INTRADAY AND OVERNIGHT RETURNS AND DAY-OF-THE-WEEK EFFECTS

This paper examines intra-trading-day and overnight returns constructed from a transactions data base. Day-of-the-week effects are examined for firms classified by level of thin trading. Results indicate that thin trading masks day-of-the-week effects. Day-of-the-week effects are much more pronounced for actively traded stocks. The importance of controlling for thin trading in studies where segmentation of returns into distinct periods is important is illustrated through an examination of day-of-the-week effects for firms classified by size.     

MONETARY AND FISCAL POLICIES AND STOCK PRICES

Investigations into business cycles have found money supply to be a lead variable to stock prices. However, some would argue that the stock market, being efficient, anticipates money supply changes and therefore, stock prices are lead variables to money supply changes. Recent developments in time series methods have facilitated the testing of these relationships through identifying bivariate and multivariate autoregressive models. However, in many cases, the results using different procedures contradict themselves and are in conflict with theoretical reasonings. In this paper the causal relationship is tested between fiscal and monetary policies and stock prices using Canadian data and bivariate andmultivariate autoregressive models.     

国家主席胡锦涛出席金砖国家领导人第三次会晤时发表重要讲话：加强合作与交流 维护国际经济金融稳定

4月14日,金砖国家领导人第三次会晤在海南省三亚市举行,中国国家主席胡锦涛、巴西总统罗塞夫、俄罗斯总统梅德韦杰夫、印度总理辛格、南非总统祖马出席。胡锦涛发表了题为《展望未来共享繁荣》的重要讲话。     

A NOTE ON INTEREST RATES AND THE RISK OF BANK AND SAVINGS AND LOAN STOCK

This study examines the relationship between interest rates and the risk of bank and savings and loan stocks. Implied standard deviations from call option prices are used as risk estimates of the financial institutions’ stocks. Results indicate that there is a positive relationship between the risk of depository institution equities and the general level of interest rates. In addition, an upward shift in their risk occurred in late 1982, coinciding with several events that were important to the financial industry (the Penn-Square Bank failure, the Mexican debt crisis, and the passage of the Garn-St. Germain Depository Institutions Act).     

阳光化和规范化是民间借贷必由之路

民间借贷在一定程度上解决了一些企业特别是小微企业的融资需求，但由此带来的高利率侵蚀企业利润、游资炒作干扰正常经济秩序、资金链断裂引起局部民间资金市场动荡等问题也在不断显现，近来尤为突出。我国民间借贷市场现况如何？问题何在？怎样趋利避害将民间借贷引入实体经济，使其发挥促进经济持续健康平稳增长的作用？就这些问题，本刊记者邀请了民间借贷研究领域问题的3位资深专家，进行了深入对话。     

OF MESSINESS, SYSTEMS AND SUSTAINABILITY: TOWARDS A MORE SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING

This essay is a personal attempt at a re-visitation and re-consideration of a number of the fundamental questions which underlie accounting and finance but which only rarely receive explicit consideration. Social and environmental accounting has been the principal focus of my research interests since I became an academic and the subject was, indeed, the primary reason I became an academic in the first place. A concern with social and environmental accounting automatically forces one to raise basic questions about (what is conventionally thought of as) accounting and finance—its foundations, its purposes, its assumptions. In trying to answer those questions one comes to see all of accounting and finance in different ways—both in terms of what it assumes about the world and what it can potentially do for the world. This paper seeks to clarify some of the ways in which conventional accounting and finance and social and environmental accounting (and finance) can be in harmony. However, the principle purpose of the paper is to suggest that many of our ghettos, our internecine squabbles and our misunderstandings are trivial when compared with the essential question of what we place at the centre of our teaching and scholarship. At the core of accounting and finance is a truly fundamental conflict between sustainability and modern international financial capitalism. Our choices between these are likely to be a great deal more than matters of methodological nicety or intellectual convenience. Social and environmental accounting (and finance) offer a way to recover a moral and productive accounting and finance that places survival of the species at its very heart.     

DIVIDEND CHANGE ANNOUNCEMENT EFFECTS AND EARNINGS VOLATILITY AND TIMING

Recent modeling using the asymmetric information framework suggests that the magnitude of a market response to dividend change announcements should be related to the timing of the dividend announcement vis-a-vis the earnings release and to the stability of those earnings. The announcement effects of regular quarterly dividend changes are tested and these effects are related to the percentage change in the dividend yield, to the stability of the firm's earnings, to the timing of dividend and earnings announcements, and to the level of earnings compared with prior quarters. Analysis indicates that significant relationships exist between the announcement effect and changes in the dividend yield, and whether the dividend change is positive or negative. Only weak evidence exists that dividend announcement effects are larger when current earnings are unknown.     

CRITICAL THEORY AND ACCOUNTING HISTORY: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

This paper briefly examines the contributions that postmodern (critical) research has made to the historical accounting literature and the opportunities that this new body of literature has created for traditional historical researchers. I suggest that the “new history” that has rendered the “familiar strange” has provided new understanding of our discipline that should be welcomed by all historians. The paper briefly examines two areas, the emergence of double entry bookkeeping and cost accounting, to demonstrate the new insights that critical historians have provided to what has been considered a settled agenda. I conclude by noting that the diversity critical research has added to the accounting history research should be celebrated, but caution that we not engage in the modernist strategy of trying to find a “certified path to knowledge.” Accounting history will be enhanced if our community adopts the values–tolerance, willingness to listen, and respect for alternative views–ithat have enabled researchers in other disciplines to flourish.     

MACROECONOMIC NEWS AND STOCK MARKET CALENDAR AND WEATHER ANOMALIES

An analysis of six stock market calendar and weather anomalies from 1980 to 2003 shows that (1) returns on trading days in which macroeconomic announcements were made generate the anomalies and (2) five of the six anomalies are not present at all on the trading days in which such announcements were not made (more than 60% of the sample). The results suggest that the market response to macroeconomic news, not psychological or institutional factors, is the main source of calendar and weather anomalies.