The Journal of Finance

The Journal of Finance publishes leading research across all the major fields of finance. It is one of the most widely cited journals in academic finance, and in all of economics. Each of the six issues per year reaches over 8,000 academics, finance professionals, libraries, and government and financial institutions around the world. The journal is the official publication of The American Finance Association, the premier academic organization devoted to the study and promotion of knowledge about financial economics.

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Search results: 2.

Trading Costs and Informational Efficiency

Published: 02/10/2021   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13008

EDUARDO DÁVILA, CECILIA PARLATORE

We study the effect of trading costs on information aggregation and acquisition in financial markets. For a given precision of investors' private information, an irrelevance result emerges when investors are ex ante identical: price informativeness is independent of the level of trading costs. When investors are ex ante heterogeneous, a change in trading costs can increase or decrease price informativeness, depending on the source of heterogeneity. Our results are valid under quadratic, linear, and fixed costs. Through a reduction in information acquisition, trading costs reduce price informativeness. We discuss how our results inform the policy debate on financial transaction taxes/Tobin taxes.


Designing Stress Scenarios

Published: 01/24/2025   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13422

CECILIA PARLATORE, THOMAS PHILIPPON

We study the optimal design of stress scenarios. A principal manages the unknown risk exposures of agents by asking them to report losses under hypothetical scenarios before taking remedial actions. We apply a Kalman filter to solve the learning problem, and we relate the optimal design to the risk environment, the principal's preferences, and available interventions. In a banking context, optimal capital requirements cover losses under an adverse scenario, while targeted interventions depend on covariances among residual exposures and systematic risks. Our calibration reveals that information is particularly valuable for targeted interventions as opposed to broad capital requirements.