Patents and R&D expenditure effects on equity returns in pharmaceutical industry

As costs of pharmaceutical R&D soar and productivity falls, the role of research pipelines in firm valuations is changing. To date, surprisingly little work has been published on the effects of R&D pipeline performance on equity returns, while controlling for coincident factors, such as legacy patents and presence of blockbuster drugs in production. Using 1996–2013 data for nine largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, this article assesses the role of the above factors on returns to pharmaceutical companies equity. We show significant positive link between changes in the number of blockbusters on patent six months prior and returns in excess of pharmaceutical equity index. The number of patents granted by United States Patent and Trademark Office in a quarter is also a significant factor. On the other hand, we find that increases in R&D expenditure in large-cap pharmaceutical companies are viewed negatively by investors in the short term.     

THE MONEY DEMAND FUNCTION FOR THE EURO AREA: SOME EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

This paper sets out to re‐examine the money demand function for the euro area. Traditional specifications often yield unsatisfactory results: instability of short and long‐term coefficients; relatively large differences between estimated and actual value of variables; and significant changes in the number of long‐term relationships, etc. Using a standard Vector Error Correction Model, we find that the usual specification is indeed unstable. However, introducing a European equity price gives rise to a more stable system. Furthermore, recursive estimates confirm the relative stability of long‐term coefficients. Estimates of the real money gap, based on the money demand equation including equity prices, point to moderate, albeit persistent, excess liquidity in the euro area in recent years. The real money gap contains information about future inflation but this content may have diminished since 2001.     

Linkages between property asset returns and interest rates: evidence for the UK

This paper considers the effect of short- and long-term interest rates, and interest rate spreads upon real estate index returns in the UK. Using Johansen's vector autoregressive framework, it is found that the real estate index cointegrates with the term spread, but not with the short or long rates themselves. Granger causality tests indicate that movements in short term interest rates and the spread cause movements in the returns series. However, decomposition of the forecast error variances from VAR models indicate that changes in these variables can only explain a small proportion of the overall variability of the returns, and that the effect has fully worked through after two months. The results suggest that these financial variables could potentially be used as leading indicators for real estate markets, with corresponding implications for return predictability.     

上市公司并购的短期和长期股价表现

本文以1998～2002年发生于我国证券市场的1415起并购事件为研究样本，考察了收购公司的短期和长期股价表现。结果表明：并购在短期内给收购公司带来了显著的超常收益，但长期内则使得收购公司股东遭受了显著的财富损失；收购公司的股价表现随公司的规模、财务杠杆、管理能力和政府关联程度的不同而变化，无论是短期内还是长期内市场都更认可小规模和低财务杠杆公司的并购；本文还发现，在对收购公司股价表现影响方面，政府关联和管理能力之间存在显著的替代关系。     

Strategies can be expensive too! The value spread and asset allocation in global equity markets

Is the value spread useful for forecasting returns on quantitative equity strategies for country selection? To test this, we examine a sample of 120 country-level equity strategies replicated within 72 stock markets for the years 1996–2017. The value spread is a powerful and robust predictor of strategy returns in the cross-section, subsuming other methods based on momentum, reversal, or seasonality. Going long (short) the strategies with the broadest (narrowest) value spread produces significant four-factor model alphas, markedly outperforming an equal-weighted benchmark of all of the strategies. The results are robust to many considerations.     

Exchange Rates and Long‐Term Bonds*

There is tentative evidence to suggest that the well‐documented empirical failure of uncovered interest parity (UIP) is confined to short‐term interest rates. However, tests of UIP for long‐term bonds are thwarted by various data problems. These data problems can be avoided by focusing on short investments in long‐term bonds. This paper concerns the relationship between changes in the US dollar–Deutsche Mark exchange rate and returns to short investments in US and German long‐term government bonds. The hypothesis that expected returns to investments in bonds denominated in the two currencies are equal is not rejected, and the estimated slope coefficients are positive. For corresponding short‐term interest rates, the typical finding of negative and large Fama coefficients is confirmed. We conclude that it is the maturity of the asset, rather than the investment horizon, that matters for the results.     

Interest rate,size and book-to-market effects in Australian financial firms

The Fama–French three-factor model (1993) has been extensively used to study the pricing of nonfinancial stocks. This study provides the first examination of the pricing of Australian financial stocks using the Fama–French framework. The four-factor model (market, size, book-to-market and momentum) augmented with the level, slope and curvature of the interest rate term structure is used to examine the pricing of Australian financial stocks. The interest rate factors have not been previously considered for pricing Australian stocks within the Fama–French framework. Consistent with US evidence, we use a system-based estimation to show that the size and book-to-market factors are not priced in the cross section of the equity returns of Australian financial stocks. Momentum and term spread are priced in the equity returns of both financial and nonfinancial stocks. These findings are robust to the inclusion of control variables such as default spread, the inflation rate and a dummy variable for the global financial crisis.     

The Australian Term Structure as a Predictor of Real Economic Activity

This study examines the empirical relation between the yield spread of the term structure of interest rates and future economic activity in Australia. Results indicate that the term spread has significant power to predict real GDP growth but not nominal GDP growth. The term spread has more power in forecasting cumulative future growth than marginal growth in periods ahead. Around one-third of the variance of two year GDP growth can be explained by the term structure one to two quarters ahead. Explanatory power begins to decline beyond two to three years into the future whatever the combination of the long and short term yields used to measure the spread. The term spread has more explanatory power than the most widely used leading index for forecasting economic activity when forecasting cumulative GDP growth beyond two quarters.     

利率期限结构与宏观经济因素的动态相依性——基于VAR模型的经验研究

利率期限结构的变化受到各种宏观经济冲击的影响,宏观经济冲击通过利率期限结构的变化影响到资产收益曲线。文章通过估计和检验结构VAR模型,发现货币冲击、供给冲击和价格冲击都对短期利率产生了持续显著的影响,而对长期利率则没有显著作用效果。宏观经济冲击只对收益曲线的截距参数具有显著影响,而对收益曲线的斜率参数和曲率参数的影响微弱。     

Endogenous uncertainty and market volatility

We advance the theory that the distribution of beliefs in the market is the most important propagation mechanism of economic volatility. Our model is based on the theory of Rational Beliefs (RB) and Rational Belief Equilibrium (RBE) developed by Kurz (1994, 1997). We argue that the diverse market puzzles which are examined, such as the equity premium puzzle, are all driven by the structure of market expectations. In support of our view, we present an RBE model with which we study financial markets. The model is able to simulate the correct order of magnitude of: (i) the long term mean and standard deviation of the price\dividend ratio; (ii) the long term mean and standard deviation of the risky rate of return on equities; (iii) the long term mean and standard deviation of the riskless rate; (iv) the long term mean equity premium. In addition, the model predicts (v) the GARCH property of risky asset returns; (vi) the observed pattern of the predictability of long returns on assets, and (vii) the Forward Discount Bias in foreign exchange markets. The common economic explanation for these phenomena is the existence of heterogenous agents with diverse but correlated beliefs such that some agents are optimistic and some pessimistic about future capital gains. The model has a unique parameterization under which the model makes all the above predictions simultaneously. The parameterization requires the optimists to be in the majority but the rationality of belief conditions of the RBE require the pessimists to have a higher intensity level. In simple terms, the large equity premium and the low equilibrium riskless rate are the result of the fact that at any moment of time there are agents who hold extreme pessimistic beliefs and they have a relatively stronger impact on the market. The paper also studies the effect of correlation of beliefs among investors. It shows that the main effect of such correlation is on the dynamic patterns of asset prices and returns and is hence important for studying such phenomena as stochastic volatility. Received: May 16, 2000; revised version: November 15, 2000     

Cross-sectional and time-series momentum returns and market dynamics: evidence from Japan

We test the behavioural theories of overconfidence and underreaction on cross-sectional (CS) and time-series (TS) momentum returns in the Japanese stock markets. Both CS and TS momentum returns are large and significant when the market continues in the same state and turns into losses when the market transitions to another state, consistent with the overconfidence but not the underreaction model. We find that TS conditional momentum returns exceed conditional CS momentum returns because of its active position since TS takes a net long (short) position following UP (DN) markets while CS is a zero-cost strategy irrespective of the market state. Finally, we find no relation between idiosyncratic volatility (IV) and momentum returns which is not supportive of either the overconfidence or underreaction model but implies that IV is not a significant limit to arbitrage in Japan.     

银行规模与经理人激励——基于中国信息和不确定性环境的理论研究

本文基于委托代理激励理论,探讨不同规模银行中信息类别、不确定性信息与合同期限、政府行为等因素对经理人激励的影响.发现在中国这样的转型经济国家中,不确定性、非契约关系与政府行为使得银行规模与其竞争力和生存性的关系变得更加微妙.(1)相对大银行而言,小银行的发展面临更多的机会和风险;(2)长期合同下股权激励对于小银行经理人有着更为重要的意义;(3)客户经理的素质高低与一致性对于小银行激励效率的发挥至关重要;(4)我国小银行与地方政府天然密切的关系对其"软"信息获取作用很大,但同时也可能对其激励机制的长期有效性造成负面影响.     

The expectations hypothesis of the term structure of interest rates and monetary policy: some evidence from Asian countries

This article outlines a panel data approach to modelling the term structure of interest rates in the short and in the long run. We find robust evidence supporting the expectations hypothesis of the term structure (EHTS) for a small sample of Asian emerging markets. Furthermore, we detect some relevant differences in the transmission mechanism of monetary policy, and the existence of a McCallum (2005) rule (no exogeneity of monetary policy to the yield curve) in some countries. Finally, we document the influence of an international global factor (i.e. a time-varying global risk premium) on the yield curve, while local country-specific factors are not statistically significant.     

Yield Curve and Financial Uncertainty: Evidence Based on US Data

How do short‐ and long‐term interest rates respond to a jump in financial uncertainty? We address this question by conducting a local projections analysis with US monthly data, period: 1962–2018. The state‐of‐the‐art financial uncertainty measure proposed by Ludvigson, Ma and Ng (2019) is found to predict movements in interest rates at different maturities. In particular, an increase in financial uncertainty is found to trigger a negative and significant response of both short‐ and long‐term interest rates. The response of the short end of the yield curve (i.e., of short‐term interest rates) is found to be stronger than that of the long end (i.e., of long‐term ones). In other words, a financial uncertainty shock causes a temporary steepening of the yield curve. This result is consistent, among other interpretations, with medium‐term expectations of a recovery in real activity after a financial uncertainty shock.     

South African stock return predictability in the context data mining: The role of financial variables and international stock returns

In this paper, we examine the predictive ability, both in-sample and the out-of-sample, for South African stock returns using a number of financial variables, based on monthly data with an in-sample period covering 1990:01 to 1996:12 and the out-of-sample period of 1997:01 to 2010:04. We use the t-statistic corresponding to the slope coefficient in a predictive regression model for in-sample predictions, while for the out-of-sample, the MSE-F and the ENC-NEW tests statistics with good power properties were utilised. To guard against data mining, a bootstrap procedure was employed for calculating the critical values of both the in-sample and out-of-sample test statistics. Furthermore, we use a procedure that combines in-sample general-to-specific model selection with out-of-sample tests of predictive ability to further analyse the predictive power of each financial variable. Our results show that, for the in-sample test statistic, only the stock returns for our major trading partners have predictive power at certain short and long run horizons. For the out-of-sample tests, the Treasury bill rate and the term spread together with the stock returns for our major trading partners show predictive power both at short and long run horizons. When accounting for data mining, the maximal out-of-sample test statistics become insignificant from 6-months onward suggesting that the evidence of the out-of-sample predictability at longer horizons is due to data mining. The general-to-specific model shows that valuation ratios contain very useful information that explains the behaviour of stock returns, despite their inability to predict stock return at any horizon. The model also highlights the role of multiple variables in predicting stock returns at medium- to long run horizons.     

Does Shariah compliance make interest rate sensitivity of Islamic equities lower? An industry level analysis under different market states

This paper examines the sensitivity of the Dow Jones Islamic market index and its corresponding industry equity indices to changes in the level, slope and curvature of the U.S. term structure of interest rates over the period 1996–2015 using the quantile regression approach. The empirical results reveal that the Islamic stock market has a considerable negative exposure to interest rate risk, although a declining time pattern of interest rate sensitivity is observed. The unexpected changes in the level factor of the U.S. yield curve, closely linked to long-term interest rates, are identified as the most important interest rate factor in explaining the variability of Islamic equity returns. Furthermore, the interest rate exposure tends to be stronger during extreme bearish conditions in the stock market, possibly due to the greater pessimism and risk aversion under these market circumstances. It is also shown that Islamic equities are not different from their mainstream counterparts in terms of interest rate sensitivity, indicating that the Islamic stock market does not provide a cushion against interest rate risk.     

The Time Varying Relation Between Consumer Confidence and Equities

We examine the impact of changes in consumer confidence measures on future stock index returns. Our analysis is built on the growing understanding that investor sentiment is an important factor in the stock market. By using frequency dependent regression methods, we show that there is a time-varying relation between consumer confidence and stock returns. Higher levels of consumer confidence imply greater returns in the short term but negative returns in the medium term. However, this effect is only observed for the small firm index. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that consumer confidence is significantly affected by stock returns in reverse causality.     

Interest Rates, Stock Returns and Credit Spreads: Evidence from German Eurobonds

We investigate daily variations in credit spreads on investment‐grade Deutschemark‐denominated Eurobonds during the challenging 1994–1998 period. Empirical results from a Longstaff and Schwartz (1995) two‐factor regression, extended for correlated spread changes and heteroskedasticity, indicate strong persistence in spread changes. Consistent with theory and previous findings, changes in spreads are significantly negatively related to the term‐structure level while, contrary to theory, the proxy for asset value does not yield a significant negative contribution. We even find a significant positive relation for Eurobonds with long maturity. Tentative interpretations are portfolio‐rebalancing activities or differing risk factor sensitivities on short‐ vs. long‐maturity bonds.     

Yield curve and the macroeconomy: Evidence from a DSGE model with housing

The slope of the yield curve has long been found to be a useful predictor of future economic activities, but the relationship is unstable. One change we have identified in this paper is that, between the early 1990s and the collapse of the housing market in 2007, movements at the long end of the yield curve have an increase in predictive power. We use a medium-scale DSGE model with a housing sector and a yield curve as a guide to find out the sources of such change. The model implies that an increase in the short-term interest rate and a decrease in the long-term interest rate have different impacts on the economy, and to use the slope as a predictor one needs to distinguish movements at the two ends of the yield curve. Based on simulated data from the model, we find that nominal wage rigidities and the capital adjustment costs are closely related to the predictive power of the yield curve. This result is further confirmed with actual data.     

Time-varying relationship of news sentiment,implied volatility and stock returns

I examine the relationship between aggregate news sentiment, S&P 500 index (SPX) returns, and changes in the implied volatility index (VIX). I find a significant negative contemporaneous relationship between changes in VIX and both news sentiment and stock returns. This relationship is asymmetric whereby changes in VIX are larger following negative news and/or stock market declines. Vector autoregression (VAR) analysis of the dynamics and cross-dependencies between variables reveals a strong positive relationship between previous and current period changes in implied volatility and stock returns, while current period and lagged news sentiment has a significant positive (negative) relationship with stock returns (changes in VIX). I develop a simple trading strategy whereby high (low) levels of implied volatility signal attractive opportunities to take short (long) positions in the underlying index, while extremely negative (positive) news sentiment signals opportunities to enter short (long) index positions. The investor fear gauge (VIX) appears to perform better than news sentiment measures in forecasting future returns.