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: 3.

The Pre‐FOMC Announcement Drift

Published: 08/06/2014   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12196

DAVID O. LUCCA, EMANUEL MOENCH

We document large average excess returns on U.S. equities in anticipation of monetary policy decisions made at scheduled meetings of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) in the past few decades. These pre‐FOMC returns have increased over time and account for sizable fractions of total annual realized stock returns. While other major international equity indices experienced similar pre‐FOMC returns, we find no such effect in U.S. Treasury securities and money market futures. Other major U.S. macroeconomic news announcements also do not give rise to preannouncement excess equity returns. We discuss challenges in explaining these returns with standard asset pricing theory.


The Narrow Channel of Quantitative Easing: Evidence from YCC Down Under

Published: 12/18/2023   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13307

DAVID O. LUCCA, JONATHAN H. WRIGHT

We study the recent Australian experience with yield curve control (YCC) as perhaps the best evidence of how this policy might work in other developed economies. YCC seemingly worked well in 2020, when the market expected short rates to stay at zero for a long period of time. As the global recovery and inflation gained momentum in 2021, liftoff expectations moved up, the Reserve Bank of Australia purchased most of the targeted government bond outstanding, and the target bond's yield dislocated from other financial market instruments. The evidence suggests that central bank bond purchase programs can operate more narrowly than previously considered.


Resource Allocation in Bank Supervision: Trade‐Offs and Outcomes

Published: 03/29/2022   |   DOI: 10.1111/jofi.13127

THOMAS M. EISENBACH, DAVID O. LUCCA, ROBERT M. TOWNSEND

We estimate a structural model of resource allocation on work hours of Federal Reserve bank supervisors to disentangle how supervisory technology, preferences, and resource constraints impact bank outcomes. We find a significant effect of supervision on bank risk and large technological scale economies with respect to bank size. Consistent with macroprudential objectives, revealed supervisory preferences disproportionately weight larger banks, especially post‐2008 when a resource reallocation to larger banks increased risk on average across all banks. Shadow cost estimates show tight resources around the financial crisis and counterfactuals indicate that binding constraints have large effects on the distribution of bank outcomes.