The Effect of Market Transparency on Corporate Disclosure: Evidence from the Observability of Bond Prices and Trading

Market prices and trading are important information constructs that reveal information to market participants. I study how the observability of market prices and trading (hereafter, "market transparency") affects firms' disclosure incentives. I exploit the staggered introduction of TRACE, which made bond prices and transactions publicly observable. I find that firms provide more guidance when their bonds' prices/trading become observable, suggesting that investors' access to market information limits managers' incentives to withhold information. This effect is stronger for firms whose revealed prices contain more new information, and it is more pronounced for the disclosure of bad news. I corroborate my results using (i) a controlled experiment, in which prices/trading were revealed for randomly selected bonds, and also (ii) relevant threshold rules. Together, my results suggest that increased market transparency improves investors' access to information not only directly, by revealing the information contained in returns/trading, but also indirectly, by increasing corporate disclosure.

New Approximations to Bond Prices in the Cox–Ingersoll–Ross Convergence Model with Dynamic Correlation

We study a particular case of a convergence model of interest rates. The bond prices are given as solutions of a parabolic partial differential equation and we consider different possibilities of approximating them, using approximate analytical solutions. We consider an approximation already suggested in the literature and compare it with a newly suggested one for which we derive the order of accuracy. Since the two formulae use different approaches and the resulting leading terms of the error depend on different parameter sets of the model, we propose their combination, which has a higher order of accuracy. Finally, we propose one more approach, which leads to higher accuracy of the resulting approximation formula.

A Segmented and Observable Yield Curve for Colombia

Following (Almeida, Ardison, Kubudi, Simonsen, & Vicente, 2018) we implement a segmented three factor Nelson-Siegel model for the yield curve using daily observable bond prices and short term interbank rates for Colombia. The flexible estimation for each segment (short, medium, and long) provides an improvement over the classical Nelson-Siegel approach in particular in terms of in-sample and out-of-sample forecasting performance. A segmented term structure model based on observable bond prices provides a tool closer to the needs of practitioners in terms of reproducing the market quotes and allowing for independent local shocks in the different segments of the curve.

Inflation Expectations and Risk Premia in Emerging Bond Markets: Evidence from Mexico

To study inflation expectations and associated risk premia in emerging bond markets, this paper provides estimates for Mexico based on an arbitrage-free dynamic term structure model of nominal and real bond prices that accounts for their liquidity risk. In addition to documenting the existence of large and time-varying liquidity premia in nominal and real bond prices that are only weakly correlated, the results indicate that long-term inflation expectations in Mexico are well anchored close to the inflation target of the Bank of Mexico. Furthermore, Mexican inflation risk premia are larger and more volatile than those in Canada and the United States.

Zero-Coupon Yields and the Cross-Section of Bond Prices

I estimate a dynamic term structure model on an unbalanced panel of Treasury coupon bonds, without relying on an interpolated zero-coupon yield curve. A linearity-generating model, which separates the parameters that govern the cross-sectional and time-series moments of the model, takes about 8 min to estimate on a sample of over 1 million bond prices. The traditional exponential affine model takes about 2 hr, because of a convexity term in coupon-bond prices that cannot be concentrated out of the cross-sectional likelihood. I quantify the on-the-run premium and a “notes versus bonds” premium from 1990 to 2017 in a single, easy-to-estimate no-arbitrage model.

Reputation and Sovereign Default

This paper presents a continuous‐time model of sovereign debt. In it, a relatively impatient sovereign government's hidden type switches back and forth between a commitment type, which cannot default, and an opportunistic type, which can, and where we assume outside lenders have particular beliefs regarding how a commitment type should borrow for any given level of debt and bond price. In any Markov equilibrium, the opportunistic type mimics the commitment type when borrowing, revealing its type only by defaulting on its debt at random times. The equilibrium features a “graduation date”: a finite amount of time since the last default, after which time reputation reaches its highest level and is unaffected by not defaulting. Before such date, not defaulting always increases the country's reputation. For countries that have recently defaulted, bond prices and the total amount of debt are increasing functions of the amount of time since the country's last default. For countries that have not recently defaulted (i.e., those that have graduated), bond prices are constant.