This paper investigates underwriters’ treatment of public information throughout the IPO pricing process. Two key findings emerge. First, public information is not fully incorporated into the initial price range. While the economic magnitude of the bias is small, it is puzzling because it is not clear who benefits from it. Further, it indicates that the filing range midpoint is not an unbiased ...

In this paper we study market environments where information is costly to acquire and is also useful to potential competitors. Agents may sell, or buy, reports over the information acquired and choose their trades in the market on the basis of what they learnt. Reports are unverifiable cheap-talk messages hence the quality of the information transmitted depends on the conflicts of interest face...

In this paper we employ variance ratio tests of the random walk hypothesis to investigate the interdependence of global equity markets in terms of the predictability of equity index returns and how the clustering pattern has evolved in recent years. The study is based on almost 15 years of daily returns of free float-adjusted market capitalization equity indices from 46 countries. First, we exa...

We demonstrate that simply by using the ethnic makeup surrounding a firm’s location, we can predict, on average, which trade links are valuable for firms. Using customs and port authority data on the international shipments of all U.S. publicly-traded firms, we show that firms are significantly more likely to trade with countries that have a large resident population near their firm headquarter...

We consider a cheap talk game with a sender who has a reputational concern for an ability to predict a state of the world correctly, and where receivers may misunderstand the message sent. When communication between the sender and each receiver is private, we identify an equilibrium in which the sender only discloses the least noisy information. Hence, what determines the amount of information ...

Whether the information environment affects the cost of capital is a fundamental question in accounting and finance research. Relying on theories about competition between informed investors as well as the pricing of information asymmetry, we hypothesize a cross-sectional variation in the pricing of information asymmetry that is conditional on competition. We develop and validate empirical prox...

Using “A” shares accessible only to local investors (who account for 99% of stock investors in China), this paper tests if short-horizon contrarian and intermediate-horizon investment strategies generate abnormal profits. We find statistically significant abnormal profits for both the arbitrage portfolio-investment strategies. Detailed analysis indicates that: (1) an absolute dominance of non-i...

Article history: Received 28 August 2012 Accepted 22 January 2013 Available online 31 January 2013 Using a sample of 293 IPOs in Hong Kong, we separately measure pre-market and aftermarket sentiments and examine their impact on IPO pricing in a two-stage framework. We find that underwriters only partially adjust offer price to reflect pre-market sentiment and money left on the table is positive...

We propose an equilibrium model to study the impact of short-sale constraints on market prices and liquidity in imperfectly competitive markets where market makers have significant market power and are averse to inventory risk. We show that shortsale constraints decrease bid because of the market power and increase ask because of the risk aversion. Our model can therefore help explain why short...

We present a new method to measure the intraday relationship between movements of implied volatility smiles and stock index returns. It exploits a specific characteristic of the smile profile in high-frequency data. Using transaction data for EuroStoxx 50 options from 2000 to 2011 and DAX options from 1995 to 2011 (14 million transactions), we find that the intraday evolution of volatility smil...