IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/apandp/v108y2018p584-89.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The "Standard Error" of Event Studies: Lessons from the 2016 Election

Author

Listed:
  • Justin Wolfers
  • Eric Zitzewitz

Abstract

The 2016 Election offers an unusually stark warning about the limitations of event studies. In four separate pre-election event windows, financial market responses to shifts in electoral probabilities were consistent with expectations that a surprise Trump win would lead the S&P 500 to fall by 11 percent. The initial decline that accompanied Trump's win was more than reversed on the day after the election, however, suggesting a reassessment of its expected effect. We discuss explanations for this reassessment. But our broader point is methodological: today's event study may not reveal tomorrow's market expectation.

Suggested Citation

  • Justin Wolfers & Eric Zitzewitz, 2018. "The "Standard Error" of Event Studies: Lessons from the 2016 Election," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 108, pages 584-589, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:apandp:v:108:y:2018:p:584-89
    Note: DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20181090
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/pandp.20181090
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrieve=tIEV0AFPESpPN6iSQ51tm7_A74YYzRRV
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hanke, Michael & Stöckl, Sebastian & Weissensteiner, Alex, 2020. "Political event portfolios," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 118(C).
    2. Chan, Kam Fong & Gray, Philip & Gray, Stephen & Zhong, Angel, 2020. "Political uncertainty, market anomalies and Presidential honeymoons," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 113(C).
    3. Child, Travers Barclay & Massoud, Nadia & Schabus, Mario & Zhou, Yifan, 2021. "Surprise election for Trump connections," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 676-697.
    4. Wagner, Alexander F. & Zeckhauser, Richard J. & Ziegler, Alexandre, 2018. "Company stock price reactions to the 2016 election shock: Trump, taxes, and trade," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(2), pages 428-451.
    5. Barraza, Santiago & Rossi, Martín A & Ruzzier, Christian A, 2022. "Sleeping with the enemy: The perils of having the government on(the)board," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 641-651.
    6. Kostakis, Alexandros & Mu, Liangyi & Otsubo, Yoichi, 2023. "Detecting political event risk in the option market," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 146(C).
    7. Paolo Manasse & Graziano Moramarco & Giulio Trigilia, 2024. "Exchange rates and political uncertainty: the Brexit case," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 91(362), pages 621-652, April.
    8. James D. Hamilton, 2018. "The Efficacy of Large-Scale Asset Purchases When the Short-Term Interest Rate Is at Its Effective Lower Bound," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 49(2 (Fall)), pages 543-554.
    9. Hennicke, Moritz & Blanga-Gubbay, Michael, 2023. "Betting on the Wrong Horse: Lobbying on TPP and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election," OSF Preprints zcwsn, Center for Open Science.
    10. Samson Mukanjari & Thomas Sterner, 2024. "Do markets Trump politics? Fossil and renewable market reactions to major political events," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(2), pages 805-836, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading

    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:aea:apandp:v:108:y:2018:p:584-89. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    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.