility in these markets. In the second essay, I investigate whether excessive shortselling is the primary cause for momentum crashes. My hypothesis is that the excessive shortselling of the loser stocks pushes their price below their fundamental values. When the market rebounds, the reversal in the price of the losers leads to momentum crash. I collect the data on shortselling policies across countries, and test whether momentum crashes less in markets with shortselling ban, controlling for the market state and volatility. My results show that the crashes are less severe in markets with shortselling ban, suggesting that shortselling partially explains momentum crashes.In the third essay, I study the mutual fund industry in 77 countries and examine how the fund styles are developed on the aggregate level. I apply textual analysis to the fund names in order to classify funds. I find that the 20 most frequently used words appear in over 50% of all fund names and I define 10 categories (“styles”) based on those (and related) words. These 10 categories are sufficient to classify over 85% of all funds. I find that the menu of funds are remarkably universal. My main result shows how the menu of funds offered to investors in those 77 countries converges over time to a common (“global”) menu of funds. I trace this surprisingly simple and uniform process of global menu convergence to the actions of individual fund families who follow similar growth paths. My results shed new light on the aggregate process of financial innovation and the industrial organization of the asset management industry that appears to produce the same “wholesale” menu around the world"--
Download or read book Three Essays on Estimating Filtering and Predicting Financial Volatility written by Christian Mücher and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Stock Market Volatility and Price Discovery written by Jose Gonzalo Rangel and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Three Essays on Volatility and Extreme Events in Financial and Electricity Markets written by Rémi Galarneau-Vincent and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Three Essays on Volatility and Information Content of Futures Markets written by Pavel Teterin and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation includes three essays on volatility and information content of futures markets. This work gives new insight into the structural changes in volatility, the information content of global interest rate futures, and the time-series behavior of the volatility term structure. The first essay examines structural volatility shifts U.S. crude oil and corn futures markets. In trying to capture the interrelations present in the two markets, we take seriously the importance of properly modelling smooth structural shifts. We incorporate trigonometric functions into a multivariate GARCH model of crude and corn futures prices to obtain the empirical volatility response functions and the time-varying correlation coefficient. Although both short-term and long-term futures exhibit shifts in the mean and volatility, volatility shifts do not manifest themselves in the same manner for different maturities. In the second essay, we investigate the term structure of interest rate futures in the US, Eurozone, United Kingdom, and Switzerland and empirically document five unique results. First, implied USD futures rates contain significantly different information compared to USD spot rates. Second, the four interest rate futures contracts contain similar information that is driven by one common component. Third, implied futures rates contain more information regarding future rate changes than return premiums. Fourth, information shifts are associated with macroeconomic conditions and central bank policies. Finally, significant information shifts occurred during the 2013-2015 time frame, which were greater than those of the great recessionary period of 2008-2009. The third essay focuses on the Samuelson hypothesis, a proposition that futures volatility declines with maturity. We study the strength of the Samuelson effect over time in ten most actively traded U.S. commodity futures. Capturing the dynamics of the futures volatility term structure with three factors, we show that in most markets the slope factor is strongly negative in certain periods and only weakly or not at all negative in other periods. Consistent with the linkage between carry arbitrage and the Samuelson hypothesis, we find that high inventory levels correspond to a flatter volatility term structure. We also find that a flatter volatility term structure corresponds to lower absolute futures term premiums.
