This article investigates the impacts of asymmetric information within a Lucas (1978) asset pricing economy. Asymmetry enters via the assumption that one group of agents is equipped with superior information about the dividend process. The agents maximize their lifetime utility of the underlying consumption process obtained from the agents' budget constraints, where the agents have the opportunity to invest in a risk asset to transfer income from the current to future periods. Since a closed form solution for the market price cannot be derived analytically, projection methods are applied, as described in Judd (1998), to approximate the expectation integrals in the agents' Euler equation. We derive the result that the informed trader only clearly improves his situation as compared to the non-trade situation if the uninformed trader only observes his own endowment but not the endowment of the informed trader. In the case where agents observe each others' endowment trade never results in a Pareto improvement. (auhtor's abstract) / Series: Working Papers SFB "Adaptive Information Systems and Modelling in Economics and Management Science"

Bakgrund: Det har tidigare konstaterats att det existerar ett samband mellan aktiers likviditet och dess avkastning. Bevis för detta har främst gått att finna på utländska aktiemarknader. På den svenska aktiemarknaden har tidigare utförda studier konstaterat att detta samband inte existerar. Vi vill därför göra en studie på den svenska aktiemarknaden, vilken delvis innefattar en ny tidsperiod för att se om någon likviditetspremie existerar. Syfte: Vårt syfte med denna studie var att undersöka om det är möjligt att uppnå en högre avkastning genom att investera i en portfölj med relativt sett illikvida aktier jämfört med en portfölj bestående av likvida aktier på Stockholmsbörsen samt undersöka om faktorerna likviditet, betavärde samt företagsstorlek signifikant påverkar portföljernas eventuella överavkastning jämfört mot ett lämpligt index. Metod: Vi har skapat tre olika portföljer, med tio aktier i varje vilka representerar de minst, mitterst och mest likvida aktierna enligt vårt valda likviditetsmått, aktieomsättningshastighet. Likviditetsmåttet laggar en månad för att kunna användas som investeringsstrategi. Vi har studerat portföljernas värdeutveckling under perioden september 2003 till december 2011 för att se om portföljernas olika likviditet påverkar avkastningen. Genom regressionsanalyser där aktieomsättningshastighet, betavärde samt storleken använts som oberoende variabler har vi försökt förklara portföljernas överavkastning mot AFGX. Resultat: Vi har kommit fram till att det inte existerar någon likviditetspremie på Stockholmsbörsen under vår valda undersökningsperiod. Det samma gäller under uppåt- respektive nedåtgående marknadstrend. Det enda fallet där en mer illikvid portfölj presterar bäst är under januari månad. / Background: Earlier studies have concluded that there is a connection between a stock’s liquidity and its yield. Proof of this connection has mainly been found on foreign stock exchanges. On the Swedish stock market, earlier studies have concluded that this connection may not exist. The authors therefore intend to do a liquidity study on the Swedish stock market on a partly new time period to see whether this liquidity premium exists or not. Aim: The aim with this study is to investigate if there is a possibility to achieve a higher yield by investing in a portfolio consisting of relatively illiquid stocks contrary a portfolio with highly liquid stocks. We also want to investigate if the factors: liquidity, beta value and company size have a significant impact on the portfolios possible excess return in relation to an appropriate index. Completion: In this study, the authors have constructed three different portfolios consisting of ten stocks, each which represent the least, middle, and highest liquid stocks according to our liquidity measure. This measure has a one-month lag to make it possible to use as an active investment strategy. The authors have studied the portfolios growth during the period September 2003 to December 2011 to investigate if the difference in liquidity has any impact on the return. Through regression analysis, where stock turnover ratio, beta value and company size has been used as independent variables, the study tries to explain the portfolios excess return over the AFGX index. Results: The study concludes that there is no significant liquidity premium during our chosen time period. The same conclusion is drawn on the sub-periods with both an up going and down going market trend. The only period during which an illiquid portfolio outperforms a liquid portfolio is during the month of January.

It is a well-known fact that macro-economic conditions, such as prices of commodities (e.g. oil, cement and steel) affect the cost of construction projects. In a volatile market environment, highway agencies often pass such risk to contractors using fixed-price contracts. In turn, the contractors respond by adding premiums in bid prices. If the contractors overprice the risk, the price of fixed-price contract could exceed the price of the contract with adjustment clauses. Consequently, highway agencies have the opportunity to design a contract that not only reduces the future risk of exposure, but also reduces the initial contract price. The main goal of this dissertation is to investigate the impact of commodity price risk on construction cost and the optimal risk hedging of such risks using price adjustment clauses. More specifically, the objective of the dissertation is to develop models that can help highway agencies manage commodity price risks. In this dissertation, a weighted least square regression model is used to estimate the risk premium; both univariate and vector time series models are estimated and applied to simulate changes in commodity prices over time, including the effect of correlation; while the genetic algorithm is used as a solution approach to a multi-objective optimization formulation. The data set used in this dissertation consists of TxDOT bidding data, market-based data including New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) future options data, and Engineering News-Record (ENR) material cost index data. The results of this dissertation suggest that the optimal risk mitigation actions are conditional on owners' risk preferences, correlation among the prices of commodities, and volatility of the market.

In this study, we use the McKean's integral equation to evaluate the American option price for constant jump di

Drought, which is an important result of the climate change, is one of the most serious natural hazards globally. It has been agreed all over the world that it has adverse impacts on the production of agriculture, which plays a major role in the economy of a country. Studies showed that the results of the drought directly affected the crop yields, and it seems that this negative impact will continue drastically soon. Moreover, many researches revealed that, Turkey will be affected from the results of climate change in many aspects, especially the agricultural production will encounter dry seasons after the rapid changes in the precipitation amount. Insurance is a well-established method, which is used to share the risk based on natural disasters by people and organizations. Furthermore, a new way of insuring against the weather shocks is designing index-based insurance, and it has gained special attention in many developing countries. In this study, our aim is to model weather index based drought insurance product to help the small holder farmers in the Cental Anatolia Region under different models. At first, time series techniques were applied to forecast the wheat yield relying on the past data. Then, the AMS (AgroMetShell) software outputs, NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) values were used, and SPI values for distinct time steps were chosen to develop a basic threshold based drought insurance for each province. Linear regression equations were used to calculate the trigger points for weather index, afterwards based on these trigger levels / pure premium and indemnity calculations were made for each province separately. In addition to this, Panel Data Analysis were used to construct an alternative linear model for drought insurance. It can be helpful to understand the direct and actual effects of selected weather index measures on wheat yield and also reduce the basis risks for constructed contracts. A simple ratio was generated to compare the basis risk of the different index-based insurance contracts.

Based on Leland (1994), the paper tries to examine the changes in probability of bankruptcy when direct and indirect costs of bankruptcy are considered. Besides, the paper tries to study the changes in probability of bankruptcy when agents have different goals, and explore the changes in bankruptcy costs and agency costs. The paper finds that, by taking into account of indirect cost of bankruptcy, the probability of bankruptcy tends to increase when agents try to maximize the value of shareholders, but tends to decrease when agents try to maximize the value of the firm. The probability of bankruptcy also varies by the changes of the parameters in different goals of agency models. Three major findings in the paper are: (1) when agents try to maximize the value of firm, the optimal probability of bankruptcy is close to zero; (2) marginal risk premium incurred by additional debts have to be considered in maximizing the value of firm; (3) the financing decision made by agents are affected by indirect costs of bankruptcy as they will increase the optimal probability of bankruptcy and marginal risk premium of debt in comparison with the case of direct costs being considered only.

In standard models of informed trading, they implicitly assume that all informed traders receive their information at the same time and then trade on their private information immediately, whether competitive or imperfect competitive¡]strategic¡^rational expectations model, differing on the speed of information revelation. In reality, the informed traders may quietly and skillfully perform noninformational trading to accumulate their ¡§line¡¨ cheaply. In this paper, we develop the multiperiod competitive rational expectations model with asymmetric information to show, under some conditions, delaying their informed trades is in the interests of informed traders; then we explore the implications of our model for the behavior of stock price, especially we find that, delaying the informed trades may increase price volatility and display the momentum effect, consistent with the empirical results.

<p>This paper adds to the understanding and transparency of equity pricing in emerging markets. Its novel contribution is that it empirically investigates the pricing of Country Risk in BRIC markets, using a two-factor intertemporal pricing model. Bridging the gap between academics and practitioners, this paper contributes to the debate as to whether or not it is justified to adjust discount rates for emerging market companies – as given by the CAPM – by including an unconditional country risk premium. In choosing between country risk proxies, the sovereign yield spread adjusted for relative equity volatility appears to supersede the classical sovereign yield spread in explaining return variations. Evidence is presented that country risk is priced in India and China indicating some type of market segmentation; in these markets, the addition of a country risk premium to the discount rate is justified. Moreover, the paper complements the market integration literature in that it is shown that the correlation between the change in country risk premium and the equity risk premium might show signs of market segmentation or market integration, rendering the pricing factor for country risk in specific countries significant or insignificant, respectively. © 2010 Soeriowardojo, G.T. All rights reserved.</p>

<p>Scientific problem: In order to maintain a competitive position in the market, companies need to create an environment of sustained development. Growing companies basically have two choices: expand internally, known as organic growth, or expand externally by a merger or acquisition (M&A). It is widely known that in almost all acquisitions the price paid by the acquiring firm tends to be much higher than the market value of the target firm before the bid, this is called an acquisition premium. There are different ways of financing an acquisition, for example with cash or stock. Previous research within this topic have concluded the M&As follow the market, as well as premiums. Therefore, an assumption made by the authors is that when there is a boom in the market, the stock exchange quota-tion takes a certain movement and the number of acquisitions that are made increases, as well as the premiums paid, and further to check if the means of payment changes whether there is a bull or bear market.</p><p>Purpose: “The general aim of this thesis is to examine acquisitions on the Swedish market in order to estimate the relation between the OMXS index and the number of acquisition bids, the acquisitions pre-mium and the means of payment.”</p><p>Method: To investigate whether a relation between the OMXS and the amount of take-over bids, simple regression analyses was the preferred model, having the bids as being de-pendent upon market performance of the OMXS index. This way, any significant lag ef-fect, the time it takes for a bidder to present a bid offer, could be recognized and used as a benchmark. This model was carried on to the remaining questions as well; whether premi-ums are affected by the stock market, and which way the acquisitions was financed, cash or stock. The time period selected for data collection was 1994 to 2004, allowing the authors a wide enough time-span to interpret at least one bull, and one bear market. The model will be based upon secondary data of market quotes and a quantitative approach will be util-ized.</p><p>Results: The authors claim that a relation between the number of acquisition bids and market movement does exist. This evidence shows that an important decision as the one of deciding whether or not to merge or acquire another firm, might not be as rational as tho-ught. Instead, it is influenced on the environment around it, with the OMXS index as one of them. When it comes to the two remaining questions, if premiums and means of pay-ment are affected by the OMXS index, the obtained answers do not provide a positive rela-tion. And thus, this thesis cannot support earlier studies that state that a relation is present.</p>

<p>The expected equity premium is an important parameter in many financial models, especially within portfolio optimization. A good forecast of the future equity premium is therefore of great interest. In this thesis we seek to forecast the equity premium, use it in portfolio optimization and then give evidence on how sensitive the results are to estimation errors and how the impact of these can be minimized.</p><p>Linear prediction models are commonly used by practitioners to forecast the expected equity premium, this with mixed results. To only choose the model that performs the best in-sample for forecasting, does not take model uncertainty into account. Our approach is to still use linear prediction models, but also taking model uncertainty into consideration by applying Bayesian model averaging. The predictions are used in the optimization of a portfolio with risky assets to investigate how sensitive portfolio optimization is to estimation errors in the mean vector and covariance matrix. This is performed by using a Monte Carlo based heuristic called portfolio resampling.</p><p>The results show that the predictive ability of linear models is not substantially improved by taking model uncertainty into consideration. This could mean that the main problem with linear models is not model uncertainty, but rather too low predictive ability. However, we find that our approach gives better forecasts than just using the historical average as an estimate. Furthermore, we find some predictive ability in the the GDP, the short term spread and the volatility for the five years to come. Portfolio resampling proves to be useful when the input parameters in a portfolio optimization problem is suffering from vast uncertainty. </p>