Common Volatility: An Empirical Investigation of Closed-End Country Funds

The study of international integration of equity markets has received a great deal of interest. This paper investigates whether returns of forty-one closed-end country funds share a common volatility process with three comparable return series: the underlying net asset value (NAV), U.S. stock market returns, and foreign stock market returns. Country funds are a natural setting to test for international market integration, as they are traded in the U.S. market, whereas their underlying assets are traded in foreign stock markets. Our results indicate that only a few emerging markets' country funds share common volatility processes with their comparable asset returns. This, in turn, suggests weak linkages through the second moment of related assets.     

会计盈余、现金流量的价值相关性实证研究基于沪深股市的实证证据

已有的研究结果说明会计盈余具有价值相关性。从盈余等于经营现金流量与应计利润之和这一新的视角切入，以实证的方法对沪深两地上市的A股公司进行三大样本检验。并通过建立股票报酬与应计利润和现金流量的回归方程，利用应计利润回归系数的显著性对会计盈余与现金流量的价值相关性做比较，结果表明，会计盈余的价值相关性要大于现金流量的价值相关性。     

EVA IN THE E&P INDUSTRY: THE CASE OF NUEVO ENERGY

This article presents a case study illustrating some aspects of the new business model discussed in the roundtable above. Continuing a major theme in the roundtable, the authors begin by arguing that the long‐run failure of the E&P industry to create shareholder wealth stems to a large degree from weak or distorted incentives held out to the top executives and managers of most large, publicly traded companies. This article traces the incentive problem to the lack of an effective wealth creation metric to guide the financial management process. Although the industry employs a variety of accounting‐based performance measures, none is a reliable measure of wealth creation. In place of traditional financial metrics such as earnings, annual cash flow, and return on capital, this article recommends a performance evaluation and incentive compensation system that is tied to the use of a “reserve‐adjusted” EVA measure—one that exhibits a strong statistical correlation with changes in shareholder wealth in the E&P business. The greater explanatory power of this new measure reflects the reality that changes in the value of reserves in the ground can greatly outweigh changes in annual earnings or cash flows. As the focal point of a compensation plan, EVA has advantages over stock options in that it can be calculated at various levels in the organization, even at the level of a single well, whereas stock prices only exist for the company as a whole. For this reason, an EVA incentive system permits a clearer “line of sight” between pay packages and the performance of the part of the business for which managers are directly accountable. Perhaps even more important, EVA can be calculated (using an “internal hedging” mechanism) in a way that removes the impact of changes in oil prices on the incentive outcome. And, as demonstrated in the case study of Nuevo Energy, such internal hedging allows companies to give their employees a much greater share of wealth created with far less cost than by simply granting stock or stock options.     

Stock or cash? The trade-offs for buyers and sellers in mergers and acquisitions

In 1988, less than 2% of large deals were paid for entirely in stock; by 1998, that number had risen to 50%. The shift has profound ramifications for shareholders of both the acquiring and acquired companies. In this article, the authors provide a framework and two simple tools to guide boards of both companies through the issues they need to consider when making decisions about how to pay for--and whether to accept--a deal. First an acquirer has to decide whether to finance the deal using stock or pay cash. Second, if the acquirer decides to issue stock, it then must decide whether to offer a fixed value of shares or a fixed number of them. Offering cash places all the potential risks and rewards with the acquirer--and sends a strong signal to the markets that it has confidence in the value not only of the deal but in its own stock. By issuing shares, however, an acquirer in essence offers to share the newly merged company with the stockholders of the acquired company--a signal the market often interprets as a lack of confidence in the value of the acquirer's stock. Offering a fixed number of shares reinforces that impression because it requires the selling stockholders to share the risk that the value of the acquirer's stock will decline before the deal goes through. Offering a fixed value of shares sends a more confident signal to the markets, as the acquirer assumes all of that risk. The choice between cash and stock should never be made without full and careful consideration of the potential consequences. The all-too-frequent disappointing returns from stock transactions underscore how important the method of payment truly is.     

The Differences Between Stock Splits and Stock Dividends: Evidence on the Retained Earnings Hypothesis

Abstract:  This paper investigates stock dividends and stock splits on the Copenhagen Stock Exchange (CSE), which is of interest because several of the more recent explanations for a stock market reaction can be ruled out. The main findings are that the announcement effect of stock dividends as well as stock splits is closely related to changes in a firm's payout policy, but that the relationship differs for the two types of events. A stock dividend implies an increase in nominal share capital and hence a decrease in retained earnings. Firms announcing stock dividends finance growth entirely by debt (explaining the need for an increase in nominal share capital) and retained earnings. Basically all firms announcing a stock dividend with a split factor of less than two can also afford to increase their total cash dividends permanently, at least proportionally to the increase in share capital, leading to a significant announcement effect of 4.23%. Firms announcing a stock dividend with a split factor of two or more also increase total cash dividends permanently, but less than proportionally to the increase in share capital. This leads to an insignificant announcement effect of 0.08%. These findings support a retained earnings/signaling hypothesis. For stock splits, no separate announcement effect was found when a firm's payout policy was controlled for. This lends support to the idea that a stock split per se is a cosmetic event on the CSE and is also consistent with the fact that making a stock split on the CSE is virtually cost free.     

Share issuance and cash savings

Firms increasingly issue shares for the purpose of cash savings. During the 1970s, $1.00 of issuance resulted in $0.23 of cash savings; over the most recent decade, $1.00 of issuance resulted in $0.60 of cash savings. This increase is caused by increasing precautionary motives. Proxies for precautionary motives increase over the sample period, and firm-level increases in these proxies are associated with firm-level increases in share issuance–cash savings. Share issuance–cash savings are inversely related to issuance costs, suggesting that firms issue and save when costs are low, so as to avoid issuing when costs are high. This framework can also help explain patterns and trends in share issuance activity over time. Market timing does not explain these effects, as share issuance–cash savings are not related to post-issuance stock returns.     

Housing,consumption and asset pricing

This paper considers a consumption-based asset pricing model where housing is explicitly modeled both as an asset and as a consumption good. Nonseparable preferences describe households’ concern with composition risk, that is, fluctuations in the relative share of housing in their consumption basket. Since the housing share moves slowly, a concern with composition risk induces low frequency movements in stock prices that are not driven by news about cash flow. Moreover, the model predicts that the housing share can be used to forecast excess returns on stocks. We document that this indeed true in the data. The presence of composition risk also implies that the riskless rate is low which further helps the model improve on the standard CCAPM.     

Corporate Control and the Choice of Investment Financing: The Case of Corporate Acquisitions

We test the proposition that corporate control considerations motivate the means of investment financing—cash (and debt) or stock. Corporate insiders who value control will prefer financing investments by cash or debt rather than by issuing new stock which dilutes their holdings and increases the risk of losing control. Our empirical results support this hypothesis: in corporate acquisitions, the larger the managerial ownership fraction of the acquiring firm the more likely the use of cash financing. Also, the previously observed negative bidders' abnormal returns associated with stock financing are mainly in acquisitions made by firms with low managerial ownership.     

Financialized accounts: Share buy-backs, mark to market and holding the financial line in the S&P 500

In recent years the US corporate sector has deployed more cash from operations to finance the repurchase of outstanding share capital for treasury stock. Shares repurchased for treasury stock can help flatter earnings per share, fund senior management share option compensation schemes and finance corporate acquisitions. In financialized accounts these are now significant transactions which, it is argued, serve the financial interests of managers and investors.The US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is now demanding a “greater use of fair value measurements in financial statements” with the result that share options and corporate acquisitions will be “marked to market”. This will force a financialized ratchet because managers in the S&P 500 will need step up cash extraction if they are to hold the financial line.     

现代公司预算编制起点问题的探讨──兼论公司财务报告的改进

本文在界定以生产为起点和以销售为起点的两种传统预算编制方法所适用的条件的同时，论证了以所有 权与管理权相分离为特征的现代公司应以每股收益或利润为起点编制预算的观点。在实务上按照这种现点编制 预算，不仅有助于提升所有者和经营者对整个公司计划和控制的能力，顺势通过改善经营管理来影响本公司股 价，而且还为财务报告的改进提供了新的线索。由于预算编制结果也可用资产负债表、利润表和现金流量表来 表述，本文建议将按每股收益为起点编制的预算以及定期甚至实时编制的预算反馈报告进行公开披露，以增强 现行财务报告的前瞻性、及时性和明细化程度，为投资者提供更加有用的信息。     

Share pledging,payout policy,and the value of cash holdings

Share pledging for insiders’ personal bank loans is associated with the agency problems of insider risk aversion and stock price crash risk. We examine the relation between insider share pledging and the value of cash holdings using the pledging data of listed firms in Taiwan. We find that the value of cash holdings is lower for pledging firms, especially for those that are relatively more risk averse. Pledging firms that repurchase shares have a higher marginal value of cash than those with other payout methods, likely due to the role of repurchases in reducing the stock price crash risk. Our results show how insiders’ personal financing incentives arising from share pledging would affect the value of cash holdings from the perspective of agency problems and payout policy.     

Alternative settlement methods and Australian individual share futures contracts

Individual share futures contracts have been introduced in Australia since 1994. Initially, the contracts were settled in cash. In 1996, cash settlement was gradually replaced by physical delivery. This study investigates the effects of the settlement method change on Australian individual stock and its futures markets. Specifically, we examine whether return and volatility of each market, correlation between the two markets, basis behavior, and hedging performance of futures markets differ across cash settlement period and physical delivery period. We find that, after the switch from cash settlement to physical delivery, the futures market, the spot market, and the basis all become more volatile. However, each individual share futures contract becomes a more effective hedging instrument. The improvement in hedging effectiveness is particularly impressive for the most recently established individual share futures contracts.     

Bank Mergers and Insider Nontrading

Insiders with nonpublic information that their firms are acquisition targets can profit by purchasing their firms' stock or by delaying planned sales of their firms' stock. Under current securities laws, insiders who execute the former strategy expose themselves to civil and criminal liability, whereas insiders who execute the latter strategy do not. Using a sample of bank mergers, we find that target bank insiders significantly decrease both share purchases and share sales before merger announcements. These findings suggest that securities laws effectively deter some forms of illegal insider trading and that insiders exploit opportunities to profit legally from nonpublic information.     

Cash holdings between public and private insurers ‒ a partial adjustment approach

Cash holdings of financial institutions, especially private firms, have been understudied in existing literature. This paper fills that gap by examining the cash holdings of US property-liability insurers in order to analyze the difference in cash holdings and cash adjustments between public and private stock insurers and between mutual and stock insurers within the private insurer category. We find that public insurers hold much less cash than private stock insurers, which differs from the findings for non-financial firms. Additionally, we find that mutual insurers hold less cash than private stock insurers. Public insurers adjust their cash holdings much faster toward their target cash levels than private stock insurers do when facing an extreme cash shortfall, but their adjustment speed is indifferent from that of private stock insurers when both having excess cash. Mutual insurers are able to adjust cash holdings slightly faster than private stock insurers when there is an extreme cash shortfall but are indifferent in adjustment speed from private stock insurers when having excess cash in hand. Overall, our results are more consistent with the financing frictions hypothesis of cash holdings and are inconsistent with the owner-manager agency problems of free cash flow.     

Oil and the Stock Markets

We test whether the reaction of international stock markets to oil shocks can be justified by current and future changes in real cash flows and/or changes in expected returns. We find that in the postwar period, the reaction of United States and Canadian stock prices to oil shocks can be completely accounted for by the impact of these shocks on real cash flows alone. In contrast, in both the United Kingdom and Japan, innovations in oil prices appear to cause larger changes in stock prices than can be justified by subsequent changes in real cash flows or by changing expected returns.     

现金流权比例对终级股东剥夺行为的约束程度分析

在投资者保护理论中,已有数位中外学者研究过现金流权比例对终极股东剥夺约束的问题,但由于他们建立的函数模型均以终极股东“不出售股票”的假设为前提,因而限定了模型的普遍适用性。本文将在修正和扩展现有学者的研究假设之下,建立关于终极股东“出售股票”前提下的收入函数,并进一步探寻在股票价格和控制权的作用下现金流权对于限制剥夺的临界比例数值,以更进一步清晰地度量终极股东持有的现金流权比例对于其剥夺的约束程度,为外部股东防范被剥夺提供预警信息。     

Corporate Cash Holdings and Acquisitions

We find that acquirers’ announcement returns decline with their cash holdings, but only when at least part of the payment is in the form of stock. We further find evidence that acquirers that use stock payment are overvalued, especially when they have excess cash that they could have used instead. Collectively, our results suggest that investors interpret announcements of stock acquisitions as a signal that the acquirers’ equity is overvalued and that high cash holdings intensify this signal. However, our results are inconsistent with the common belief that cash holdings induce value‐destroying acquisitions.     

Tobin's q,agency conflicts,and differential wealth effects of international joint ventures

This article examines announcement effects of 240 international joint ventures (IJVs) undertaken by US firms to ascertain their impact on shareholders' wealth. The objective is to ascertain whether the mixed results of announcement effects reported in the literature can be explained. Theory suggests that IJVs would result in differential stock price reactions due to firm-specific characteristics. Therefore, it is hypothesized that IJVs would elicit a positive stock price reaction, on average. Also, it is hypothesized that this reaction should be greater for high Tobin's q firms and for low free cash flow firms. Empirical analysis reveals that firm-specific characteristics do influence announcement effects and suggests that these factors may explain the mixed announcement effects documented in the literature.     

Share repurchases of initial public offerings: motives,valuation effects,and the impact of market regulation

This study investigates the motives and valuation effects of share repurchase announcements of German firms during the 1998–2008 period, addressing the question why initial public offering (IPO) firms repurchase shares soon after going public. While our focus is on IPO firms, we also examine the impact of firm size by differentiating between IPO and established DAX/MDAX firms and by analyzing the source of surplus cash holdings, that is, either from equity issuances or from operating cash flows. We further explore the impact of the regulatory environment. Our empirical analysis reveals significant differences between the IPO and DAX/MDAX subsamples regarding their repurchase motives, stock price performance, and explanatory factors. Standard corporate payout theories are essential in explaining the different valuation effects. Our empirical analysis suggests agency costs of free cash flow as the main reason for the observed valuation effects of both IPO and DAX/MDAX firms, yet for different reasons. While DAX/MDAX firms continuously generate high operating cash flows before and after repurchasing shares, IPO firms exhibit low operating cash flows during the entire period but large surplus cash holdings due to the mandatory equity issuance at their public offering. Overall, the repurchase decisions of IPO firms are best explained by the agency costs of cash holdings and the unique rules and regulations of the German stock exchange.     

Multinationals and cash holdings

This study examines the relationship between cash holdings and the level of multinationality for a large international sample of firms from 40 countries. We consider two dimensions of diversification, geographical and industrial, and find a direct negative relation between both geographic and industrial diversification and cash holdings. This finding is consistent with the diversification argument that multinationals' headquarters plan their investment and cash needs in an efficient way across geographically diversified operations. We further examine whether there is a trade-off between two diversification strategies. The evidence shows that the effect of industrial diversification is negligible once firms are geographically diversified. By performing country-level tests, we also document some new evidence of international differences for the impacts of tax systems, investor protection, political stability, stock market development, economic size and growth, and national culture on the separate and joint effects of geographic and industrial diversifications.