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Journal Article
The electronic purse
The electronic purse, a new payments instrument offering advantages to both consumers and merchants, may soon replace currency in many routine transactions. Widespread use of the electronic purse could, however, raise concerns about consumer protection and the safety and soundness of the instrument.
Journal Article
Are high-quality firms also high-quality investments?
The relationship between corporate reputation and investment results is the subject of ongoing debate. Some argue that high-quality firms ultimately provide superior stock price performance; others counter that stock prices already reflect these firms' prospects for growth and profitability. This study advances the debate by providing fresh evidence that investing in high-quality firms yields above-average returns and that these superior returns continue for up to five years.
Report
Stock market valuation indicators: is this time different?
Record low dividend yields and record high market-to-book ratios in recent months have led many market watchers to conclude that these indicators now behave differently from how they have in the past. This paper examines the relationship between traditional market indicators and stock performance, and then addresses two popular claims that the meaning of these indicators has changed in recent years. The first is that dividend yields are permanently lower now than in the past because firms have increased their use of share repurchases as a tax-advantaged substitute for dividends. The second ...
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Do investors mistake a good company for a good investment?
Do investors confuse the quality of a firm with its attractiveness as an investment? If so, shares of well-run companies will be bid up too high and subsequently earn negative abnormal returns. Our analysis of Fortune magazine?s annual survey of "America?s Most Admired Companies" for 1983-96 finds the opposite. A portfolio of the most admired decile of firms earns an abnormal return of 3.2 percent in the year after the survey is published and 8.3 percent over three years. The least admired decile of firms earns a negative abnormal return of 8.6 percent in the nine months through the end ...
Journal Article
Has the stock market grown more volatile?
The record number of fifty-point daily moves in the Dow Jones Industrial Average in 1996--forty-five in the first three quarters alone--has attracted considerable media attention. An analysis traces this phenomenon to two basic causes: the record level of the Dow and the return of price volatility to post-World War II norms following several years of low volatility.
Report
Rational bias in macroeconomic forecasts
This paper develops a model of macroeconomic forecasting in which the wages firms pay their forecasters are a function of their accuracy as well as the publicity they generate for their employers by being correct. In the resulting Nash equilibrium, forecasters with identical models, information, and incentives nevertheless produce a variety of predictions in order to maximize their expected wages. In the case of heterogeneous incentives, the forecasters whose wages are most closely tied to publicity, as opposed to accuracy, produce the forecasts that deviate most from the consensus. We find ...
Report
Rational bias in macroeconomic forecasts
This paper develops a model of macroeconomic forecasting in which a forecaster's wage is a function of his accuracy as well as the publicity he generates for his firm by being correct. In the resulting Nash equilibrium, forecasters with identical models, information, and incentives nevertheless produce a variety of predictions, consciously biasing them in order to maximize expected wages. In the case of heterogeneous incentives, the forecasters whose wages are most closely tied to publicity, as opposed to accuracy, produce the forecasts that deviate most from the consensus. We find empirical ...