IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/9423.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Limited Arbitrage and Short Sales Restrictions: Evidence from the Options Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Eli Ofek
  • Matthew Richardson
  • Robert F. Whitelaw

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate empirically the well-known put-call parity no-arbitrage relation in the presence of short sale restrictions. We use a new and comprehensive sample of options on individual stocks in combination with a measure of the cost and difficulty of short selling, specifically the spread between the rate a short-seller earns on the proceeds from the sale relative to the standard rate (the rebate rate spread). We find that violations of put-call parity are asymmetric in the direction of short sales constraints, their magnitudes are strongly related to the rebate rate spread, and they are maintained even in the presence of transactions costs both in the options and equity lending market. These violations appear to be related to both the maturity of the option and the level of valuations in the stock market, consistent with a behavioral finance theory that relies on over-optimistic investors in the stock market and segmentation between the stock and options markets. Moreover, the extent of violations of put-call parity and the rebate rate spread for individual stocks are significant predictors of future stock returns. For example, cumulative abnormal returns, net of borrowing costs, over a 2«-year sample period can exceed 65%.

Suggested Citation

  • Eli Ofek & Matthew Richardson & Robert F. Whitelaw, 2003. "Limited Arbitrage and Short Sales Restrictions: Evidence from the Options Markets," NBER Working Papers 9423, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:9423
    Note: AP
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w9423.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Detemple, Jerome B & Selden, Larry, 1991. "A General Equilibrium Analysis of Option and Stock Market Interactions," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 32(2), pages 279-303, May.
    2. Longstaff, Francis A, 1995. "Option Pricing and the Martingale Restriction," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 8(4), pages 1091-1124.
    3. Harrison Hong & Jeremy C. Stein, 2003. "Differences of Opinion, Short-Sales Constraints, and Market Crashes," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 16(2), pages 487-525.
    4. Basak, Suleyman & Croitoru, Benjamin, 2000. "Equilibrium Mispricing in a Capital Market with Portfolio Constraints," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 13(3), pages 715-748.
    5. Barberis, Nicholas & Thaler, Richard, 2003. "A survey of behavioral finance," Handbook of the Economics of Finance, in: G.M. Constantinides & M. Harris & R. M. Stulz (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Finance, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 1053-1128, Elsevier.
    6. Mark Mitchell & Todd Pulvino & Erik Stafford, 2002. "Limited Arbitrage in Equity Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(2), pages 551-584, April.
    7. Chen, Joseph & Hong, Harrison & Stein, Jeremy C., 2002. "Breadth of ownership and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 171-205.
    8. Robert C. Merton, 2005. "Theory of rational option pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 8, pages 229-288, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    9. Detemple, Jerome & Murthy, Shashidhar, 1997. "Equilibrium Asset Prices and No-Arbitrage with Portfolio Constraints," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 10(4), pages 1133-1174.
    10. Kamara, Avraham & Miller, Thomas W., 1995. "Daily and Intradaily Tests of European Put-Call Parity," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(4), pages 519-539, December.
    11. Owen A. Lamont & Richard H. Thaler, 2003. "Can the Market Add and Subtract? Mispricing in Tech Stock Carve-outs," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(2), pages 227-268, April.
    12. Geczy, Christopher C. & Musto, David K. & Reed, Adam V., 2002. "Stocks are special too: an analysis of the equity lending market," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 241-269.
    13. Jones, Charles M. & Lamont, Owen A., 2002. "Short-sale constraints and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 207-239.
    14. Bodurtha, James N, Jr & Courtadon, Georges R, 1986. "Efficiency Tests of the Foreign Currency Options Market," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 41(1), pages 151-162, March.
    15. John H. Cochrane, 2002. "Stocks as Money: Convenience Yield and the Tech-Stock Bubble," NBER Working Papers 8987, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Detemple, Jerome & Jorion, Philippe, 1990. "Option listing and stock returns : An empirical analysis," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 781-801, October.
    17. Klemkosky, Robert C & Resnick, Bruce G, 1979. "Put-Call Parity and Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 34(5), pages 1141-1155, December.
    18. Lintner, John, 1969. "The Aggregation of Investor's Diverse Judgments and Preferences in Purely Competitive Security Markets," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(4), pages 347-400, December.
    19. Johnson, H. E., 1983. "An Analytic Approximation for the American Put Price," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 141-148, March.
    20. Eli Ofek & Matthew Richardson, 2001. "DotCom Mania: The Rise and Fall of Internet Stock Prices," NBER Working Papers 8630, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    21. Nisbet, Mary, 1992. "Put-call parity theory and an empirical test of the efficiency of the London Traded Options Market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 381-403, April.
    22. Jarrow, Robert A, 1980. "Heterogeneous Expectations, Restrictions on Short Sales, and Equilibrium Asset Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 35(5), pages 1105-1113, December.
    23. Almazan, Andres & Brown, Keith C. & Carlson, Murray & Chapman, David A., 2004. "Why constrain your mutual fund manager?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(2), pages 289-321, August.
    24. Geske, Robert & Johnson, Herb E, 1984. "The American Put Option Valued Analytically," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 39(5), pages 1511-1524, December.
    25. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "The Limits of Arbitrage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 35-55, March.
    26. Figlewski, Stephen, 1981. "The Informational Effects of Restrictions on Short Sales: Some Empirical Evidence," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 16(4), pages 463-476, November.
    27. Duffie, Darrell & Garleanu, Nicolae & Pedersen, Lasse Heje, 2002. "Securities lending, shorting, and pricing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 307-339.
    28. Danielsen, Bartley R. & Sorescu, Sorin M., 2001. "Why Do Option Introductions Depress Stock Prices? A Study of Diminishing Short Sale Constraints," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(4), pages 451-484, December.
    29. J. Michael Harrison & David M. Kreps, 1978. "Speculative Investor Behavior in a Stock Market with Heterogeneous Expectations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 92(2), pages 323-336.
    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. Flynn, Sean Masaki, 2003. "Limited Arbitrage, Segmentation, and Investor Heterogeneity: Why the Law of One Price So Often Fails," Vassar College Department of Economics Working Paper Series 56, Vassar College Department of Economics.
    2. Han, Bin, 2004. "Limits of Arbitrage, Sentiment and Pricing Kernal: Evidences from Index Options," Working Paper Series 2004-2, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    3. Ibáñez, Alfredo, 2005. "Option-pricing in incomplete markets: the hedging portfolio plus a risk premium-based recursive approach," DEE - Working Papers. Business Economics. WB wb058121, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía de la Empresa.
    4. Michael R. Powers & David M. Schizer & Martin Shubik, 2003. "Market Bubbles and Wasteful Avoidance: Tax and Regulatory Constraints on Short Sales," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1413, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    5. Marsh, Ian W. & Payne, Richard, 2012. "Banning short sales and market quality: The UK’s experience," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(7), pages 1975-1986.
    6. Owen Lamont, 2004. "Go Down Fighting: Short Sellers vs. Firms," NBER Working Papers 10659, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Owen Lamont, 2004. "Go Down Fighting: Short Sellers vs. Firms," NBER Working Papers 10659, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Flynn, Sean Masaki, 2004. "Arbitrage in Closed-end Funds: New Evidence," Vassar College Department of Economics Working Paper Series 57, Vassar College Department of Economics.
    9. Alfredo Ibáñez, 2005. "Option-Pricing in Incomplete Markets: The Hedging Portfolio plus a Risk Premium-Based Recursive Approach," Computing in Economics and Finance 2005 216, Society for Computational Economics.
    10. Doukas, John A. & Kim, Chansog & Pantzalis, Christos, 2006. "Divergence of opinion and equity returns under different states of earnings expectations," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 9(3), pages 310-331, August.

    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. Ofek, Eli & Richardson, Matthew & Whitelaw, Robert F., 2004. "Limited arbitrage and short sales restrictions: evidence from the options markets," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 305-342, November.
    2. Tibor Neugebauer & Sascha Füllbrunn, 2013. "Deflating Bubbles in Experimental Asset Markets: Comparative Statics of Margin Regulations," LSF Research Working Paper Series 13-14, Luxembourg School of Finance, University of Luxembourg.
    3. Harrison Hong & José Scheinkman & Wei Xiong, 2006. "Asset Float and Speculative Bubbles," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1073-1117, June.
    4. Eli Ofek & Matthew Richardson, 2001. "DotCom Mania: The Rise and Fall of Internet Stock Prices," NBER Working Papers 8630, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Harrison Hong & Jose Scheinkman & Wei Xiong, 2005. "Asset Float and Speculative Bubbles," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000000861, UCLA Department of Economics.
    6. Richard J. Kish & Nandkumar Nayar & Wenlong Weng, 2012. "IPO pricing: a case of short-sale restrictions and divergent expectations," Quantitative Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 12(9), pages 1439-1451, November.
    7. Wei Xiong, 2013. "Bubbles, Crises, and Heterogeneous Beliefs," NBER Working Papers 18905, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Duffie, Darrell & Garleanu, Nicolae & Pedersen, Lasse Heje, 2002. "Securities lending, shorting, and pricing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 307-339.
    9. Jianping Mei & Jose A. Scheinkman & Wei Xiong, 2009. "Speculative Trading and Stock Prices: Evidence from Chinese A-B Share Premia," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 10(2), pages 225-255, November.
    10. Patrick Bolton & José Scheinkman & Wei Xiong, 2006. "Executive Compensation and Short-Termist Behaviour in Speculative Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(3), pages 577-610.
    11. David M. Schizer & Michael R. Powers & Martin Shubik, 2003. "Market Bubbles and Wasteful Avoidance: Tax and Regulatory Constraints on Short Sales," Yale School of Management Working Papers ysm356, Yale School of Management.
    12. J. Scheinkman & W. Xiong, 2002. "Overconfidence, Short-Sale Constraints and Bubbles," Princeton Economic Theory Working Papers 98734966f1c1a57373801367f, David K. Levine.
    13. Chang, Eric C. & Cheng, Joseph W. & Pinegar, J. Michael & Yu, Yinghui, 2012. "Short-sale constraints: Reductions in costs of capital or overvaluation? Evidence from Hong Kong," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 506-520.
    14. Chen, Yong & Da, Zhi & Huang, Dayong, 2022. "Short selling efficiency," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 387-408.
    15. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    16. Chen, Joseph & Hong, Harrison & Stein, Jeremy C., 2002. "Breadth of ownership and stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(2-3), pages 171-205.
    17. Li Lin & Didier Sornette, 2009. "Diagnostics of Rational Expectation Financial Bubbles with Stochastic Mean-Reverting Termination Times," Papers 0911.1921, arXiv.org.
    18. Flynn, Sean Masaki, 2003. "Limited Arbitrage, Segmentation, and Investor Heterogeneity: Why the Law of One Price So Often Fails," Vassar College Department of Economics Working Paper Series 56, Vassar College Department of Economics.
    19. Peter Temin & Hans-Joachim Voth, 2004. "Riding the South Sea Bubble," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1654-1668, December.
    20. Malcolm Baker & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2006. "Investor Sentiment and the Cross‐Section of Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 61(4), pages 1645-1680, August.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:nbr:nberwo:9423. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.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.