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Abstract:
Using a large international equity market database that has not been previously used for such a purpose, this paper documents that value (i.e., high book-to-market ) stocks outperform growth (i.e., low book-to-market ) stocks, on average, in most countries during the January 1975 - December 1995 period, both absolutely and after adjusting for risk. The international evidence confirms the findings of previous work reported for the U.S.. For 1975-1995, the annual difference between the average returns on portfolios of high and low book-to-market stocks is 12.94% in North America, 10.42% in Europe, 17.26% in Pacific-Rim per year, and value stocks outperform growth stocks in 17 out of 18 national capital markets. Our analysis also shows that a three-factor model explains most of the cross-sectional variation in average returns on industry portfolios across countries and that the superior performance of the value investing strategy, documented in this study, is a manifestation of size and book-to-market effects. These results are consistent with those reported by Fama and French (1994, 1996) that show that the value-growth pattern in stock returns is largely explained by a three-factor asset pricing model. Our results suggest that the Fama and French (1996) three-factor asset pricing model is not limited to the U.S. stock market.

Abstract:
This study provides new evidence on the market impact of new issues of convertible bonds of U.S. listed firms. We examine on the market reaction surrounding the announcement dates and the issue dates of convertible bonds. The evidence suggests that firms experience negative abnormal returns around the announcement of new issues of convertible bonds. Abnormal returns are found to be a function of firm market value, price-to-book ratio, issue size, as well as the state of the overall market. Simulations using convertible arbitrage strategies suggests that investors could take advantage of these negative abnormal returns by going long on the firm's convertible bond and short on the firm's stock at the issue date.

Abstract:
This paper investigates the sources of time-varying risk and risk premia for both the U.S. stock and bond markets. Although a growing literature has emerged that examines the return and volatility characteristics of the U.S. stock and bond markets separately, little work has appeared that models these markets jointly. This paper proposes a model that provides evidence concerning the sources of time varying risk and risk premia in the markets that considers both markets simultaneously. The model captures the change in the risk premium to each market's own volatility risk as well as to the covariance risk for specific events. We test for the effects of macroeconomic news on time-varying volatility as well as time-varying covariance, and whether such news induces time-varying risk premia in either of the markets. We find that stocks, as opposed to bonds exhibit a change in the risk premium on variance risk on PPI announcement dates. There is also evidence of a change in the bond risk premium on covariance risk on macroeconomic news announcement dates. Employment reports and PPI releases appear as events inducing time-varying conditional variance for stock, Treasury Notes, as well as Treasury Bond returns. Finally, the results do not support the conjecture that conditional covariance of stock and bond returns falls on announcement days.

Abstract:
The random walk hypothesis is rejected for foreign stock market prices. Variance ratio tests are performed on weekly stock prices of nine major foreign stock market indices. While longer-term returns follow random walks, short-horizon, bi-weekly returns exhibit significant positive serial correlation.

Random walks, memory, international stock prices, variance ratio, mean reverting

Abstract:
This study examines the effects of trading in Standard and Poor's Depository Receipts on the pricing efficiency of the index options markets. Using the put-call parity model's no-arbitrage arguments, and intra-day S&P 500 index option data, three boundary conditions are formulated and tested for a total of 119,470 portfolios using intradaily data. Problems of non-synchronous prices are reduced by using intradaily data and also by considering only trades that occur at precisely the same time to the second. The tests indicate that there are significant violations of the arbitrage relations. After accounting that transactions costs including the bid-ask spread, it is apparent that the magnitude and frequency of violations of the arbitrage bounds has decreased, since the introduction of SPDRs. However, the dollar size of the violations that persist through time is substantial and may be worthy of future investigation.