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Journal Article
Arbitrage: the key to pricing options
Arbitrage has become associated in popular attitudes with the most ruthless and profit-driven of human impulses, but the opposite reputation might be more well-deserved. The ability to arbitrage is essential for the efficient operation of markets. An interesting application of the principle of arbitrage arose when it provided the breakthrough insight in economists? solution to a formerly intractable problem: how to properly price the emergent financial instruments known as options.
Working Paper
Macroeconomic risk and asset pricing: estimating the apt with observable factors
This paper develops and applies a new maximum likelihood method for estimating the Arbitrage Pricing Theory (APT) model with observable risk factors. The approach involves simultaneous estimation of the factor loadings and risk premiums and can be applied to return panel with more securities than time series observations per security. Observable economic factors are found to account for 25 to 40 percent of the covariation in U.S. equity returns, and the APT pricing restrictions cannot be rejected for most sample periods. A significant "firm size anomaly" is measured, but it may be partly ...
Working Paper
A Model of Anomaly Discovery
We analyze a model of anomaly discovery. Consistent with existing evidence, we show that the discovery of an anomaly reduces its magnitude and increases its correlation with existing anomalies. One new prediction is that the discovery of an anomaly reduces the correlation between deciles 1 and 10 for that anomaly. Using data for 12 well-known anomalies, we find strong evidence consistent with this prediction. Moreover, the correlation between deciles 1 and 10 of an anomaly becomes correlated with the aggregate hedge-fund wealth volatility after the anomaly is discovered. Our model also sheds ...
Working Paper
An international arbitrage pricing model with PPP deviations
This paper develops an intertemporal, international asset pricing model for use in applied theoretical and empirical research. An important feature of the model is that it incorporates both stochastic inflation rates and stochastic Purchasing Power Parity deviations (PPP). The model derives the equilibrium real return on assets, and obtains empirically tractable reduced form equations which can be used to examine such issues as capital market segmentation, currency substitution, exchange rate volatility, and the forward exchange market's risk premium. Mechanically, the model begins as a ...
Working Paper
Around and Around: The Expectations Hypothesis
We show how to construct arbitrage-free models of he term structure of interest rates in which various expectations hypotheses can hold. McCulloch (1993) provided a Gaussian non-Markovian example of the unbiased expectations hypothesis (U--EH), thereby contradicting the assertion by Cox, Ingersoll, and Ross (CIR, 1981) that only the so-called local expectations hypothesis could hold. We generalize that example in three ways: (i) We characterize the U--EH in terms of forward rates; (ii) we extend this characterization to a class of expectations hypotheses that includes all of those considered ...
Working Paper
Direct tests of index arbitrage models
Previous tests of stock index arbitrage models have rejected the no-arbitrage constraint imposed by these models. This paper provides a detailed analysis of actual S&P 500 arbitrage trades and directly relates these trades to the predictions of index arbitrage models. An analysis of arbitrage trades suggests that (i) short sale rules are unlikely to restrict arbitrage, (ii) the opportunity cost of arbitrage funds exceeds the Treasury Bill rate, and (iii) the average price discrepancy captured by arbitrage trades is small. Tests of the models provide some support for a version of the arbitrage ...
Working Paper
Index arbitrage and nonlinear dynamics between the S&P 500 futures and cash
We use a cost of carry model with nonzero transactions costs to motivate estimation of a nonlinear dynamic relationship between the S&P 500 futures and cash indexes. Discontinuous arbitrage suggests that a threshold error correction mechanism may characterize many aspects of the relationship between the futures and cash indexes. We use minute-by-minute data on the S&P 500 futures and cash indexes. The results indicate that nonlinear dynamics are important and related to arbitrage and suggest that arbitrage is associated with more rapid convergence of the basis to the cost of carry than would ...
Working Paper
Deliverability and regional pricing in U.S. natural gas markets
During the 1980s and early '90s, interstate natural gas markets in the United States made a transition away from the regulation that characterized the previous three decades. With abundant supplies and plentiful pipeline capacity, a new order emerged in which freer markets and arbitrage closely linked natural gas price movements throughout the country. After the mid-1990s, however, U.S. natural gas markets tightened and some pipelines were pushed to capacity. We look for the pricing effects of limited arbitrage through causality testing between prices at nodes on the U.S. natural gas ...
Journal Article
Asset mispricing, arbitrage, and volatility
Market efficiency remains a contentious topic among financial economists. The theoretical case for efficient markets rests on the notion of risk-free, cost-free arbitrage. In real markets, however, arbitrage is not risk-free or cost-free. In addition, the number of informed arbitrageurs and the supply of financial resources they have to invest in arbitrage strategies is limited. This article builds on an important recent model of arbitrage by professional traders who need?but lack?wealth of their own to trade. Professional abitrageurs must convince wealthy but uninformed investors to entrust ...