This paper presents a generalized version of the lattice approach to pricing options. It shows how the control variate technique can produce significant improvements in the efficiency of the approach. The control variate technique is illustrated using American puts on dividend and nondividend paying stocks.

A procedure is developed for the valuation of options when there are two underlying state variables. The approach involves an extension of the lattice binomial approach developed by Cox, Ross, and Rubinstein to value options on a single asset. Details are given on how the jump probabilities and jump amplitudes may be obtained when there are two state variables. This procedure can be used to price any contingent claim whose payoff is a piece-wise linear function of two underlying state variables, provided these two variables have a bivariate lognormal distribution. The accuracy of the method is illustrated by valuing options on the maximum and minimum of two assets and comparing the results for cases in which an exact solution has been obtained for European options. One advantage of the lattice approach is that it handles the early exercise feature of American options. In addition, it should be possible to use this approach to value a number of financial instruments that have been created in recent years.

We examine the stock price behavior associated with public offerings of common stock and convertible debt that are withdrawn by the issuing firm, as well as the stock price behavior associated with completed offerings. We find that stock returns are negative in the period from the announcement to the withdrawal, and are statistically insignificant from the announcement to the issuance. Stock returns are positive at the withdrawal and negative at the issuance. Furthermore, the average stock returns associated with withdrawals are significantly different from zero only when the reported reason for the withdrawals is unfavorable market conditions. Our evidence suggests that managers' decisions to withdraw equity offerings depend on recent stock price behavior, and that managers' decisions convey information about firm value to market participants.

This study empirically tests contingent claims pricing models for American currency spot and futures options. Numerical analysis indicates that the difference in the model prices of spot and futures put (call) options (with the same exercise price and maturity) is, for a premium (discount) currency, positive and an increasing function of (a) the absolute difference in the prices of the underlying spot and futures contracts and (b) the maturity of the options. Tests on British pound, Deutsche mark, and Swiss franc options indicate many violations of the ordinal pricing relationships noted above. Additional tests indicate that option prices are inconsistent with functional relationship (b) above. Most of the observed violations are sufficiently large to provide arbitrage profits net of transaction costs, assuming interest rates are constant and the Interest Rate Parity theorem holds continuously. Alternatively, both the violations and the inconsistent functional relationship may be due to violation of the assumption of constant interest rates.

This paper explores implications of differential personal taxation for corporate investment and dividend decisions. The personal tax advantage of dividend deferral causes shareholders to generally prefer greater investment in real assets under internal as opposed to external financing. Furthermore, dividend deferral is shown to be costly at the corporate level, causing shareholders in different tax brackets at times to disagree over optimal investment and dividend policies under internal financing. The profitability of internally-financed security investment is shown to depend on a security's tax status and shareholders' tax brackets. However, externally-financed security purchases are unprofitable from a tax standpoint.

Speculative bubbles have been offered to explain the excess volatility results by Shiller (1981) and LeRoy and Porter (1981). Recent work by Flood, Hodrick, and Kaplan has shown that rational speculative bubbles cannot be the explanation for the excess volatility results. This paper provides an analytical framework for examining the hypothesis that the simple present value model used for the excess volatility studies is a misspecification of the true model. The method is applied to data from a market index and four large corporations. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that the simple present value model is not the correct specification for stock market pricing.

Segmentation of capital markets produces incentives for firms to adopt countermeasures, one of which is dually listing their stocks on foreign capital markets. In this paper, the behavior of stock returns surrounding such international listings is examined for a sample of firms. Assuming that the capital markets are either completely or “mildly” segmented beforehand, it is hypothesized that the international listing of a security should, in general, accompany a reduction in its expected return. The sample reveals evidence consistent with this hypothesis.

This study is an ex post performance test comparing the accuracy of an American model to a European model for valuing listed options. Specifically, the Geske and Johnson American put valuation model is compared with the Black and Scholes European put model. On average, both models undervalue, relative to market prices, put options. However, the Geske and Johnson model values are significantly closer to market prices than are the Black and Scholes values.

This study provides evidence on joint characteristics of hourly common stock trading volume and returns on the New York Stock Exchange. Average volume traded shows significant differences across trading hours of the day and across days of the week. Average returns differ across hours of the day, and, to some extent, across days of the week. There is a strong contemporaneous relation between trading volume and returns and also a relation between trading volume and returns lagged up to four hours. Furthermore, the trading volume-returns relation is steeper for positive returns than for nonpositive returns.

Among the elements of value reflected in the prices of corporate securities are the taxtiming options associated with the opportunities for investors to tax manage their portfolios by deferring gains and taking losses. We show that the aggregate value of these taxtiming options for the securityholders of a firm will be enhanced when the firm has multiple classes of tradeable securities outstanding. For that reason, the inclusion of debt as well as equity in a firm's capital structure should raise the total market value of the firm. We further show that, under most likely circumstances, there will be an interior optimal degree of leverage that will maximize tax-timing option values.

What happens to the price of a put in a period during which the stock price stays constant? The hedging strategy implicit in the Black-Scholes model would seem to imply that the put goes up in value. Pure arbitrage arguments imply the opposite result. This paper resolves the paradox and uses it to explore the restrictions inherent in the diffusion processes assumed for all option pricing models.

This paper shows how a derivative security can be duplicated by a forward strategy, and, hence, priced by arbitrage in terms of the forward price.

Mechanical trading rules seem to have more potential than previous tests found. Fama and Blume (1966), looking at the Dow 30 of the late 1950s, found no profits for the best (½-percent) rule after adjusting for transactions costs. Fifteen of these stocks looked profitable in their sample, however; for the same rule, the surviving fourteen show statistically significant profits for 1970–1982 for transactions costs obtainable by floor traders. The test used here assumes constant risk premia, or more generally, that risk premia are on average approximately the same on days “in” as for the total period.

We support and generalize our original results (1978) in light of potential impediments to a pure market solution to agency problems and potential causal links between liquidation and bankruptcy. In the case of bankruptcy costs, market impediments are easily eliminated through the inclusion of simple provisions in corporate charters and bond indentures. Further, we demonstrate that recent attempts to link liquidation costs to capital structure are without merit. If the firm is to be liquidated on the basis of a rule other than one that maximizes the total value of all the claimants, arbitrage profits arise, and informal reorganization will discipline management to follow the liquidation rule that is optimal for existing securityholders. Also, we find that the pure market solution is not readily generalizable to other classes of agency problems, particularly the risk incentive problem. However, the alternative solution of the risk incentive problem through complex financing contracting may be useful in explaining complexities in contemporary financial contracts.

A family of jump process models is derived by applying Gauss-Hermite quadrature to the recursive integration problem presented by a compound option model. The result is jump processes of any order with known efficiency properties in valuing options. In addition, these processes arise in the replication of options over finite periods of time with two or more assets where they again have known efficiency properties. A “sharpened” trinomial process is designed that accounts for the first-derivative discontinuity in option valuation functions at critical exercise points. It is shown to have accuracy superior to that of conventional binomial and trinomial processes and is nearly identical to the trinomial process optimized by Boyle (1988) through trial and error.

The federal funds rate arguably is the most important interest rate in the U.S. capital market because it plays a central role in monetary policy and the term structure. This paper examines the micromechanics of the funds market. We show that in a continuous market with asynchronous trading, regulatory constraints and accounting conventions that focus agents' attention on discrete time instants have important implications for the dynamics of trading activity and realized market prices. We also exhibit a model of the market that explains observed regularities in the intertemporal behavior of the funds rate.

This paper examines the valuation impacts of specially designated dividends (SDDs) by analyzing the behavior of stock and bond prices on dates surrounding their announcements. The evidence presented here suggests that SDDs are considered positive signals by the market, with (most of) the gains associated with their announcements accruing to stockholders. In addition, we present some evidence that the gain to stockholders is negatively related to the frequency of SDD announcements.

In a world of asymmetric information in which only the insiders know the quality of the firm, it is claimed that debt, even if it is risky, is more advantageous than outside equity because issuance of debt is less attractive to inferior firms. The advantage to debt arises from the fact that it can keep unprofitable firms out of the market, thus improving the average quality of firms in the market. This advantage exists even if the firms cannot be perfectly sorted in the signaling equilibrium.

This paper explores the implications for the information content of acquisition offers in an economy with asymmetric information. It is shown that mergers can be socially beneficial due to risk reduction and information asymmetry even when there are no productive synergies and when positive premia are paid. The properties of equilibria with and without mergers are derived and contrasted in order to obtain a quantitative bound on potential merger premia. Theory is related to empirical evidence, where our results show that aggregate valuation gains can accrue on a purely informational basis. Moreover, the model developed here has important implications for the reported differences in tender offer and merger studies.

This paper examines the intertemporal behavior of the short-term rate of interest in a mean-reverting model (Vasicek's elastic random walk model). Using the Goldfeld-Quandt switching regressions technique, we show that the mean-reverting model switched regimes three times over the sample period (March 1959 to December 1985) and that two of these switches coincide with the 1979 and 1982 changes in Federal Reserve monetary policy on interest rates. Parameter estimates prove to be unstable over the sample period. There is evidence of slow mean reversion over the entire sample period; yet significant mean-reversion emerges only in the 1979n1982 regime.