James Rockey

Ideology and the Growth of Government

We analyze the impact of ideology on the size of government. In a simple model, the government sets redistribution and provision of public services according to the preferences of the median voter. Ideology is defined in terms of preferences for public services, and the impact of ideology on the size of government is shown to increase with mean income. This idea is tested using measures of ideology based on party manifestos. We show that the interaction of ideology and mean income has a major role in explaining the increase and divergence in government size observed across OECD countries.

Losing Money on the Margin

Margin trading is popular with retail investors around the world. We show in this paper, however, that the collateral requirement imposed by margin calls results in negative expected returns for these traders whilst also inducing positive skew in the returns distribution. Investments in assets with symmetric returns, when traded on margin, instead offer limited losses and a small chance of a large gain, much like lottery stocks and other gambles. We demonstrate this theoretically and then show empirically, using a unique database of account data from a Chinese retail brokerage, that the realized losses of margin traders are often substantial.

Margin Trading: Hedonic Returns and Real Losses

Margin trading is popular with retail investors around the world. This is a puzzle, since, as we show, it has a negative expected return. Our explanation is that whilst lowering mean returns, the collateral requirement imposed by margin calls induces positive skew in the distribution of returns. Investments in assets with symmetric returns now offer limited losses and a small chance of a large gain, like lottery tickets and other gambles. Results from a unique dataset of retail futures traders show that actual losses are substantial. Traders’ behaviour is demonstrated to be best understood as motivated by hedonic returns.