Jonathan Brogaard

The Asset-Pricing Implications of Government Economic Policy Uncertainty

Using the news-based measure of Baker et al. [Baker SR, Bloom N, Davis SJ 2013 Measuring economic policy uncertainty. Working paper, Stanford University, Stanford, CA] to capture economic policy uncertainty EPU in the United States, we find that EPU positively forecasts log excess market returns. An increase of one standard deviation in EPU is associated with a 1.5% increase in forecasted three-month abnormal returns 6.1% annualized. Furthermore, innovations in EPU earn a significant negative risk premium in the Fama-French 25 size-momentum portfolios. Among the Fama-French 25 portfolios formed on size and momentum returns, the portfolio with the greatest EPU beta underperforms the portfolio with the lowest EPU beta by 5.53% per annum, controlling for exposure to the Carhart four factors as well as implied and realized volatility. These findings suggest that EPU is an economically important risk factor for equities. This paper was accepted by Wei Jiang, finance.

High-Frequency Trading and the Execution Costs of Institutional Investors

This paper studies whether high-frequency trading (HFT) increases the execution costs of institutional investors. We use technology upgrades that lower the latency of the London Stock Exchange to obtain variation in the level of HFT over time. Following upgrades, the level of HFT increases. Around these shocks to HFT institutional traders’ costs remain unchanged. We find no clear evidence that HFT impacts institutional execution costs.

High-Frequency Trading and Extreme Price Movements

Are endogenous liquidity providers (ELPs) reliable in times of market stress? We examine the activity of a common ELP type—high frequency traders (HFTs)—around extreme price movements (EPMs). We find that on average HFTs provide liquidity during EPMs by absorbing imbalances created by non-high frequency traders (nHFTs). Yet HFT liquidity provision is limited to EPMs in single stocks. When several stocks experience simultaneous EPMs, HFT liquidity demand dominates their supply. There is little evidence of HFTs causing EPMs.

High Frequency Trading and the 2008 Short Sale Ban

We examine the effects of high-frequency traders (HFTs) on liquidity using the September 2008 short sale-ban. To disentangle the separate impacts of short selling by HFTs and non-HFTs, we use an instrumental variables approach exploiting differences in the bans cross-sectional impact on HFTs and non-HFTs. Non-HFTs’ short selling improves liquidity, as measured by bid-ask spreads. HFTs’ short selling has the opposite effect by adversely selecting limit orders, which can decrease liquidity supplier competition and reduce trading by non-HFTs. The results highlight that some HFTs’ activities are harmful to liquidity during the extremely volatile short-sale ban period.

High-Frequency Trading Competition

We analyze trading dynamics as successive high-frequency trading (HFT) firms begin to trade stocks in an equity market. Entrants compete with incumbents for volume, and there is crowding out. Earlier entry is associated with larger effects. After Passive HFT entry, incumbent spreads tighten. After Aggressive HFT entry, incumbent order flow loses informedness. Revenue datasuggest entry reduces the profitability of HFT activity. The results show that part of the value of HFT comes from its competitiveness.

Price Discovery Without Trading: Evidence from Limit Orders

We analyze the contribution to price discovery of market and limit orders by high‐frequency traders (HFTs) and non‐HFTs. While market orders have a larger individual price impact, limit orders are far more numerous. This results in price discovery occurring predominantly through limit orders. HFTs submit the bulk of limit orders and these limit orders provide most of the price discovery. Submissions of limit orders and their contribution to price discovery fall with volatility due to changes in HFTs’ behavior. Consistent with adverse selection arising from faster reactions to public information, HFTs’ informational advantage is partially explained by public information.

Institutions and Deposit Insurance: Empirical Evidence

Do banks’ responses to changes in deposit insurance vary across countries even if the countries have comparable institutions? If so, by how much? Using data on the financial performance of large banks in 15 financially and economically developed countries, we find that where deposit insurance has an effect, it is large and varies depending on the level of economic freedom, rule of law and corruption in the bank’s home country. As in prior papers, we show that during stable economic periods, increases in deposit insurance are associated with higher bank risk, both problem loans and leverage. In most, but not all, cases stronger institutions temper these effects. The institutions’ effects are substantial. For example, average changes in the rule of law double the impact of a change in deposit insurance on bank leverage. We contribute to the substantial literature in this area by showing that the institutional effects are significant even across a set of countries with comparable institutions; by conducting a careful calibration of the economic significance of the effects; by providing evidence that during stable periods changes in deposit insurance only affect bank risk and not other measures of performance; and finally by showing that the effects of both deposit insurance and institutions vary across stable and crisis economic periods. The stable period results are consistent with the moral hazard effects of deposit insurance, while the crisis period results are consistent with endogeneity concerns that poor bank performance could drive changes in regulations.

Do Upgrades Matter? Evidence from Trading Volume

Prior research examines the information content of credit rating changes using returns in stock, bond or credit default swap markets. Results are mixed, generally showing a significant reaction to downgrades with much weaker results for upgrades. We extend prior research using abnormal trading volume. Because trading volume is highly non-normally distributed (especially in the bond market), we derive a new nonparametric test statistic that can be used to test abnormal volume in other applications. Our results show significant abnormal volume in both stock and bond markets around upgrades and downgrades, consistent with the hypothesis that credit rating changes are informative.

Why Do We Tenure? Analysis of a Long Standing Risk-Based Explanation

Using a sample of all academics who pass through top 50 economics and finance departments from 1996 through 2014, we study whether the granting of tenure leads faculty to pursue riskier ideas. We use the extreme tails of ex-post citations as our measure of risk and find that both the number of publications and the portion consisting of “home runs�? peak at tenure and fall steadily for a decade thereafter. Similar patterns hold for faculty at elite (top 10) institutions and for faculty who take differing time to tenure. We find the opposite pattern among poorly-cited publications: their numbers rise steadily both pre- and post-tenure.

A Bit Goes a Long Way: Bilateral Investment Treaties and Cross-Border Mergers

We examine whether Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) remove impediments to foreign investment by helping enforce contracts and property rights. We find that BITs have a large, positive effect on cross-border mergers: the probability and dollar volume of mergers between two given countries more than doubles after the signing of a BIT. Most of this increase is driven by capital flowing from developed economies to developing economies, answering the long-standing Lucas Paradox as to why most cross-border capital still flows to developed countries. Additionally, most of our results are driven by target countries with “medium” levels of political risk, consistent with popular views that BITs are ineffective for countries with very high risk and not necessary for countries with low political risk.