The Asian flu and Russian virus: the international transmission of crises in firm-level data

This paper examines how the Asian and Russian crises affected different types of firms around the world. It constructs a new data set of financial statistics, industry information, geographic data, and stock returns for over 10?000 companies in 46 countries. Results show that firms competing with exports from the crisis countries, or with direct sales exposure to the crisis countries, had significantly lower abnormal stock returns. Firms with higher debt ratios, however, did not experience lower abnormal returns. Country-specific effects, although important determinants of company stock returns, are generally less important than firm-specific characteristics. These results suggest that trade channels are important factors determining how crises are transmitted internationally.     

市场竞争、银行信贷与上市公司商业信用

商业信用是企业特别是受到信贷约束的中小私有企业获得外部融资的一种重要方式。利用2004—2008年中国制造业上市公司数据,分析市场竞争与银行贷款对上市公司商业信用的影响。结果显示:市场竞争和应收账款正相关,和应付账款负相关;随着银行贷款的增加,企业的应收和应付账款都有所增加。     

Does the Quality of Corporate Governance Affect Firm Valuation and Risk? Evidence from a Corporate Governance Scorecard in Hong Kong*

Using Hong Kong firm data, we construct an index of corporate governance during 2002–2005, which scores the corporate governance practices of listed companies from the public shareholders' perspective based on the Organization for Economic Corporation and Development Principles of Corporate Governance. The findings show that family firms and firms with concentrated ownership structures are associated with bad corporate governance. The evidence also shows that these firms improve their corporate governance practices slower than their peers. Overall, the quality of corporate governance is very significant in explaining future company stock returns and risk. Good corporate governance is associated with both higher stock returns and with lower risk. Improvements in corporate governance are associated with significantly higher stock returns and lower company risk.     

Day-of-the-Week Variation and Predicting Stock Returns: Taiwan and Thailand Stock Exchanges

Previously, researchers created a day-of-the-week anomaly in closing stock returns for firms listed on established financial markets. This article explores whether this line of argument is or is not satisfactory and does or does not aid in predicting daily stock returns. The article focuses on the performance of stock returns for two large Asian Stock Market exchanges, Taiwan and Thailand. The purpose is to determine if stock market returns (which include closing prices and dividends) are in part predictable and whether there are explanations for short-term predictability.     

The relationship between currency carry trades and U.S. stocks

The article examines the relationship between daily returns of currency carry trades and U.S. stocks from January 1995 through September 2010. Carry trade and stock returns are highly correlated with no Granger‐causality in either direction. An EGARCH model shows that significant volatility spillovers flow from the stock market to the carry‐trade market, but not vice versa. The markets are more correlated in periods of high volatility. Volatilities in both markets also increase more with negative innovations than positive innovations. A sectoral analysis of the index suggests that volatilities of cyclical stocks have more impact than noncyclical stocks on carry trades.     

事务所行业专长、客户谈判能力与审计费用

文章以我国上市公司为对例,实证研究了事务所行业专长和客户谈判能力对审计费用的影响,研究结果表明:在总体上,我国审计收费与事务所行业专业化水平显著正相关,与客户谈判能力显著负相关,行业专业化水平愈高的事务所,审计收费溢价愈多;谈判能力愈强的企业,折价愈多;相对而言,有行业专长的事务所和国际"四大"的专业化收费溢价更多;但在客户谈判能力较高时,事务所的专业化溢价水平较低;客户谈判能力的折价效应仅在"非四大"审计时存在,"四大"审计时不存在;在无行业专长的"非四大"审计时存在,有行业专长的"非四大"审计时不存在;在企业的谈判能力强时存在,企业的谈判能力弱时不存在。     

证券市场选择是否影响公司业绩与价值?--来自中国房地产行业的经验证据

企业在不同资本市场之间的选择往往是上市过程中一个重要决策。上市地点是否会影响其后续业绩表现以及价值？文章基于中国内地房地产企业数据的研究发现,在中国香港上市的企业比在中国内地上市的企业经营业绩更优,而两者在股市价值上并无显著差别。另外,在(中国)香港上市的房地产企业中,国有企业股市价值低于非国有企业;而在中国内地上市的房地产企业中,国有企业股市价值高于非国有企业。研究结果说明,证券市场完善的监管有利于降低代理人问题,提高企业经营业绩。     

Government Quality Determinants of Stock Market Performance in African Countries

How do government policies and institutions affect stock market performance? As stock markets grow broader and deeper in African countries, the question becomes more critical. Government quality dynamics of corruption control, government effectiveness, political stability or no violence, voice and accountability, regulation quality and rule of law are instrumented with income levels, religious dominations, press freedom degrees, and legal origins to account for stock market performance dynamics of capitalization, value traded, turnover and number of listed companies. The results demonstrate a significant positive association between stock market performance measures and the quality of government institutions. These findings suggest countries with better developed government institutions would favor stock markets with higher market capitalization, better turnover ratios, higher value in shares traded and greater number of listed companies.     

Co-movement among oil,stock, bond,and housing markets: An analysis of U.S., Asian,and European economies

This study explores the co-movement among oil and the stock, bond, and housing markets of the U.S. and major developed countries across Europe and Asia. The results indicate that oil is long-run integrated with each asset class, and that the extent of convergence has increased after the onset of the 2007–2009 global financial crisis (GFC). Moreover, oil contributes most heavily toward the common trends, implying that oil is the “leader” sector that drives each asset class toward long-run equilibrium relationships. Short-run analyses indicate that oil shocks induce a negative response in stock and housing returns and a positive reaction in bond returns, showing a tendency to become more intense and persistent after the GFC. When oil shocks are disentangled, the results indicate that supply and demand have heterogeneous effects on the three global asset classes. Over the long-run, demand shocks make the most significant contribution to the common trends and “lead” the other asset classes, whereas supply shocks have either a negligible or a weaker impact. Over the short-run, demand shocks positively impact the stock and housing markets and negatively impact bonds, while supply shocks induce negative and weaker impacts on all three asset classes.     

Does Interindustry and Intraindustry Information Help Predict Financial Distress?

This study investigates whether and how the accounting ratios of peer firms within the same industry (the industry peers) or firms within the industry of their customers (the downstream peers) help improve the predictability of sample firm financial distress. We document that the Z‐score factors of the companies with high correlation in stock returns help predict financial distress. The results show that accounting‐based ratios of the industry peers and the downstream peers enhance the accuracy of early warnings of financial distress, especially when prior returns of peer firms are highly correlated with the sample firm.     

Institutional determinants of emerging market returns and flows

Investors commonly rely on macroeconomic variables to drive capital allocation decisions. But other institutional factors may alter investor returns as well, particularly in emerging market countries. Given these concerns, this paper examines the effects of institutional factors—specifically democracy, transparency and corruption—on emerging market equity returns and flows. We find that institutional quality impacts stock market returns and flows in emerging markets where corruption, transparency, and democracy levels are below average. We also find that government-owned or controlled industries are positively impacted by a deterioration in the corruption and democracy indexes, while highly concentrated sectors, like the financial industry, are negatively impacted by improving transparency.     

客户重要性与审计质量：基于投资者保护视角

本文探讨投资者保护条款的完善与执行、客户重要性与审计质量之间的关系,利用我国证券市场2003~2005年的数据研究发现：（1）客户重要性对审计质量并没有产生负面影响,事务所审计质量普遍有所提高;（2）随着法律责任的加重,法律保护条款的完善与盈余管理空间显著负相关,然而法律执行越严的省区,上市公司的盈余管理却越强烈,这表明中国证券市场出现了法律条款的完善与执行逆向起作用的＂背驰效应＂;（3）审计师对盈余管理方向的关注与国外文献的发现不一致,审计师能够关注重要客户操纵盈余减少的行为,但却无法控制重要客户操纵盈余增加的行为;（4）相对于规模较小的事务所而言,投资者保护条款的完善对规模较大的事务所提高审计质量具有更明显的促进作用。     

Supply Chains,Global Financial Shocks and Firm Behaviour towards Liquidity Needs

Driven by the increasingly important role of supply chains in global production, this paper studies empirical association between global credit‐market shocks and firm behaviour towards liquidity needs across countries and industries. Focusing on the adjustment of working‐capital financing, we find two pieces of supporting evidence from international firm‐level panel data covering the period 2002:I–2012:IV. First, for industries where specific investment in the input supplier–customer relationship is large, firms are more exposed to credit‐market shocks. We find that measures of global credit‐market shocks are negatively associated with trade receivables, trade payables and inventories, conditional on the level of contract intensity in the industries where firms operate. Second, firms in emerging markets are more vulnerable to credit‐market shocks than are firms in developed countries. We are also able to verify the economic significance of sales growth, operating cash flows, cash stock and firm size in the overall adjustment. Our findings highlight the importance of balance‐sheet contagion along supply chains during the 2007–09 global financial crisis.     

Political connections,political cycles and stock returns: Evidence from Iran

We examine the effect of political connections and political cycles on stock returns of listed companies in Iran. Using 1146 firm-year observations derived from firms listed on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE) for the period 2005–2017, we find that political connections are positively associated with firms' annual actual returns and annual abnormal returns. Presidential elections strengthen the positive relationship between political connections and cumulative abnormal returns. Transfer of power to the Moderation (Principlist) party in 2013 (2005) strengthened (weakened) the positive relation between political connections and cumulative abnormal returns. Several sensitivity tests show that the results are not materially different from the main findings. Consistent with the political economy perspective, the findings suggest that political connections in a centrally planned economy are valuable for both parties and they become even more valuable in election years. Moreover, consistent with rational partisan theory, results suggest that investors react to political uncertainties stemming from presidential elections and transfer of power, even in emerging market economies like Iran.     

媒体关注、产权性质与上市公司融资约束——基于Heckman两阶段模型的实证检验

基于信息不对称理论和声誉理论,文章以2010-2014年沪深两市5988个观察样本为研究对象,采用Heckman两阶段模型实证检验了媒体关注对上市公司融资约束的影响机理,探讨了不同产权性质情况下媒体关注对融资约束的影响差异。研究结果显示：媒体关注与上市公司融资约束呈负相关关系,媒体关注可以缓解企业的融资约束程度;正面媒体报道可以降低企业的融资约束程度,而负面媒体报道则会加剧企业的融资约束程度;媒体关注对不同产权性质企业融资约束的影响存在差异。具体而言,相对于非国有企业而言,媒体关注对国有企业的融资约束缓解程度更大。     

Trade and exposure of Eastern European multinationals

We find that about 19% of our sample of 149 Eastern European multinationals’ stock returns experienced economically significant exposure effects to the U.S. dollar for the period January 2000 to December 2004. The average exposure of the highly net exporting (importing) industry portfolios is positive (negative). Foreign exposure is found to increase with the evolution of net positions in U.S. foreign trade and with the industries’ degree of openness towards U.S. foreign markets. We also find that foreign exposure decreases with firm size.     

Bending the rules,breaking the rules: How corruption and lobbying affect the investment market selection of Swedish firms

There is stark evidence that many policies which influence firm gains from engaging in FDI (such as tax and trade policies) are targeted by lobbying groups and that corruption can be an important determinant of market attractiveness. The scarce research that exists on firm behaviour, corruption and lobbying shows that these activities can be regarded as alternative, and interdependent, influence forms. This paper provides the novel contribution of investigating how the market infiltration of corruption and lobbying affects the firm's investment decision. We identify the interdependent effects using census data for Swedish manufacturing firms that allows a complete identification of the firm's market selection. Our results reveal that these private–public sector links influence the firm's investment decision differently, as market selection is deterred by corruption and stimulated by lobbying, and that they function as substitutes. We show that the stimulating lobbying effect largely can be attributed to its interdependency with corruption, which suggests that firms are more shielded from corruption in lobbying environments. Further investigation reveals that the corruption and lobbying effects are not always representative of larger firms: The largest firms are undeterred by corruption in markets where lobbying forms an integral part of the business environment and larger firms are not stimulated by lobbying in markets largely void of corruption.     

Do cross-border mergers and acquisitions increase short-term market performance? The case of Chinese firms

Despite the new momentum in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) by emerging market firms, we have a limited understanding of the impact of these activities. Drawing on signalling theory and the institution-based view, this paper examines the extent of stock market reactions to the announcement of cross-border M&A deals, based on an event study of a sample of Chinese firms during the period 2000–2012. The findings indicate that the announcement of cross-border M&As results in a positive stock market reaction; this effect is more significant in the mainland Chinese stock markets (Shanghai and Shenzhen) than that in the Hong Kong market. The shareholders of Chinese firms that acquire a target firm in a host country with a low level of political risk gain higher cumulative abnormal returns than those firms targeting companies in countries with a high level of political risk. The shareholders of Chinese state-owned enterprises experience lower abnormal returns compared with those of Chinese privately owned firms when engaging in cross-border M&A deals.     

Corporate usage of financial derivatives,information asymmetry,and insider trading

This article investigates whether financial derivative usage by Australian corporations constitutes information asymmetry when proxied by profitable trading in the firms' securities by insiders. The findings show that insiders who trade in companies that employ derivatives make larger purchase returns compared to insiders in nonuser firms with regard to trading identity, trading intensity, variability of usage, volume of trading, and industry effects. A plausible explanation is that asymmetry is driven by derivative traders who undertake noisy transactions in firms where risk outcomes were previously transparent. Excess returns are confined to purchase transactions consistent with insiders primarily selling for noninformation reasons. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 30:25–47, 2010     

When less family is more: Trademark acquisition,family ownership,and internationalization

This study examines the relationship between international performance and the orientation of the firm towards trademark acquisition, and discusses family ownership as a moderator of this association. We conceptualize our study along three interrelated lines of ‘openness’ i.e. openness towards external resources, openness of governance, and openness towards international markets. The empirical investigation relies on a panel data analysis over four years, and on a cross-industry sample of European listed companies consisting of 712 observations. Our outcomes reveal that the attitude of the company to enrich the brand portfolio with externally developed trademarks is positively associated with the firms’ international performance. We also find that this relationship is moderated by family ownership. “Less family is more”: we find a positive relationship of openness towards trademark acquisitions with the firms’ international performance, which decreases with the presence of a family in a dominant position.