Is hedging successful at reducing financial risk exposure?

This article analyses whether firms use risk management instruments for hedging or speculative purposes. First, by analysing the relationship between the firm’s stock returns and financial risks in 567 Euronext firms, we measure the firm’s exposure to risk. Next, we investigate the effect of hedging in such exposures, addressing simultaneously the endogeneity of hedging decision through a treatment effect methodology. We have found that firms in our sample display higher percentages of exposure, when weighed against preceding studies, and confirmed that hedging reduces the level of the underlying financial exposure, concluding that firms use risk management instruments with hedging purposes.     

金融衍生品使用与企业价值、风险:来自中国有色金属类上市公司的经验证据

本文基于企业使用金融衍生品的发展趋势,以中国有色金属类上市公司为样本,对上市公司使用金融衍生品是否有利于提升公司价值;使用金融衍生品究竟增加了企业的风险还是降低了企业的风险?企业价值和企业风险关系如何?对这些问题进行了实证检验。结果发现,公司使用金融衍生品提升了公司价值,但未必能提升经营业绩;合理运用金融衍生品在某种程度上能够降低公司的内生性风险,有利于企业价值提升,而系统性风险与企业价值之间不具有因果关系。本文研究结论对中国上市公司合理使用金融衍生品进行风险管理提供了有益的借鉴。     

货币薪酬能激励高管承担风险吗

有关“风险承担”（risk taking）的研究是近年来特别是全球金融危机背景下财务学研究的热点问题之一。本文研究结果表明：（1）货币薪酬激励的增加能提升高管承担风险的水平;（2）最终控制人性质和公司成长性会影响两者之间的关系,在国有企业以及公司成长性较低的公司,货币薪酬激励与风险承担之间的正相关关系较弱;（3）风险承担水平的提高能促进公司绩效的提升;（4）进一步研究发现,风险承担在高管薪酬激励与企业绩效之间发挥中介效用作用。这些结论在采用两阶段最小二乘法（2SLS）和三阶段最小二乘法（3SLS）处理内生性问题等稳健性测试后依然成立。因此,本文从“风险承担”这一新的视角深化了有关高管薪酬激励降低代理问题并提升公司绩效的研究,也为中国上市公司尤其是国有上市公司高管薪酬契约设计的有效性提供了借鉴和参考价值。     

全面风险管理:必然的选择

始于运用VaR方法度量金融市场风险的金融风险管理革命,目前已扩展至对企业的全面风险管理。一个理想的全面风险管理体系应站在企业全局的角度去识别、度量和管理风险。全面风险管理体系的优势在于:它有助于通过对冲风险以达到降低收益波动性的目的,从而增加企业价值;它有助于降低对冲的成本,因为它实际上是对净风险的对冲,而不是在单独的风险管理方法下的逐个对冲,这就使得风险的对冲成本下降了。     

Managerial risk reduction, incentives and firm value

Summary. Empirical evidence suggests that managers privately alter the risk in their compensation by trading in the financial markets. This paper analyzes the implications of the managers hedging ability on her optimal compensation scheme, incentives and firm value. I allow the manager to reduce her systematic risk exposure by trading the market portfolio. I find that the managers optimal hedge depends on the liquidity of the market. Due to imperfect liquidity, the managers optimal hedge is not complete. The equilibrium pay-performance sensitivity and hence the managers equilibrium incentives and the firm value increases in the liquidity of the market.Received: 24 November 2003, Revised: 22 September 2004, JEL Classification Numbers: G30, G32.I am grateful to a referee whose comments improved the paper. I would also like to thank Gerald Garvey and Li Jin for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.     

Intraday hedging with financial options: the case of electricity

As market intermediaries, electricity suppliers purchase electricity from the wholesale market or self-generate to deliver their customers. However, electricity suppliers are uncertain about how much electricity their residential customers will use at any hour of the day until they actually turn switches on. While demand uncertainty is a common feature of all commodity markets, suppliers generally rely on storage to manage it. Singularly, electricity suppliers are exposed to joint volumetric and price risk on an hourly basis given the physical attributes of electricity. In the literature on electricity markets, few articles compare the efficiency of forward contracts, options and physical assets (i.e. power plants) within intraday hourly hedging portfolios, whereas electricity markets are precisely hourly markets. We analyse portfolios made of forwards, options and/or power plants for specific hourly clusters (9 am, 12 pm, 18 pm, 9 pm) based on electricity market data from 2013 to 2015 from the integrated German–Austrian spot market. Through a VaR model, we prove that intraday hedging with forwards is structurally inefficient compared to financial options and physical assets, no matter the cluster hour. Moreover, our results demonstrate the contribution of ‘out of the money’ options for all hours within volatile spot markets.     

Insider trading with product differentiation

This paper investigates the effect of product differentiation on the real and financial decisions of a publicly-owned firm, competing $\grave{a}$ la Cournot with another privately-owned firm. The results show that the degree of product differentiation affects the stock price coefficients (i.e. the market maker’s response to the real signal and to the total order flow signal) and the output of the publicly-owned firm. It also appears to have a detrimental effect on the manager’s profits and compensation scheme. The paper then proposes an extension of the benchmark model to incorporate Cournot and Stackelberg competition between two insiders in the financial market. The type of the financial competition adopted has also an effect on the results of the benchmark model that sometimes depend on the degree of product differentiation.     

Operational and financial hedging for exporting firms

This paper examines the interaction between operational and financial hedging in the context of an internationally competitive but domestically monopolistic firm under exchange rate uncertainty. Operational hedging is modeled by letting the firm make its export decision after it has observed the true realization of the then prevailing spot exchange rate. Financial hedging, on the other hand, is modeled by allowing the firm to trade fairly priced exotic derivatives that are tailor-made for the firm's hedging need. We show that both operational and financial hedging unambiguously entice the firm into producing more. We further derive sufficient conditions under which operational hedging dominates (is dominated by) financial hedging in terms of promoting the firm's optimal output.     

Operating efficiency and output insensitive employment contracts for capital management

Summary This paper considers a problem in which an agent is hired to manage a capital investment and subsequently receives private information regarding the productivity of the capital investment. The capital manager must decide whether to invest capital supplied by the firm (the principal), or to divert these investment funds to perquisite consumption. If the manager decides to invest, the manager must then select the level of operating efficiency (productivity) of the capital investment, this latter choice being unobservable and constrained by the (maximal) productivity of the investment. In this setting we demonstrate that the optimal employment contract, from the perspective of the firm hiring the manager, is the contract whichminimizes the dependence of the manager's compensation on firm output. This contract pays the manager a fixed wage whenever output from the investment exceeds the wage and provides the manager with all of the projects rents whenever output falls below this level. Thus, we provide a setting in which fixed wage contracts are the optimal incentive contract even when agents are risk neutral and contracts can be costlessly written on future output.We would like to thank the participants in the Princeton Economics and Finance Workshop and the Ohio State University Finance Workshop for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper. The second author gratefully acknowledges the research support of the Georgia State College of Business Administration Research Council.     

EXPORT AND HEDGING DECISIONS UNDER CORRELATED REVENUE AND EXCHANGE RATE RISK

This paper examines the behaviour of a competitive exporting firm under joint revenue and exchange rate risk. The firm can trade unbiased currency futures contracts for hedging purposes. We show that neither the separation theorem nor the full‐hedging theorem holds when the revenue shock prevails. If the correlation between the revenue shock and the random spot exchange rate is non‐positive, the firm optimally produces less than the benchmark level when the revenue shock is absent. If, in addition, the firm is prudent, the optimal futures position is an under‐hedge. Finally, we derive sufficient conditions under which the firm's optimal output level is higher in the presence than in the absence of the revenue shock. Operational hedging and financial hedging as such interact in a complicated way to better cope with the multiple sources of uncertainty faced by the firm.     

Financial innovations and managerial incentive contracting

Abstract.  The top executives' demands for financial instruments that enable them to hedge the risk exposure in their compensation has increased drastically in the last decade. We analyse the implications of a manager's hedging ability for effort incentives. We show that if the manager's hedging opportunity is limited to a known fixed number of trading rounds with risk‐neutral third parties, then the equilibrium effort is not affected at all. If the manager has the opportunity to hedge without committing to a last trading round, however, she hedges completely and no effort incentives can be sustained. Therefore, limiting the manager's opportunity to hedge to a fixed known number of trading rounds is crucial for sustaining incentives. JEL classification: G30, G32     

Corporate tax evasion with agency costs

This paper examines corporate tax evasion in the context of the contractual relationship between the shareholders of a firm and a tax manager who possesses private information regarding the extent of legally permissible reductions in taxable income, and who may also undertake illegal tax evasion. Using a costly state falsification framework, we characterize formally the optimal incentive compensation contract for the tax manager and, in particular, how the form of that contract changes in response to alternative enforcement policies imposed by the taxing authority. The optimal contract may adjust to offset, at least partially, the effect of sanctions against illegal evasion, and we find a new and policy-relevant non-equivalence result: penalties imposed on the tax manager are more effective in reducing evasion than are those imposed on shareholders.     

Regulating a risk-averse firm under incomplete information

We examine the optimal regulatory policy for a risk-averse firm when the firm is imperfectly informed about its efficiency parameter for a project at the time of contracting. The firm’s risk aversion shifts the optimal regulatory policy from a fixed-price contract to a cost-plus contract. The optimal regulatory policy entails undereffort by an inefficient firm as in Laffont and Tirole (J Polit Econ 94(3):614–641, 1986) and the effort distortion increases as the firm becomes more risk-averse. Further, the regulator benefits from sequential contracting with the firm where the firm chooses contract terms gradually as it acquires information, albeit the benefit diminishes as the firm becomes more risk-averse.      

On the Separability of Real and Financial Decisions

The financial manager faces two basic problems: first, the firm’s investment or capital budgeting decision, and second, the financing decision. Capital investment and financing decisions are typically analyzed independently. Capital budgeting criteria proceeds under the simplest possible assumption about financing, namely all-equity financing. The only link between investment and financing decisions is the cost of capital. The basic idea behind Modigliani and Miller’s famous proposition I is that in perfect markets, changes in capital structure do not affect value. As long as the total cash flow generated by the firm’s assets is unchanged by capital structure, value is independent of capital structure. This paper is the first attempt to prove that leverage affects the mathematical structures of the cash flow of financing, and that different mathematical structures of financing cash flows may change the total cash flows generated by the firm or the project, thus altering the value of the firm even in perfect markets. The purpose of this paper is to explore the validity of the separation rule through net present value (NPV) and internal rate of return (IRR) rules, as representatives of academic and business practice, and compare their results with simulations that will include the financial decision of the firm. A singular experiment proving that we can change the IRR or NPV of an investment modifying the financial structure cannot be used to affirm a universal statement, but it can be used to show that a theory is wrong.     

Mixed forests and finance — Methodological approaches

Mixed forest ecosystems show effects of risk compensation similar to diversified portfolios of stocks. Other than portfolios of stocks, the composition of long-lived forests cannot be adjusted at short notice to current market developments. Thus, the financial robustness of tree-species portfolios is very important. However, it is still an open question, which financial approaches are appropriate to evaluate the financial robustness of mixed forests compared to single-species forests.This paper analysed various possibilities to assess portfolios of tree species, namely, the mean-variance (MV) approach applied for the selection of optimal portfolios, the second order stochastic dominance (SSD) criterion and the information-gap approach. For the numerical analysis existing financial data on Norway spruce (Picea abies [L.] Karst.) and European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) were used which were generated by Monte-Carlo simulations (MCS) under risk.Regardless of the analysed approach, in all cases pure forests did not outperform mixed forests. The MV approach was restricted by the assumption of normally distributed financial returns. It had the tendency to favour larger proportions of the high-risk species Norway spruce. SSD was only able to distinguish between the efficient and the inefficient portfolios. It showed that forests with less than 20% (financial returns generated by MCS) or less than 30% (normally distributed financial returns) of Norway spruce were inefficient. Under information-gap modelling the advantages of risk compensation in mixed forests became clearest. Under the given assumptions, the financial robustness of a mixed forest (50% European beech and 50% Norway spruce) was between 4 and 18 times greater than that of pure Norway spruce.Modern information-gap modelling is very similar to the well known safety first rules and as such it is not that novel to financial optimisation as it seems at the first glance. Although the information-gap theory resulted in the same rankings as the minimisation of the estimated probability of failure, it nevertheless proved to be useful as a supplement to the other methods. Against the background of severe uncertainty inherent in long-term decision-making in forestry, information-gap modelling is based on appropriate assumptions. It favours a decision, which promises the greatest tolerance to possible errors in the available information, while still guaranteeing a minimal acceptable financial result. In principle, classical safety first rules do the same. However, the information-gap model is able to quantify the immunity of a decision against errors in the estimated financial data. From a theoretical point of view, this approach provides a supplementary and methodologically sound opportunity to incorporate severe uncertainty in decision-making.     

Technology adoption under hidden information

We consider a firm where workers have pre-contractual private information regarding their cost of production. Before contracting takes place, the owner of the firm can adopt a new technology that reduces production costs for each type of worker. We show that technology adoption may have an adverse rent effect that counteracts the cost-reducing effect. This is the case whenever the new technology reduces the costs of more efficient types more strongly. Nevertheless, if the owner contracts directly with a worker (two-tier hierarchy), the cost-reducing effect always dominates. By contrast, if the firm has more hierarchical tiers such that contracting with the worker is delegated to a manager, the rent effect may prevail. Then, the owner does not adopt the new technology, even if it is costlessly available.     

多元化战略对管理层激励的影响--来自中国资本市场的经验证据

本文利用2001-2004年中国上市公司的数据,使用面板数据模型,对中国上市公司多元化与管理层激励之间的关系进行了检验.结果表明:现金薪酬水平与公司价值负相关,高管人员持股比例与公司价值之间是非线性关系,激励并没有发挥其应有的作用;多元化对公司价值的影响并不显著.当控制了影响多元化的公司内部因素后,我们发现国有股占主导地位的公司,多元化程度与现金薪酬之间是负向关系;多元化程度与管理层持股比例之间是正向关系.多元化程度与在职消费正相关.多元化决策是管理当局希望从多元化中获取更多的剩余收益和隐性的私人利益.     

委托代理制下基金经理人的信息优势与绩效——基于中国台湾地区的实证研究

在共同基金产业快速成长条件下,基金经理人能否取得良好绩效成为一个重要的研究课题。本文以公开信息依赖程度来探讨委托代理制下基金经理人是否具有私有信息优势,并因而获利。研究结果是：第一,公开信息依赖度可以正向解释定价误差,显示公开信息依赖度可作为情绪指标;第二,高公开信息依赖度会伴随高报酬,亦即低公开信息依赖度（高情绪）会预测长期的负报酬率;第三,公开信息依赖度低是由于基金经理人利用投资人情绪而短期获利所致;第四,不同公开信息依赖度情况下,投资人对于高风险的股票会给予不同的评价;第五,利用公开信息依赖度敏感度来建立投资组合,可以有效增加投资人的投资绩效。     

Are Dow Jones Islamic equity indices exposed to interest rate risk?

The Dow Jones Islamic Market indices (DJIMI) are constructed by screening out stocks that are incompatible with Islam's prohibition of interest and certain lines of business. However, as a blunt instrument, the interest rate can affect discounted cash flows of any firm, even a firm with no financial leverage. This study reveals that the aggregate portfolio of Islamic stocks is immune to interest rate risk. However, at the sectoral level some Islamic equity portfolios demonstrate exposure to interest rate risk. Overall, evidence of interest rate risk exposure is less pronounced among Islamic sector portfolios than that of their mainstream counterparts—the Dow Jones World sector indices. The results also hold when interest rate risk is assessed in terms of the sensitivity of the DJIMI return to changes in level, slope and curvature of the interest rate term structure.     

Corporate governance structure and product market competition

This article assesses the effects of the competitive structure of a product market on a firm’s corporate governance structure. Our model demonstrates that shareholders strategically determine the corporate governance structure, including the manager’s stock ownership and his controlling power over the firm, in order to maximize their utility in the product market competition. We find that the manager’s stock ownership is lower and his controlling power over the firm is higher when the firm’s product is more profitable or when competition within the product market is more severe. The inefficiency of the wealth transfer from shareholders to the manager also affects the corporate governance structure.