IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/has/discpr/0114.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Learning, noise traders, the volatility and the level of bond spreads

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Benczur

    (Central Bank of Hungary)

Abstract

According to various studies, sovereign bond spreads often deviate from any "sensible" perception of default risk. It is usually attributed to behavioral effects (overreaction) or illiquidity. The former explanation imposes some irrationality or bounded rationality on investors; while the latter usually relies on some informational asymmetry or thin markets. The paper presents a different source of liquidity risk: in a Diamond-Dybvig type model, where agents face a liquidity risk (becoming more risk-averse early consumers), changes in the speed of public learning about default risk may increase bond spreads. This effect operates through a link between future volatility and current levels: increased expected future price volatility (a volatility effect) leads to lower prices today (a level effect). Under reasonable parameter values, accelerated information revelation may increase spreads by 50%. I also compare the welfare of the issuer and investors under different speeds of learning: revealing information may be good or bad for the issuer (issue prices may increase or decrease), and also for the investors (ex ante utility might be higher or lower).

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Benczur, 2001. "Learning, noise traders, the volatility and the level of bond spreads," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 0114, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:has:discpr:0114
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econ.core.hu/doc/dp/dp/benczur.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Krebs, Tom, 1999. "Information and asset prices in complete markets exchange economies," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 75-83, October.
    2. Beverly Hirtle, 1988. "Default and liquidity risk in the junk bond market," Research Paper 8816, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    3. Grossman, Sanford J & Miller, Merton H, 1988. " Liquidity and Market Structure," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 43(3), pages 617-637, July.
    4. Redding, Lee S., 1999. "Negative nominal interest rates and the liquidity premium," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 213-216, February.
    5. Douglas W. Diamond & Philip H. Dybvig, 2000. "Bank runs, deposit insurance, and liquidity," Quarterly Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, vol. 24(Win), pages 14-23.
    6. Ederington, Louis H & Lee, Jae Ha, 1993. "How Markets Process Information: News Releases and Volatility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(4), pages 1161-1191, September.
    7. Shiller, Robert J, 1981. "Do Stock Prices Move Too Much to be Justified by Subsequent Changes in Dividends?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 71(3), pages 421-436, June.
    8. Hirshleifer, Jack, 1971. "The Private and Social Value of Information and the Reward to Inventive Activity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(4), pages 561-574, September.
    9. Harvey, Campbell R & Huang, Roger D, 1991. "Volatility in the Foreign Currency Futures Market," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 4(3), pages 543-569.
    10. Jones, Charles M. & Kaul, Gautam & Lipson, Marc L., 1994. "Information, trading, and volatility," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 127-154, August.
    11. Cassano, Mark A., 1999. "Learning and mean reversion in asset returns," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 39(4), pages 529-545.
    12. Amihud, Yakov & Mendelson, Haim, 1991. "Liquidity, Maturity, and the Yields on U.S. Treasury Securities," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(4), pages 1411-1425, September.
    13. LeRoy, Stephen F & Porter, Richard D, 1981. "The Present-Value Relation: Tests Based on Implied Variance Bounds," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(3), pages 555-574, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alfonso Mendoza, 2004. "Modelling long memory and risk premia in Latin American sovereign bond markets," Money Macro and Finance (MMF) Research Group Conference 2003 65, Money Macro and Finance Research Group, revised 13 Oct 2004.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Krebs, Tom, 1999. "Information and asset prices in complete markets exchange economies," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 75-83, October.
    2. Allen, Franklin & Gale, Douglas, 1995. "A welfare comparison of intermediaries and financial markets in Germany and the US," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 179-209, February.
    3. Chen, Carl R. & Mohan, Nancy J. & Steiner, Thomas L., 1999. "Discount rate changes, stock market returns, volatility, and trading volume: Evidence from intraday data and implications for market efficiency," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(6), pages 897-924, June.
    4. James Ming Chen, 2017. "Systematic Risk in the Macrocosm," Quantitative Perspectives on Behavioral Economics and Finance, in: Econophysics and Capital Asset Pricing, chapter 0, pages 239-274, Palgrave Macmillan.
    5. Levine, Ross & Zervos, Sara, 1998. "Stock Markets, Banks, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 537-558, June.
    6. J. Bradford De Long & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1989. "The Size and Incidence of the Losses from Noise Trading," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 44(3), pages 681-696, July.
    7. Halim, Edward & Riyanto, Yohanes E. & Roy, Nilanjan, 2022. "Sharing idiosyncratic risk even though prices are “wrong”," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 200(C).
    8. Torben G. Anderson & Tim Bollerslev & Ashish Das, 1998. "Testing for Market Microstructure Effects in Intraday Volatility: A Reassessment of the Tokyo FX Experiment," NBER Working Papers 6666, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Bofinger, Peter & Schnabel, Isabel & Feld, Lars P. & Schmidt, Christoph M. & Wieland, Volker, 2015. "Zukunftsfähigkeit in den Mittelpunkt. Jahresgutachten 2015/16 [Focus on Future Viability. Annual Report 2015/16]," Annual Economic Reports / Jahresgutachten, German Council of Economic Experts / Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung, volume 127, number 201516.
    10. Ait-Sahalia, Yacine, 1998. "Dynamic equilibrium and volatility in financial asset markets," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 93-127, May.
    11. Fares Triki, 2009. "Leverage Bubbles," Post-Print halshs-00390688, HAL.
    12. Peter Koudijs, 2016. "The Boats That Did Not Sail: Asset Price Volatility in a Natural Experiment," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(3), pages 1185-1226, June.
    13. Xavier Gabaix & Parameswaran Gopikrishnan & Vasiliki Plerou & H. Eugene Stanley, 2006. "Institutional Investors and Stock Market Volatility," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 461-504.
    14. M. D. Mckenzie & R. D. Brooks, 2003. "The role of information in Hong Kong individual stock futures trading," Applied Financial Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(2), pages 123-131.
    15. James Ming Chen, 2017. "Econophysics and Capital Asset Pricing," Quantitative Perspectives on Behavioral Economics and Finance, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-3-319-63465-4, February.
    16. Sadzik, Tomasz & Woolnough, Chris, 2021. "Snowballing private information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    17. Dungey, Mardi & Erdemlioglu, Deniz & Matei, Marius & Yang, Xiye, 2018. "Testing for mutually exciting jumps and financial flights in high frequency data," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 202(1), pages 18-44.
    18. König, Philipp J. & Pothier, David, 2018. "Safe but fragile: Information acquisition, sponsor support and shadow bank runs," Discussion Papers 15/2018, Deutsche Bundesbank.
    19. Rhys Bidder & Ian Dew-Becker, 2016. "Long-Run Risk Is the Worst-Case Scenario," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2494-2527, September.
    20. Paulo M.M. Rodrigues & Rita Fradique Lourenço, 2015. "House prices: bubbles, exuberance or something else? Evidence from euro area countries," Working Papers w201517, Banco de Portugal, Economics and Research Department.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:has:discpr:0114. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Nora Horvath (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/iehashu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.