Dynamic Asset Pricing Model Research Articles

Diagnosing Dynamic Asset Pricing Models with Generalized Entropy Bounds

I examine moment characteristics and predictability assumptions of dynamic asset pricing models. I propose a new measure --- the generalized entropy --- to summarize moment information of the multi-horizon pricing kernel for a dynamic model. Both static and dynamic strategy returns impose robust restrictions on the generalize entropy, providing a way to test candidate models. Applying this test to leading representative agent models and by creating dynamic strategies that depend on model-implied predictive signals, I find that models featuring growth uncertainty is able to explain market data better.

A Model of Monetary Policy and Risk Premia

We develop a dynamic asset pricing model in which monetary policy affects the risk premium component of the cost of capital. Risk-tolerant agents (banks) borrow from risk-averse agents (i.e. take deposits) to fund levered investments. Leverage exposes banks to funding risk, which they insure by holding liquidity buffers. By changing the nominal rate the central bank influences the liquidity premium in financial markets, and hence the cost of taking leverage. Lower nominal rates make liquidity cheaper and raise leverage, resulting in lower risk premia and higher asset prices, volatility, investment, and growth. We analyze forward guidance, a "Greenspan put'', and the yield curve.

Two-period trading sentiment asset pricing model with information

We present a dynamic asset pricing model with investor sentiment and information, which shows that the investor sentiment plays a systematic and important role in the asset prices and the information is gradually incorporated into prices. The model has an analytical solution to the sentiment equilibrium price. We find that sentiment trading quantity not only increases the market liquidity, but also causes the asset prices' overreaction if the intensity of sentiment demand is more than a constant value. Therefore, the continuing overreactions result in a short-term momentum and a long-term reversal. The model could offer a partial explanation to some financial anomalies such as price bubbles, high volatility, asset prices' overreaction and so on.

Dynamic asset pricing model with heterogeneous sentiments

The systematic and important role of investor sentiment has been supported by some recent empirical and theoretical literatures. In this paper, we present a dynamic asset pricing model with heterogeneous sentiments and we find that the equilibrium stock price is the wealth-share-weighted average of the stock prices that would prevail in an economy with one sentiment investor only. Moreover, heterogeneous sentiments induce fluctuations in the wealth distribution, which increases stock return volatility and induces mean reversion in stock returns. The model offers a partial explanation for the financial anomaly of mean reversion.

Learning, Active Investors, and the Returns of Financially Distressed Firms

I develop a dynamic asset pricing model to analyze expected returns of financially distressed firms in the presence of learning about firm fundamentals and endogenous information acquisition by active investors that acquire large stakes in distressed firms via private investments in public equity. The model reveals that learning and information acquisition critically affect risk exposures close to default and can rationalize low and even negative expected equity returns for firms with high default risk. Similar to Schumpeter’s (1934) argument that recessions have a positive, cleansing effect on the economy, the model reveals that equity holders may benefit from the increased speed of learning about insolvent firms in downturns, which increases the value of their abandonment option in these times. Equity holders’ option value is further enhanced by the ability to partially free-ride on active investors’ acquisition of information on firm fundamentals. Both information channels are shown to affect equity betas, and may account for striking, momentum-type dynamics in risk premia.

Learning, Active Investors, and the Returns of Financially Distressed Firms

I develop an analytically tractable dynamic asset pricing model to study expected returns of financially distressed firms in the presence of learning and investor activism. Learning critically affects distressed stocks' valuations and risk exposures as information about solvency is essential for firm survival in distress. Informational externalities from active investors thus can also have first-order effects on distress risk premia. The presented model can shed light on a variety of empirical regularities related to financial distress, such as distressed firms' apparent stock market underperformance, momentum return dynamics, and negative abnormal returns after private placements of public equity involving active investors.

Debt Financing in Asset Markets

We study rollover risk and collateral value in a dynamic asset pricing model with endogenous debt financing by extending the framework of Geanakoplos (2009) with a generic binomial tree and time-varying heterogeneous beliefs. Optimistic borrowers face rollover risk if the belief dispersion between the borrowers and the pessimistic lenders widens after interim bad news. We demonstrate the optimality of the maximum riskless short-term debt financing for optimistic borrowers even in the presence of the rollover risk. We also highlight the role of interim trading which, by allowing creditors to sell seized collateral to other optimists with saved cashes, boosts the asset's collateral value and equilibrium price.

Forecasting the forecasts of others: Implications for asset pricing

We develop a dynamic asset pricing model with heterogeneously informed agents. Unlike previous research, we focus on the general case where differential information leads to the problem of “forecasting the forecasts of others” and to non-trivial dynamics of higher order expectations. In particular, we prove that the model does not admit a finite number of state variables. Using numerical analysis, we compare equilibria characterized by identical fundamentals but different information structure. We demonstrate that the distribution of information has substantial impact on equilibrium prices and returns. In particular, we show that asymmetric information can generate momentum in returns and high trading volume.

From Dynamic Linear Evaluation Rule to Dynamic CAPM in a Fractional Brownian Motion Environment

In this paper, we present the fundamental framework of the evaluation problem under which the evaluation operator satisfying some axioms is linear. Based on the dynamic linear evaluation mechanism of contingent claims, studying this evaluation rule in the market driven by fractional Brownian motions has led to a dynamic capital asset pricing model. It is deduced here mainly with the fractional Girsanov theorem and the Clark-Haussmann-Ocone theorem.

Efficient, Regression-Based Estimation of Dynamic Asset Pricing Models

We study regression-based estimators for beta representations of dynamic asset pricing models with an affine pricing kernel specification. These estimators extend static cross-sectional asset pricing estimators to settings where prices of risk vary with observed state variables. We identify conditions under which four-stage regression-based estimators are efficient and also present alternative, closed-form linearized maximum likelihood (LML) estimators. We provide multi-stage standard errors necessary to conduct inference for asset pricing tests. In empirical applications, we find that time-varying prices of risk are pervasive, thus favoring dynamic cross-sectional asset pricing models over standard unconditional specifications.

Efficient, Regression-Based Estimation of Dynamic Asset Pricing Models

We propose regression-based estimators for beta representations of dynamic asset pricing models with an affine pricing kernel specification. We allow for state variables that are cross-sectional pricing factors, forecasting variables for the price of risk, and factors that are both. The estimators explicitly allow for time-varying prices of risk, time-varying betas, and serially dependent pricing factors. Our approach nests the Fama-MacBeth two-pass estimator as a special case. We provide asymptotic multistage standard errors necessary to conduct inference for asset pricing test. We illustrate our new estimators in an application to the joint pricing of stocks and bonds. The application features strongly time-varying, highly significant prices of risks that are found to be quantitatively more important than time-varying betas in reducing pricing errors.

Disagreement, Habit and the Dynamic Relation Between Volume and Prices

Dynamic asset pricing models typically do not generate trading volume whereas empirically trading volume is strongly related to asset prices; volume is usually high when returns are high and during periods of high return volatility. Stock prices on the other hand are known to be quite volatile and require a high equity premium while the risk-free rate of return is low and quite stable. We attempt to reconcile all these price and volume characteristics in a new model of disagreement where agents have external habit formation preferences that generate time-variation in risk-aversion. The model is flexible enough to be able to generate in a number of ways the dynamic relation between prices and volume whereas it also provides a configuration by which prices are also fitted well. The paper additionally shows that the information structure and the asset structure have important implications for the correlation between stock returns and volume.

Positive feedback trading: evidence from futures markets

Shiller (1990) hypothesises that the positive feedback mechanism in financial markets may exhibit longer memory in the sense that feedback may operate over long time intervals. This paper tests the Shiller hypothesis using data from major index futures markets. The analysis is based on a modified dynamic capital asset pricing model that assumes two types of investors: 1 expected utility maximisers 2 positive feedback traders who sell during market declines and buy during market advances. According to the model, the interaction of the two groups induces negative time varying autocorrelation. There is some evidence of time-varying negative autocorrelation, consistent with the notion that some participants engage in positive feedback trading. Moreover, the feedback mechanism exhibits persistence in support of Shiller’s (1990) hypothesis.

Option Pricing for Garch-Type Models with Generalized Hyperbolic Innovations

In this paper, we provide a new dynamic asset pricing model for plain vanilla options on equity option indexes. Given the historical measure, the dynamics of assets are modeled by Garch-type models with generalized hyperbolic innovations and the pricing kernel is an exponential affine function of the state variables, we show that the risk neutral distribution is unique and implies again a generalized hyperbolic dynamics with changed parameters. We provide an empirical test for our pricing methodology on two data sets of options respectively written on the French CAC 40 and the American SP 500. Then, using our theoretical result associated with Monte Carlo simulations, we compare this approach to natural competitors in order to test its efficiency. More generally, our empirical investigations analyze the ability of specific parametric innovations to reproduce market prices in the context of an exponential affine specification of the stochastic discount factor.

Performance Fees and Asset Prices in Equilibrium

The paper examines the effects of exogenous changes in the performance fees paid from terminal investors such as households to intermediaries managing their assets, on endogenous variables such as the risky asset volatility and risk premium, in the context of a dynamic equilibrium asset pricing model. The importance of the household behavior is highlighted by comparing two settings, one in which households are naive and perceive the investment opportunities as constant, and one in which households are more sophisticated and perceive the true opportunity set conditionally on the state variables. Intermediaries receive performance-based fees that are convex in the actual performance. These fees have a component proportional to performance, as well as a component capturing the convexity of fees as a function of performance. When households are naive, a higher proportional fee coefficient implies higher asset volatility and risk premium, as well as higher volatility in these variables. Moreover, a higher convex component has little impact on the volatility, but reduces the risk premium. In contrast, when households are sophisticated, a higher proportional fee component has little impact on the economy dynamic, but a higher convex component increases stock volatility and risk premium, as well as the volatility of these variables. If changes in the fee structure are important, the economic effects can be significant. Empirically, hedge fund performance fees are related to market returns and volatility in ways consistent with the framework where households are naive.

Option pricing for GARCH-type models with generalized hyperbolic innovations

In this paper, we provide a new dynamic asset pricing model for plain vanilla options and we discuss its ability to produce minimum mispricing errors on equity option books. Given the historical measure, the dynamics of assets being modeled by Garch-type models with generalized hyperbolic innovations and the pricing kernel is an exponential affine function of the state variables, we show that the risk-neutral distribution is unique and again implies a generalized hyperbolic dynamics with changed parameters. We provide an empirical test for our pricing methodology on two data sets of options, respectively written on the French CAC 40 and the American SP 500. Then, using our theoretical result associated with Monte Carlo simulations, we compare this approach with natural competitors in order to test its efficiency. More generally, our empirical investigations analyse the ability of specific parametric innovations to reproduce market prices in the context of an exponential affine specification of the stochastic discount factor.

On equilibrium prices in continuous time

State prices are the fundamental building block for dynamic asset pricing models. We provide here a general continuous-time setup that allows to derive non-trivial structural properties for state-prices from economic fundamentals. To this end, we combine general equilibrium theory and théorie générale of stochastic processes to characterize state prices that lead to continuous price systems on the consumption set. We also show that equilibria with such state prices exist.

Option Pricing for GARCH-Type Models with Generalized Hyperbolic Innovations

In this paper, we provide a new dynamic asset pricing model for plain vanilla options and we discuss its ability to produce minimum mispricing errors on equity option books. Given the historical measure, the dynamics of assets are modeled by Garch-type models with generalized hyperbolic innovations and the pricing kernel is an exponential affine function of the state variables, we show that the risk neutral distribution is unique and implies again a generalized hyperbolic dynamics with changed parameters. We provide an empirical test for our pricing methodology on two data sets of options respectively written on the French CAC 40 and the American SP 500. Then, using our theoretical result associated with Monte Carlo simulations, we compare this approach to natural competitors in order to test its efficiency. More generally, our empirical investigations analyze the ability of specific parametric innovations to reproduce market prices in the context of an exponential affine specification of the stochastic discount factor.

Does Corporate Governance Affect the Cost of Equity Capital?

Using a dynamic asset pricing model with managerial empire-building incentives, this paper shows that the effect of corporate governance on the cost of equity capital is procyclical. In the model, managers seek private benefits and tend to over-invest. Corporate governance serves as a mechanism for shareholders to discipline managers and control overinvestment. Strongly governed firms deviate less from the optimal investment policies and have a higher value of growth options and higher value of disinvestment options than weakly governed firms. Growth options are riskier and disinvestment options are less risky than assets-in-place. A higher value of growth options, therefore, leads to higher stock returns and a higher value of disinvestment options leads to lower stock returns. The net effect of corporate governance on cross-sectional stock returns depends on the relative importance of growth options and disinvestment options to firm value. Because the value of growth options is larger than the value of disinvestment options during expansion and vice versa during contraction, the model predicts a procyclical relation between corporate governance and stock returns.

Differences of Opinion and the Price Volume Relation

This paper solves a dynamic general equilibrium asset pricing model of disagreement that draws a direct link between asset prices and the financial volume of trade. The model exhibits two risk averse agents that hold heterogeneous beliefs about the conditional mean of the aggregate consumption growth. The differences in opinions is supported by the fact that agents interpret public information differently. The connecting link between prices and volume is an exogenously time varying disagreement intensity that determines the magnitude of disagreement about new information. The model is able to explain a number of seemingly unrelated asset pricing facts namely the positive correlation between price changes and volume, the contemporaneous relation between volume and return volatility, the excess volatility, the volatility persistence and the negative correlation between price levels and volatility.