IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/expeco/v25y2022i5d10.1007_s10683-022-09757-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Capital structure irrelevance in the laboratory: an experiment with complete and asymmetric information

Author

Listed:
  • Arturo Macias

    (Universidad Nacional de Educacion a Distancia (UNED) and Banco de España)

Abstract

This article presents a laboratory experiment about capital structure irrelevance. The equity and debt issued by a firm are traded in two double-auction markets. In the Public treatment a signal carrying information about the firm’s value is known to all traders, while in the Private treatment, it is only disclosed to some randomly chosen participants. In treatment Public the conditions for capital structure irrelevance hold. The experimental results support the irrelevance of the capital structure but reject the rational expectations (risk-neutral) valuation. Treatment effects are significant and information is more efficiently embedded in prices in the Public treatment. The results from treatment Private on prices support the prior information over the rational expectations equilibrium. The analysis of the final portfolios of informed and uninformed participants suggests incomplete adjustment towards the prior information equilibrium predicted holdings.

Suggested Citation

  • Arturo Macias, 2022. "Capital structure irrelevance in the laboratory: an experiment with complete and asymmetric information," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(5), pages 1418-1440, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:expeco:v:25:y:2022:i:5:d:10.1007_s10683-022-09757-8
    DOI: 10.1007/s10683-022-09757-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10683-022-09757-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10683-022-09757-8?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Plott, Charles R & Sunder, Shyam, 1982. "Efficiency of Experimental Security Markets with Insider Information: An Application of Rational-Expectations Models," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 90(4), pages 663-698, August.
    3. Brice Corgnet & Cary Deck & Mark Desantis & Kyle Hampton & Erik O Kimbrough, 2019. "Reconsidering Rational Expectations and the Aggregation of Diverse Information in Laboratory Security Markets," Working Papers halshs-02146611, HAL.
    4. Plott, Charles R & Sunder, Shyam, 1988. "Rational Expectations and the Aggregation of Diverse Information in Laboratory Security Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1085-1118, September.
    5. J. Hirshleifer, 1966. "Investment Decision Under Uncertainty: Applications of the State-Preference Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 80(2), pages 252-277.
    6. Gary Charness & Tibor Neugebauer, 2019. "A Test of the Modigliani‐Miller Invariance Theorem and Arbitrage in Experimental Asset Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(1), pages 493-529, February.
    7. M. Levati & Jianying Qiu & Prashanth Mahagaonkar, 2012. "Testing the Modigliani-Miller theorem directly in the lab," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(4), pages 693-716, December.
    8. Grossman, Sanford J & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1980. "On the Impossibility of Informationally Efficient Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 70(3), pages 393-408, June.
    9. Peter Bossaerts & Cary Frydman & John Ledyard, 2014. "The Speed of Information Revelation and Eventual Price Quality in Markets with Insiders: Comparing Two Theories," Review of Finance, European Finance Association, vol. 18(1), pages 1-22.
    10. Angerer, Martin & Neugebauer, Tibor & Shachat, Jason, 2023. "Arbitrage bots in experimental asset markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 206(C), pages 262-278.
    11. Lionel Page & Christoph Siemroth, 2021. "How Much Information Is Incorporated into Financial Asset Prices? Experimental Evidence," Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(9), pages 4412-4449.
    12. Bruno Biais & Denis Hilton & Karine Mazurier & Sébastien Pouget, 2005. "Judgemental Overconfidence, Self-Monitoring, and Trading Performance in an Experimental Financial Market," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 72(2), pages 287-312.
    13. Merton, Robert C, 1974. "On the Pricing of Corporate Debt: The Risk Structure of Interest Rates," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 29(2), pages 449-470, May.
    14. Ho, Kwok & Robinson, Chris, 1994. "The relevance of financial policy in perfect capital markets," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 97-111.
    15. Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1969. "A Re-Examination of the Modigliani-Miller Theorem," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(5), pages 784-793, December.
    16. Smith, Vernon L & Suchanek, Gerry L & Williams, Arlington W, 1988. "Bubbles, Crashes, and Endogenous Expectations in Experimental Spot Asset Markets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(5), pages 1119-1151, September.
    17. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    18. Corgnet, Brice & DeSantis, Mark & Porter, David, 2020. "The distribution of information and the price efficiency of markets," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    19. Claudio Borio, 2014. "The financial cycle and macroeconomics: what have we learned and what are the policy implications?," Chapters, in: Ewald Nowotny & Doris Ritzberger-Grünwald & Peter Backé (ed.), Financial Cycles and the Real Economy, chapter 2, pages 10-35, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Thomas Stöckl & Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler, 2010. "Bubble measures in experimental asset markets," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(3), pages 284-298, September.
    21. Camelia Bejan, 2020. "Investment and financing in incomplete markets," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 69(1), pages 149-182, February.
    22. Kraus, Alan & Litzenberger, Robert H, 1973. "A State-Preference Model of Optimal Financial Leverage," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 28(4), pages 911-922, September.
    23. Markowitz, Harry, 2014. "Mean–variance approximations to expected utility," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 234(2), pages 346-355.
    24. Borio, Claudio, 2014. "The financial cycle and macroeconomics: What have we learnt?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 182-198.
    25. Alok Kumar, 2009. "Who Gambles in the Stock Market?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(4), pages 1889-1933, August.
    26. Sheridan Titman, 2002. "The Modigliani and Miller Theorem and the Integration of Financial Markets," Financial Management, Financial Management Association, vol. 31(1), Spring.
    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. Brice Corgnet & Cary Deck & Mark DeSantis & Kyle Hampton & Erik O. Kimbrough, 2023. "When Do Security Markets Aggregate Dispersed Information?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(6), pages 3697-3729, June.
    2. Brice Corgnet & Cary Deck & Mark DeSantis & David Porter, 2022. "Forecasting Skills in Experimental Markets: Illusion or Reality?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(7), pages 5216-5232, July.
    3. Corgnet, Brice & DeSantis, Mark & Porter, David, 2021. "Information aggregation and the cognitive make-up of market participants," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    4. Corgnet, Brice & Deck, Cary & DeSantis, Mark & Porter, David, 2018. "Information (non)aggregation in markets with costly signal acquisition," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 286-320.
    5. Brice Corgnet & Mark DeSantis & David Porter, 2020. "Information Aggregation and the Cognitive Make-up of Traders," Working Papers 20-18, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    6. Marquardt, Philipp & Noussair, Charles N & Weber, Martin, 2019. "Rational expectations in an experimental asset market with shocks to market trends," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 116-140.
    7. Edward Halim & Yohanes E. Riyanto & Nilanjan Roy, 2019. "Costly Information Acquisition, Social Networks, and Asset Prices: Experimental Evidence," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 74(4), pages 1975-2010, August.
    8. Simone Alfarano & Albert Banal-Estañol & Eva Camacho & Giulia Iori & Burcu Kapar & Rohit Rahi, 2024. "Centralized vs decentralized markets: The role of connectivity," Economics Working Papers 1877, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    9. Merl, Robert, 2022. "Literature review of experimental asset markets with insiders," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(C).
    10. Halim, Edward & Riyanto, Yohanes E., 2020. "Asset markets with insider trading disclosure rule and reselling constraint: An experimental analysis," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    11. Robert Merl, 2021. "Literature Review of Experimental Asset Markets with Insiders," Working Paper Series, Social and Economic Sciences 2021-04, Faculty of Social and Economic Sciences, Karl-Franzens-University Graz.
    12. Lawrence Choo & Todd R. Kaplan & Ro’i Zultan, 2019. "Information aggregation in Arrow–Debreu markets: an experiment," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 22(3), pages 625-652, September.
    13. Neugebauer, Tibor & Shachat, Jason & Szymczak, Wiebke, 2023. "A test of the Modigliani-Miller theorem, dividend policy and algorithmic arbitrage in experimental asset markets," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    14. Te Bao & Edward Halim & Charles N. Noussair & Yohanes E. Riyanto, 2021. "Managerial incentives and stock price dynamics: an experimental approach," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 24(2), pages 617-648, June.
    15. Merl, Robert & Stöckl, Thomas & Palan, Stefan, 2023. "Insider trading regulation and shorting constraints. Evaluating the joint effects of two market interventions," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    16. Lunawat, Radhika, 2021. "Learning from trading activity in laboratory security markets with higher-order uncertainty," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    17. Huber, Jürgen & Kirchler, Michael & Stefan, Matthias, 2014. "Experimental evidence on varying uncertainty and skewness in laboratory double-auction markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PB), pages 798-809.
    18. Razen, Michael & Huber, Jürgen & Kirchler, Michael, 2017. "Cash inflow and trading horizon in asset markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 359-384.
    19. Loukas Balafoutas & Simon Czermak & Marc Eulerich & Helena Fornwagner, 2020. "Incentives For Dishonesty: An Experimental Study With Internal Auditors," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 58(2), pages 764-779, April.
    20. Michael Razen & Jürgen Huber & Michael Kirchler, 2016. "Cash Inflow and Trading Horizon in Asset Markets," Working Papers 2016-06, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Experimental economics; Modigliani-Miller; Corporate finance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • G30 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - General

    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:kap:expeco:v:25:y:2022:i:5:d:10.1007_s10683-022-09757-8. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.