IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jfinan/v57y2002i2p551-584.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Limited Arbitrage in Equity Markets

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Mitchell
  • Todd Pulvino
  • Erik Stafford

Abstract

We examine 82 situations where the market value of a company is less than its subsidiary. These situations imply arbitrage opportunities, providing an ideal setting to study the risks and market frictions that prevent arbitrageurs from immediately forcing prices to fundamental values. For 30 percent of the sample, the link between the parent and its subsidiary is severed before the relative value discrepancy is corrected. Furthermore, returns to a specialized arbitrageur would be 50 percent larger if the path to convergence was smooth rather than as observed. Uncertainty about the distribution of returns and characteristics of the risks limits arbitrage.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jfinan:v:57:y:2002:i:2:p:551-584
    DOI: 10.1111/1540-6261.00434
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-6261.00434
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/1540-6261.00434?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark Mitchell & Todd Pulvino, 2001. "Characteristics of Risk and Return in Risk Arbitrage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(6), pages 2135-2175, December.
    2. Rosenthal, Leonard & Young, Colin, 1990. "The seemingly anomalous price behavior of Royal Dutch/Shell and Unilever N.V./PLC," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 123-141, July.
    3. Shleifer, Andrei & Vishny, Robert W, 1997. "The Limits of Arbitrage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 35-55, March.
    4. Shleifer, Andrei & Summers, Lawrence H, 1990. "The Noise Trader Approach to Finance," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 4(2), pages 19-33, Spring.
    5. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    6. Jun Liu, 2004. "Losing Money on Arbitrage: Optimal Dynamic Portfolio Choice in Markets with Arbitrage Opportunities," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 17(3), pages 611-641.
    7. Merton, Robert C, 1987. "A Simple Model of Capital Market Equilibrium with Incomplete Information," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 42(3), pages 483-510, July.
    8. De Long, J Bradford & Andrei Shleifer & Lawrence H. Summers & Robert J. Waldmann, 1990. "Noise Trader Risk in Financial Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(4), pages 703-738, August.
    9. Lee, Charles M C & Shleifer, Andrei & Thaler, Richard H, 1991. "Investor Sentiment and the Closed-End Fund Puzzle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(1), pages 75-109, March.
    10. Dammon, Robert M & Dunn, Kenneth B & Spatt, Chester S, 1993. "The Relative Pricing of High-Yield Debt: The Case of RJR Nabisco Holdings Capital Corporation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1090-1111, December.
    11. Alon Brav & J.B. Heaton, 2002. "Competing Theories of Financial Anomalies," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 15(2), pages 575-606, March.
    12. Fama, Eugene F, 1991. "Efficient Capital Markets: II," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 46(5), pages 1575-1617, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Daniel, Kent & Hirshleifer, David & Teoh, Siew Hong, 2002. "Investor psychology in capital markets: evidence and policy implications," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 139-209, January.
    2. Scruggs, John T., 2007. "Noise trader risk: Evidence from the Siamese twins," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 76-105, February.
    3. David Hirshleifer, 2001. "Investor Psychology and Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1533-1597, August.
    4. Barberis, Nicholas & Shleifer, Andrei & Wurgler, Jeffrey, 2005. "Comovement," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 283-317, February.
    5. 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.
    6. Sayim, Mustafa & Rahman, Hamid, 2015. "An examination of U.S. institutional and individual investor sentiment effect on the Turkish stock market," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 1-17.
    7. Akbas, Ferhat & Boehmer, Ekkehart & Jiang, Chao & Koch, Paul D., 2022. "Overnight returns, daytime reversals, and future stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 850-875.
    8. Gagnon, Louis & Andrew Karolyi, G., 2010. "Multi-market trading and arbitrage," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(1), pages 53-80, July.
    9. Chan, Wesley S. & Frankel, Richard & Kothari, S.P., 2004. "Testing behavioral finance theories using trends and consistency in financial performance," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 3-50, December.
    10. Kumari, Jyoti, 2019. "Investor sentiment and stock market liquidity: Evidence from an emerging economy," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 166-180.
    11. Committee, Nobel Prize, 2013. "Understanding Asset Prices," Nobel Prize in Economics documents 2013-1, Nobel Prize Committee.
    12. Stambaugh, Robert F. & Yu, Jianfeng & Yuan, Yu, 2012. "The short of it: Investor sentiment and anomalies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(2), pages 288-302.
    13. Joey W. Yang & Lewis May & John Gould, 2023. "Exchange‐traded fund ownership and underlying stock mispricing," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(S1), pages 1417-1445, April.
    14. Christiane Goodfellow & Dirk Schiereck & Steffen Wippler, 2013. "Are behavioural finance equity funds a superior investment? A note on fund performance and market efficiency," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 14(2), pages 111-119, April.
    15. Adrian, Tobias, 2009. "Inference, arbitrage, and asset price volatility," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 49-64, January.
    16. Brav, Alon & Geczy, Christopher & Gompers, Paul A., 2000. "Is the abnormal return following equity issuances anomalous?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 209-249, May.
    17. Adam Zaremba & Jacob Koby Shemer, 2018. "Price-Based Investment Strategies," Springer Books, Springer, number 978-3-319-91530-2, November.
    18. Miwa, Kotaro & Ueda, Kazuhiro, 2016. "Analysts’ preference for growth investing and vulnerability to market-wide sentiment," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 40-52.
    19. Kim, Soonho & Na, Haejung, 2020. "Earnings information, arbitrage constraints, and the forecast dispersion anomaly," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 35(C).
    20. Yi‐Wei Chuang & Wei‐Che Tsai & Ming‐Hung Wu, 2020. "The impact of net buying pressure on VIX option prices," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(2), pages 209-227, February.

    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:bla:jfinan:v:57:y:2002:i:2:p:551-584. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/afaaaea.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.