Atanu Saha

Recently, an influential academic study and many lawsuits have claimed that the VIX index has been manipulated since 2008. In this paper, we construct a regression model with explanatory variables that are exogenous to the index and examine the model prediction errors. We find that the movements in the daily levels of the VIX index are explained by...

In this article we propose a general method to test whether economic data support the claim of futures market manipulation. We examine the question of whether or not Amaranth manipulated the market for natural gas futures using three alternative methods. The first is our contribution to the existing body of literature on the analysis of manipulatio...

We extend the analytical framework of traditional DCF models to allow for the possibility of a time-varying cessation risk for cash flows. We first set out a parsimonious functional form for timedependent survival probability of cash flows and then derive a closed-form solution for cessation risk-adjusted discount rates within a DCF model. Applicat...

In this paper will present and discuss four different methodologies for calculating ERISA damages – what we will label the "best performing fund" "portfolio redistribution," "most similar fund" and "10b-5 style" ERISA damage methods. For purposes of demonstrating how these ERISA damage methods work in practice we will use facts and data from an act...

Using the traditional event study approach in the context of securities litigation, the determination of the "materiality" of a firm disclosure hinges on the statistical significance of the abnormal share price change (i.e., return) on the disclosure day. To estimate per share damages, the abnormal return is then transformed to an abnormal dollar i...

We propose in this paper the forward-casting method for estimating 10b-5 damages. We argue that this method compares favorably to two commonly used 10b-5 damage methods: constant dollar back-casting and the allocation method. Most importantly, both constant dollar back-casting and the allocation method, in contrast to forward-casting, fail to incor...

This paper addresses one of the key issues – the foreseeability of the housing market downturn that began in September of 2007 and intensified in the fourth quarter of 2007 – that must be addressed in assessing the extensive securities class action litigation that has been filed against financial institutions (and others) seeking to recover damages...

A striking feature of the United States stock market is the tendency of days with very large movements of stock prices to be clustered together. We define an extreme movement in stock prices as one that can be characterized as a three sigma event; that is, a daily movement in the broad stock-market index that is three or more standard deviations aw...

In order to have recoverable damages in a Rule 10b-5 action, plaintiffs must establish loss causation, i.e., that the actionable misconduct was the cause of economic losses to the plaintiffs. The requirement of loss causation has come to the fore as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Dura Pharmaceuticals, Inc. v. Broudo. We a...

The widely studied phenomenon of underpricing of new issues of common stock can be explained by underwriters' payoff asymmetry. Under uncertain investors' demand for a new issue, the underwriter's downside risk if he overestimates demand can be significantly larger than the upside potential when he underestimates demand. To protect himself from the...

We develop a simultaneous equations estimation framework to understand the interactions among generic entry, prices, and market shares. We base our estimates on a panel data sample of 40 brand-name drugs that first experienced generic competition during the period July 1992-January 1998. We find that generic share and price are simultaneously deter...

It is well known that the voluntary reporting of hedge funds may cause biases in estimates of their investment returns. But wide disagreements exist in explaining why hedge funds stop reporting to the datagathering services. Academic studies have suggested that poor or failing funds stop reporting while industry analysts suggest that better perform...

Constructing a data base that is relatively free of bias, this paper provides measures of the returns of hedge fund s as well as the distinctly non-normal characteristics of the data. We provide risk-adjusted measures of performance as well as tests of the degree to which hedge funds live up to their claim of market neutrality. We also examine the...

Considerable attention has been paid to the expenditure level for food-away-from-home (FAFH); however, little attention has been paid to consumption frequency. The purpose of this study is to determine the socio-demographic effects of FAFH frequency. The data used in this study comes from the National Panel Diary. The data was analyzed using five e...

Damage estimation in mass torts involving hazardous or defective products is often complicated by the unknown time-profile of disease incidence or failure rate. Because these cases involve diseases with long latencies or involve products that fail after years of productive use, estimation of the defendants' future liability stream requires a model...

U.S. households spend nearly one-half of their food budget for food away from home (FAFH) with an increasing share for fast-food facilities. These trends can impact the structure of the food distribution industry, nutritional intake of U.S. households, and demand for goods at the farm level. This analysis investigates the effects of socioeconomic a...

Curvature properties of the indirect utility function are shown to be necessary and sufficient for refutable behavioural postulates in the form of comparative static results, reciprocity relations, and restrictions on output and input responses for firm models under risk. These postulates are independent of onerous restrictions on risk preference,...

The innovation adoption literature has focused primarily on a producer's decision of whether and how much to adopt. An equally pertinent question is when to adopt, because in the case of new technologies it often 'pays to wait' for more information. We propose a double-limit hurdle model to analyse adoption intensity and inertia in the context of a...

Concern for the potentially harmful side effects of agricultural chemical inputs, especially pesticides, highlights the need to accurately determine the economic levels of their use. We consider three model specification issues: interaction of direct production inputs with damage control inputs in damage abatement, justification for a priori exclus...

In many economic settings, individual decisions can be viewed as a sequential process where a dichotomous choice is followed by a continuous choice. These processes are frequently encountered in consumption demand studies, where the decision of whether or not to consume a particular commodity is followed by the choice of how much to consume. The He...

Using the Heckamn approach, either in single-equation or multi-equation settings, general expressions are derived for calculating marginal effects and elasticities. In the conventional calculation of marginal effects, terms related to the change in the inverse of Mills ratio are omitted. Using data from the 19877-88 Nationwide Food Consumption Surv...

Just-Pope production functions have been traditionally estimated by feasible generalized least squares (FGLS). This paper investigates the small-sample properties of FGLS and maximum likelihood (ML) estimators in heteroscedastic error models. Monte Carlo experiment results show that in small samples, even when the error distribution departs signifi...

Existing computationally tractable duration models impose onerous restrictions on the hazard function's shape. A theoretically consistent, tractable and yet flexible hazard function capable of exhibiting constant, monotonically increasing or decreasing, U-shaped, and inverted U-shaped forms is proposed.

The two-step decision process for food-away-from-home (FAFH) consumption is empirically estimated using a generalization of the Heien and Wessells approach. Household information gathered by the National Panel Diary Group is used for the analysis. Marginal effects are corrected by untangling the respective variable impacts on the inverse Mills rati...

A method is developed to permit joint estimation of risk preference structure, degree of risk aversion, and production technology. The method is implemented using the Expo-Power utility function, which imposes no restrictions on risk preference structure. The empirical application uses data from a sample of Kansas wheat farmers. Evidence rejects th...

The typical discounted cash flow model used to value assets openly projects cash flows for an initial set of years and then typically assumes that the cash flows will grow at a constant rate into the indefinite future. In this paper, we discuss the implications for valuation and the discount rate when one assumes that cash flows have a non-zero pro...