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Direct financing of consumer credit by individual investors or non-bank institutions through an implementation of marketplace lending is a relatively new phenomenon in financial markets. The emergence of online platforms has made this type of financial intermediation widely available. This paper analyzes the performance of marketplace lending using proprietary cash flow data for each individual loan from the largest platform, Lending Club. While individual loan characteristics would be important for amateur investors holding a few loans, sophisticated lenders, including institutional investors, usually form broad portfolios to benefit from diversification. We find high risk-adjusted performance of approximately 40 basis points per month for these basic loan portfolios. This abnormal performance indicates that Lending Club, and similar marketplace lenders, are likely to attract capital to finance a growing share of the consumer credit market. In the absence of a competitive response from traditional credit providers, these loans lower costs to the ultimate borrowers and increase returns for the ultimate lenders.
We analyze the performance of marketplace lending using loan cash flow data from the largest platform, Lending Club. We find substantial risk-adjusted performance of about 40 basis points per month for the entire loan portfolio. Other loan portfolios grouped by risk category have similar risk-adjusted performance. We show that characteristics of the local bank sector for each loan, such as concentration of deposits and the presence of national banks, are related to the performance of loans. Thus, marketplace lending has the potential to finance a growing share of the consumer credit market in the absence of a competitive response from the traditional incumbents.
This study analyzes the short-term dynamic spillovers between the futures returns on the DAX, the DJ Eurostoxx 50 and the FTSE 100. It also examines whether economic news is one source of international stock return co-movements. In particular, we test whether stock market interdependencies are attributable to reactions of foreign traders to public economic information. Moreover, we analyze whether cross-market linkages remain the same or whether they do increase during periods in which economic news is released in one of the countries. Our main results can be summarized as follows: (i) there are clear short term international dynamic interactions among the European stock futures markets; (ii) foreign economic news affects domestic returns; (iii) futures returns adjust to news immediately; (iv) announcement timing of macroeconomic news matters; (v) stock market dynamic interactions do not increase at the time of the release of economic news; (vi) foreign investors react to the content of the news itself more than to the response of the domestic market to the national news; and (vii) contemporaneous correlation between futures returns changes at the time of macroeconomic releases. JEL Classification: G14, G15
We study the relation between the credit cycle and macro economic fundamentals in an intensity based framework. Using rating transition and default data of U.S. corporates from Standard and Poor’s over the period 1980–2005 we directly estimate the credit cycle from the micro rating data. We relate this cycle to the business cycle, bank lending conditions, and financial market variables. In line with earlier studies, these variables appear to explain part of the credit cycle. As our main contribution, we test for the correct dynamic specification of these models. In all cases, the hypothesis of correct dynamic specification is strongly rejected. Moreover, accounting for dynamic mis-specification, many of the variables thought to explain the credit cycle, turn out to be insignificant. The main exceptions are GDP growth, and to some extent stock returns and stock return volatilities. Their economic significance appears low, however. This raises the puzzle of what macro-economic fundamentals explain default and rating dynamics. JEL Classification: G11, G21
Deviations from normality in financial return series have led to the development of alternative portfolio selection models. One such model is the downside risk model, whereby the investor maximizes his return given a downside risk constraint. In this paper we empirically observe the international equity allocation for the downside risk investor using 9 international markets’ returns over the last 34 years. The results are stable for various robustness checks. Investors may think globally, but instead act locally, due to greater downside risk. The results provide an alternative view of the home bias phenomenon, documented in international financial markets. JEL Classification: G11, G12, G15
We examine the empirical predictions of a real option-pricing model using a large sample of data on mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. banking sector. We provide estimates for the option value that the target bank has in waiting for a higher bid instead of accepting an initial tender offer. We find empirical support for a model that estimates the value of an option to wait in accepting an initial tender offer. Market prices reflect a premium for the option to wait to accept an offer that has a mean value of almost 12.5% for a sample of 424 mergers and acquisitions between 1997 and 2005 in the U.S. banking industry. Regression analysis reveals that the option price is related to both the price to book market and the free cash flow of target banks. We conclude that it is certainly in the shareholders best interest if subsequent offers are awaited. JEL Classification: G34, C10
This study develops a novel 2-step hedonic approach, which is used to construct a price index for German paintings. This approach enables the researcher to use every single auction record, instead of only those auction records that belong to a sub-sample of selected artists. This results in a substantially larger sample available for research and it lowers the selection bias that is inherent in the traditional hedonic and repeat sales methodologies. Using a unique sample of 61,135 auction records for German artworks created by 5,115 different artists over the period 1985 to 2007, we find that the geometric annual return on German art is just 3.8 percent, with a standard deviation of 17.87 percent. Although our results indicate that art underperforms the market portfolio and is not proportionally rewarded for downside risk, under some circumstances art should be included in an optimal portfolio for diversification purposes.
While companies have emerged as very proactive donors in the wake of recent major disasters like Hurricane Katrina, it remains unclear whether that corporate generosity generates benefits to firms themselves. The literature on strategic philanthropy suggests that such philanthropic behavior may be valuable because it can generate direct and indirect benefits to the firm, yet it is not known whether investors interpret donations in this way. We develop hypotheses linking the strategic character of donations to positive abnormal returns. Using event study methodology, we investigate stock market reactions to corporate donation announcements by 108 US firms made in response to Hurricane Katrina. We then use regression analysis to examine if our hypothesized predictors are associated with positive abnormal returns. Our results show that overall, corporate donations were linked to neither positive nor negative abnormal returns. We do, however, see that a number of factors moderate the relationship between donation announcements and abnormal stock returns. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
This paper focuses on dynamic interactions of equity prices among theoretically related assets. We explore the existence of intraday non-linearities in the FTSE 100 cash and futures indices. We test whether the introduction of the electronic trading systems in the London Stock Exchange in 1997 and in the London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange (LIFFE) in 1999 has eliminated the non-linear dynamic relationship in the FTSE 100 markets. We show that the introduction of the electronic trading systems in the FTSE 100 markets has increased the efficiency of the markets by enhancing the price discovery process, namely by facilitating the increase of the speed of adjustment of the futures and cash prices to departures of the mispricing error from its non-arbitrage band. Nevertheless, we conclude that the automation of the markets has not completely eliminated the non-linear properties of the FTSE 100 cash and futures return series. JEL Classification: G12, G14, G15
We test whether asymmetric preferences for losses versus gains as in Ang, Chen, and Xing (2006) also affect the pricing of cash flow versus discount rate news as in Campbell and Vuolteenaho (2004). We construct a new four-fold beta decomposition, distinguishing cash flow and discount rate betas in up and down markets. Using CRSP data over 1963–2008, we find that the downside cash flow beta and downside discount rate beta carry the largest premia. We subject our result to an extensive number of robustness checks. Overall, downside cash flow risk is priced most consistently across different samples, periods, and return decomposition methods, and is the only component of beta that has significant out-of-sample predictive ability. The downside cash flow risk premium is mainly attributable to small stocks. The risk premium for large stocks appears much more driven by a compensation for symmetric, cash flow related risk. Finally, we multiply our premia estimates by average betas to compute the contribution of the different risk components to realized average returns. We find that up and down discount rate components dominate the contribution to average returns of downside cash flow risk. Keywords: Asset Pricing, Beta, Downside Risk, Upside Risk, Cash Flow Risk, Discount Rate Risk JEL Classification: G11, G12, G14
