Impact of oil prices on firm stock return: industry-wise analysis

The study investigates the impact of oil prices on firm-level stock returns in case of Pakistan over the period 1998–2014, as this relationship is neglected by the previous literature. By using the panel data estimation, the results of full sample indicate significant positive effect of oil price changes on firm stock returns in the same period, whereas the lagged oil price changes have significant negative effect on firms’ stock return. Moreover, the industry-level analysis also confirms the similar findings; results indicate significant positive impact of oil price on firms’ stock return in full sample, textile, chemical and miscellaneous industry, while the lagged oil price changes negatively affect the stock returns of full sample and all the industries except tobacco, jute and vanaspati industries. The study confirms that rise in oil price transfers a positive signal in the stock market that boosts the firm-level stock returns in Pakistan. In contrast to the negative shocks, the stock returns are significantly affected by the positive oil price shocks.     

Product market competition and productivity shocks

I investigate the interaction effects of competition and productivity shocks on stocks’ earnings and returns. I find that the sensitivities of earnings and returns to productivity shocks are negatively associated with competition intensity. I also find that the excess returns of productivity shocks-sorted portfolios are lower when competition intensity is high, even after controlling for known return predictors. Overall, the empirical evidence shows firms are less exposed to productivity shocks when competition is high. As such, this study provides a possible mechanism through which the structure of product markets affects stock returns.     

R&D, patents and stock return volatility

Recent finance literature highlights the role of technological change in increasing firm specific (idiosyncratic) and aggregate stock return volatility, yet innovation data is not used in these analyses, leaving the direct relationship between innovation and stock return volatility untested. The paper investigates the relationship between volatility and innovation using firm level patent data. The analysis builds on the empirical work by Mazzucato (Rev Econ Dyn 5:318–345, 2002; J Evol Econ 13(5):491–512, 2003) where it is found that stock return volatility is highest during periods in the industry life-cycle when innovation is the most ‘radical’. In this paper we ask whether firms which invest more in innovation (more R&D and more patents) and/or which have more important innovations (patents with more citations) experience more volatility in their returns. Given that returns should in theory be higher, on average, for higher risk stocks, we also look at the effect of innovation on the level of returns. To take into account the competition between firms within industries, firm returns and volatility are measured relative to the industry average. We focus the analysis on firms in the pharmaceutical industry between 1974 and 1999. Results suggest that there is a positive and significant relationship between volatility, R&D intensity and the various patent related measures—especially when the innovation measures are filtered to distinguish the very innovative firms from the less innovate ones.     

When Do Opening Stock Returns Tend to be Higher?

Abstract

In this study, I make an effort to formulate a trading rule that would make use of some systematic interday patterns in individual stocks’ opening returns. I analyze intraday price data on all the stocks that were S&P 500 Index constituents during the period from 1993 to 2012. I document that if the general market direction of the previous day's opening session is controlled for, then a stock's opening return tends to be higher if, on the previous trading day, its opening return was relatively high (either positive, or higher than the same day's opening market return) and its open-to-close return was relatively low (either non-positive, or lower than or equal to the same day's open-to-close market return). Finally, for the sampling period, I construct two different investment portfolios involving a long position in the stocks on the days when, according to the findings, their opening returns are expected to be high and a short position in the stocks on the days when, according to the findings, their opening returns are expected to be low. Both portfolios are found to yield significantly positive returns, providing evidence for the practical applicability of the documented patterns in opening stock prices.     

The predictability of aggregate Japanese stock returns: Implications of dividend yield

This paper explores the implications of a dividend yield model for predicting aggregate Japanese stock returns using long time-series data from 1949 to 2009. In addition to one-period return tests, we conduct statistical tests based on dividend growth forecasts and long-horizon return forecasts implied by one-year regressions to provide significant evidence for the predictability of aggregate Japanese stock returns. Our findings therefore strengthen the international evidence for the role of dividend yield in predicting returns. However, we find that direct long-horizon regressions are not a powerful way of testing the null hypothesis of no return predictability. Moreover, we find that current cash flow is a more important driving force than future cash flow in the stock market fluctuations, although the dominant force is attributed to expected future returns.     

Research and development and labour productivity: do high-tech firms exhibit labour- or capital-saving technical change?

Employment and output in the advanced technology sectors have generally exhibited above-average growth for more than two decades. While this industry accounts for a relatively small share of total employment, the majority of private sector research and development (R&D) expenditures in the US is concentrated within seven sub-sectors. However, little attention has been paid as to whether high-tech productivity exhibits Hicksian capital or labour ‘savings’ bias or tendency to displace either factor input over time. Biased technical change can occur as economies transition between growth regimes. An augmented production function is employed to analyse the additional impact of R&D activity on firm-level labour productivity. A panel data set comprised of high-tech firms located across the advanced economies, China and India from 1990 to 2013 is used in the analysis. Labour-saving technical change was present across the advanced technology sectors and most countries. The expanded models of labour productivity that used fixed effects with lagged regressors confirmed the prior results as well as finding that R&D per employee, relative R&D intensity and firm market share contribute to firm-level labour productivity growth across countries and sectors. Additional support was found for diminishing returns to scale but not for R&D spillover effects.     

Unexpected Share Repurchase Announcements

Abstract

Open-market stock repurchase announcements are generally perceived by the stock market as a signal of firm undervaluation. Our study shows that repurchase announcements that were preceded by SEOs of other firms in the same industry within the prior six months (namely SEO-RPs) are more likely the result of lacking investment opportunities than signaling undervaluation, especially in concentrated industries. Specifically, we find investors response negatively to SEO-RP announcements while react positively to regular repurchase announcements. The higher the intensity of SEO activities in the industry, the more negative market reaction to SEO-RP announcements. We argue that the market doesn’t expect a repurchase announcement when other rival firms are raising more capital via SEOs. These SEO-RPs represent a negative surprise to the market and lead to a downward adjustment in value of the repurchasing firms in the announcement window. In the three-year post-announcement periods, the SEO-RP firms underperform regular repurchasing firms in both stock return and operating performance. Moreover, while regular repurchasing firms gradually increase their capital expenditures, SEO-RP firms significantly reduce their capital expenditures. These findings support our arguments that repurchase announcements that immediately follow SEOs of rival firms (SEO-RPs) more likely indicate the announcing firms entering a slower growth rate with fewer investment opportunities than signal the undervaluation problem. The underperformance in stock return and operation combined with a significant reduction in capital expenditures in the post-announcement periods are consistent with this logic and also explain why the market reacts negatively to SEO-RP announcements.     

An empirical investigation of herding in the U.S. stock market

This paper proposes a new empirical testing method for detecting herding in stock markets. The traditional regression approach is extended to a vector autoregressive framework, in which the predictive power of squared index returns for the cross-sectional dispersion of equity returns is tested using a Granger causality test. Macroeconomic news announcements and the aggregate number of firm-level news items are treated as conditioning variables, while the average sentiment of firm-level news is treated as jointly determined. The testing algorithm allows the change points in the causal relationships between the cross-sectional dispersion of returns and squared index returns to be determined endogenously rather than being chosen arbitrarily a priori. Evidence of herding is detected in the constituent stocks of the Dow Jones Industrial Average at the onset of the subprime mortgage crisis, during the European debt and the U.S. debt-ceiling crises and the Chinese stock market crash of 2015. These results contrast with those obtained from the traditional methods where little evidence of herding is found in the US stock market.     

Aggregate returns to social capital: Estimates based on the augmented augmented-Solow model

We extend the augmented-Solow model to estimate the aggregate output elasticity and depreciation rate of social capital that characterize aggregate returns. The estimated output elasticity is approximately 0.1. While social capital positively affects economic growth, the magnitude is much smaller than that of other production inputs. The estimated depreciation rate is at least 10% per annum, which is higher than that of physical capital. The median value of the implied aggregate return of social capital is approximately 19.11% at the global level. In OECD countries, it is likely to be considerably smaller than the individual returns, suggesting the fallacy of composition. While there is no systematic relationship between GDP per capita and returns to physical or human capital, the aggregate returns to social capital seem to be negatively related to the level of development.     

An examination of the dynamic behavior of aggregate bond and stock issues

Using a vector autoregressive (VAR) model, this article examines the dynamic behavior of aggregate bond issues and aggregate stock issues and how interest rates, stock market returns, and aggregate capital expenditures influence them. We find that an increase in stock market returns causes an increase in stock issues that persists over one quarter, while a decrease in interest rates leads to an increase in bond issues that persists over a full year. Aggregate capital expenditures have an immediate effect, but not a long-term effect, on bond issues. We also find that the financing process spreads over a period of at least 1 year. In the short run, an increase in aggregate bond issues leads to a decrease in aggregate stock issues, but in the long run (6 months to 1 year), an issue of either stocks or bonds makes subsequent financing by either stocks or bonds more likely.     

A lottery-preference-based explanation of realized kurtosis puzzle in Chinese stock market

High kurtosis corresponds to fat tails on both sides and under risk-aversion assumption investors’ dislike of left-tail loss outweighs their preference for right-tail gain. Therefore, high kurtosis characteristic of stock should predict high expected returns. However, the high-frequency-data-based empirical results on Chinese stock market are just the opposite, which we refer to as the ‘realized kurtosis puzzle’. Using the double sorts and firm-level cross-sectional regression methods, we further demonstrate investors’ preference for lottery-like stocks or lottery preference is key to solve the puzzle. Our further empirical research verifies stocks with higher retail investors’ shareholding proportion and unavailable for short show stronger ‘realized kurtosis puzzle’. In addition, the puzzle is particularly significant in high lottery preference periods while less apparent in low lottery preference times.     

WTO accession,foreign bank entry,and the productivity of Chinese manufacturing firms

After China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001, foreign banks are allowed to enter the Chinese banking market in phases. Using firm-level data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China which cover all state-owned and non state-owned manufacturing firms with sales over 5 million RMB, we examine the relationship between foreign bank entry and the industry-level productivity growth of China’s manufacturing sector. Our empirical results suggest that (a) on average, opening up a region for foreign bank entry has no impact on aggregate productivity growth, (b) however, industries more dependent on external finance grow faster after a region is opened up for foreign bank entry, and (c) these results are due to changes in technical efficiency rather than reallocation. Overall, this paper provides new evidence on the relationship between banking market structure and manufacturing productivity in a fast growing developing country.     

The relation between asset growth and the cross-section of stock returns: Evidence from the Chinese stock market

This study examines the effect of firm investment on stock returns by using data on the Chinese stock market. We find that stocks with higher investment experience lower future returns and there is an obvious investment effect in the Chinese stock market. The investment effect is stronger for firms that have higher cash flows, lower debt or for state-owned firms. We further explore the relation between investment and returns over the 3 years around portfolio formation. The results show that the high investment firms earn higher returns than low investment firms before portfolio formation; however the high investment firms earn lower returns than low investment firms after portfolio formation, such evidence is supportive of investor's overreaction explanation. Additionally, the stock returns don't necessarily decrease after investment, and the stock returns don't significantly positively correlate with firm profitability or book-to-market, so the result don't support risk-based explanation. Overall, both our portfolio sort and two-stage cross-sectional regression analysis show that behavioral finance theories are better than risk-based theories in explaining the investment anomaly. Evidence from the Chinese stock market provides a useful perspective to understand the debate on the investment anomaly.     

Evolving Efficiency of Dually-Listed Indian Stocks: A Nonlinear Perspective

This paper examines the degree of efficiency of Indian ADRs and their underlying stocks trading in NSE/BSE from an adaptive markets hypothesis (AMH) perspective that is theoretically grounded in nonlinear serial dependence. For this purpose, the authors employ the windowed as well as the rolling hinich bicorrelation test procedures on ADRs and the underlying stocks issued by Indian firms such as, and limited to, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Infosys, Wipro, Tata Motors, and Sterlite Industries. The study’s findings indicate that the degree of market efficiency witnessed at the level of individual scrips (ADRs or underlying domestic stocks) differs considerably from the degree of efficiency of the broader stock market in which such scrips trade. Further, the degree of efficiency witnessed amidst all US and Indian scrips considered for this study was found to be heterogeneous in nature and in-turn warrants a ranking approach. Lastly, the degree of efficiency witnessed in certain (not all) dually-listed Indian scrips was found to be homogenous across trading locations. However, this does not happen to be the case for all other dually-listed scrips considered for this study. The study’s findings bring to light the need for disaggregated, firm level market efficiency studies aimed at examining firm-level market efficiency at different trading locations and in-turn identifying the antecedents behind homogeneity (or lack-thereof) in firm-level market efficiency across multiple trading locations.

     

Market Moods and Network Dynamics of Stock Returns: The Bipolar Behavior

The authors show that a simple mood-separable preference in a network study of stock returns captures a variety of stylized facts regarding stocks’ provisional (ab)normal behavior. These behaviors are articulated in a multistate complete Euclidean network model that specifies the existence, direction, and magnitude of a self-organized dynamics for each individual stock during abnormal market moods. In the empirical setting, the authors apply suggested model along with 2 established visual approaches (multidimensional scaling and agglomerative hierarchical clustering) for benchmark purposes. Results reveal different levels of erratic return dynamics for each stock and the entire market in different abnormal market moods. The authors model and interpret these self-organized dynamics as evidence of stocks’ and market’s bipolar behavior.     

CSR,rationality and the ethical preferences of investors in a laboratory experiment

This experimental study aims to clarify to what extent and in which direction investors react to CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiatives meant to upgrade the ethical standards of firms beyond the minimal requirements of law. Subjects in the laboratory were invited to invest their endowment in a portfolio of financial assets. We provided information on the expected returns of each stock and on its inclusion in an ethical index, or exclusion from it. Our findings show that subjects’ behavior appears to be a function not only of their individual pay-offs but also of the information on the ethical standards of the firms issuing stocks. Most of them, however, did not show a fully irrational behavior as they consistently correlated the share of stocks with their expected returns. We may conclude that the sizeable reaction of our investors to the inclusion of a stock in the ethical index, or its exclusion from it, is the fruit of a deliberate choice.     

Stock return reversal and continuance anomaly: new evidence from Hong Kong

Using weekly data, this article conducts a comprehensive analysis and presents new empirical evidences on the short-term stock return reversal and continuance anomaly in the Hong Kong stock market. We confirm that winner stocks behave differently from loser stocks in that the return reversal phenomenon is pervasive within past winner stocks only while past loser stocks tend to show weak return continuance. The arbitrage strategy can earn significantly positive contrarian profits, especially for small firms and illiquid stocks. The anomaly varies across different industries and is also sensitive to the market movement. Despite the existence of the anomaly, our results still in general suggest that the Hong Kong stock market is weak-form efficient because arbitrage trading costs would largely overwhelm the available profits in most cases.     

Price-setting and economic slack: Evidence from firm-level survey data

Economic slack plays an important role for inflation dynamics in conventional macroeconomic models. Some have argued that this relationship, known as the Phillips curve, has broken down in recent years. However, due to the endogenous response of monetary policy, identification of the aggregate Phillips curve is fraught with uncertainty. To deal with some of these issues, this paper relies on a novel survey data set for firms in the retail trade sector in Sweden to explore the relationship between firms price-setting and firm-level measures of economic slack, namely firms’ perception of their sales situation, profitability, labor shortages and goods in stock. The results suggest that firms’ selling prices are more likely to increase if they perceive the sales situation to be good, rather than satisfactory or poor, and if they expect aggregate inflation to be rising. Firms’ assessment of their profitability, labor shortages or goods in stock are however only weakly correlated with selling prices, if at all.     

Economic transition, higher education and worker productivity in China

We investigate the role of education on worker productivity and firms' total factor productivity using a panel of firm-level data from China. We estimate the returns to education by calculating the marginal productivity of workers of different education levels based on estimates of the firm-level production function. We also estimate how the education level of workers and CEO contributes to firms' total factor productivity. Estimated marginal products are much higher than wages, and the gap is larger for highly educated workers. Our estimate shows that an additional year of schooling raises marginal product by 30.1%, and that CEO's education increases TFP for foreign-invested firms. Estimates vary substantially across ownership classes, the effect of schooling on productivity being highest in foreign-invested firms. We infer that market mechanisms contribute to a more efficient use of human capital within firms.     

Asymmetric spillover effects between the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock markets: evidence from quantile lagged regression

This article surveys the asymmetric spillover effects between the mainland China-based Shanghai Composite Index (SCI) and the Hong Kong based Hang Seng Index (HSI) using a quantile lagged regression model. Compared to previous studies, this article, based on data before and after the 2008 global financial crisis, presents a more detailed analysis, as we investigate the spillovers in terms of returns, volatilities and exchange rates between the renminbi (RMB) and the Hong Kong dollar (HKD) throughout the entire conditional return distribution, including the central quantiles, which are closely related to the normal circumstances, and the extreme quantiles, which correspond to the bear and bull markets. First, we find that the return spillovers from its lagged returns or from the other index not only vary across time but also depend on stock state. Second, while return volatility may boost the stock market in a bull market, it accelerates the decline in a bear market. Third, the depreciation of the RMB relative to the HKD does not significantly affect current returns for the HSI, while it negatively affects current returns for the SCI in a bad state after the crisis. The findings presented in this article will facilitate investors’ understanding of the two stock markets.