IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/9120.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Asset Prices and Institutional Investors

Author

Listed:
  • Basak, Suleyman
  • Pavlova, Anna

Abstract

Empirical evidence indicates that trades by institutional investors have sizable effects on asset prices, generating phenomena such as index effects, asset-class effects and others. It is difficult to explain such phenomena within standard representative-agent asset pricing models. In this paper, we consider an economy populated by institutional investors alongside standard retail investors. Institutions care about their performance relative to a certain index. Our framework is tractable, admitting exact closed-form expressions, and produces the following analytical results. We find that institutions optimally tilt their portfolios towards stocks that comprise their benchmark index. The resulting price pressure boosts index stocks, while leaving nonindex stocks unaffected. By demanding a higher fraction of risky stocks than retail investors, institutions amplify the index stock volatilities and aggregate stock market volatility, and give rise to countercyclical Sharpe ratios. Trades by institutions induce excess correlations among stocks that belong to their benchmark index, generating an asset-class effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Basak, Suleyman & Pavlova, Anna, 2012. "Asset Prices and Institutional Investors," CEPR Discussion Papers 9120, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:9120
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP9120
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

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

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Patrick Bolton & Mathias Dewatripont, 2005. "Contract Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262025760, December.
    2. Lakonishok, Josef, et al, 1991. "Window Dressing by Pension Fund Managers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 227-231, May.
    3. Eric Zitzewitz, 2006. "How Widespread Was Late Trading in Mutual Funds?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 284-289, May.
    4. Cox, John C. & Huang, Chi-fu, 1989. "Optimal consumption and portfolio policies when asset prices follow a diffusion process," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 33-83, October.
    5. Bengt Holmstrom, 1979. "Moral Hazard and Observability," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 10(1), pages 74-91, 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. Schubert, Torben, 2009. "Empirical observations on New Public Management to increase efficiency in public research--Boon or bane?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 1225-1234, October.
    2. Johannes Hörner & Larry Samuelson, 2013. "Incentives for experimenting agents," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 44(4), pages 632-663, December.
    3. Renee B. Adams & Benjamin E. Hermalin & Michael S. Weisbach, 2010. "The Role of Boards of Directors in Corporate Governance: A Conceptual Framework and Survey," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(1), pages 58-107, March.
    4. David Rietzke & Yu Chen, 2020. "Push or pull? Performance‐pay, incentives, and information," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 51(1), pages 301-317, March.
    5. Dong, Gang Nathan, 2014. "Excessive financial services CEO pay and financial crisis: Evidence from calibration estimation," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 75-96.
    6. Prasad, Kislaya & Salmon, Timothy C., 2013. "Self Selection and market power in risk sharing contracts," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 71-86.
    7. Marchegiani, Lucia & Reggiani, Tommaso G. & Rizzolli, Matteo, 2011. "How Unjust! An Experimental Investigation of Supervisors' Evaluation Errors and Agents' Incentives," IZA Discussion Papers 6254, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Arifovic, Jasmina & Karaivanov, Alexander, 2010. "Learning by doing vs. learning from others in a principal-agent model," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 1967-1992, October.
    9. Hatfield, John William & Padro i Miquel, Gerard, 2006. "Multitasking, limited liability and political agency," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 4824, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    10. Miguel Antón & Florian Ederer & Mireia Giné & Martin Schmalz, 2023. "Common Ownership, Competition, and Top Management Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 131(5), pages 1294-1355.
    11. Topi Miettinen, 2011. "Moral Hazard and Clear Conscience," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 167(2), pages 224-235, June.
    12. Vergara, Marcos & Bonilla, Claudio A. & Sepulveda, Jean P., 2016. "The complementarity effect: Effort and sharing in the entrepreneur and venture capital contract," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 254(3), pages 1017-1025.
    13. Charness, Gary & Dufwenberg, Martin, 2003. "Promises & Partnership," Research Papers in Economics 2003:3, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    14. Ulbricht, Robert, 2016. "Optimal delegated search with adverse selection and moral hazard," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(1), January.
    15. Damien S Eldridge, 2007. "A Shirking Theory of Referrals," Working Papers 2007.05, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
    16. Pierre Chaigneau, 2012. "On the Value of Improved Informativeness," Cahiers de recherche 1205, CIRPEE.
    17. Pierre Chaigneau & Alex Edmans & Daniel Gottlieb, 2014. "The Generalized Informativeness Principle," NBER Working Papers 20729, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Groll, Thomas & Ellis, Christopher J., 2014. "A simple model of the commercial lobbying industry," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 299-316.
    19. repec:cwl:cwldpp:1726rr is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Hector Chade, 2017. "Disentangling Moral Hazard and Adverse Selection," 2017 Meeting Papers 1537, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    21. Hooper, Louise, 2008. "Paying for performance: Uncertainty, asymmetric information and the payment model," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 157-163, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Asset class; Asset pricing; General equilibrium; Indexing; Institutions; Money management;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G18 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • G29 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Other

    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:cpr:ceprdp:9120. 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://www.cepr.org .

    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.