What explains the value premium? The case of adjustment costs,operating leverage and financial leverage

This paper empirically examines and compares the different theoretical predictions on how adjustment costs, operating and financial leverage influence the value premium. Consistent with Ozdagli (2012), financial leverage plays a dominant role, supported by adjustment costs (which represent the degree of investment irreversibility). Specifically, the observed value premium is driven by the financial leverage differences between value and growth firms, partially neutralized by investment irreversibility. The relation between the value premium and investment irreversibility is contrary to the intuition in Zhang (2005) and Cooper (2006). Operating leverage does not significantly influence the value premium.     

Financing constraints, irreversibility, and investment dynamics

We develop a model of an industry with many heterogeneous firms that face both financing constraints and irreversibility constraints. We use this model to examine the cyclical behavior of aggregate fixed investment, variable capital investment, and output in the presence of persistent idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks. Our model yields three main results. First, the effect of the irreversibility constraint on fixed capital investment is reinforced by the financing constraint. Second, the effect of the financing constraint on variable capital investment is reinforced by the irreversibility constraint. Finally, the interaction between the two constraints is key for explaining why input inventories and material deliveries of US manufacturing firms are so volatile and procyclical, and also why they are highly asymmetrical over the business cycle.     

Tangibility and investment irreversibility in asset pricing

Zhang (2005) and Cooper (2006) provide a theoretical risk‐based explanation for the value premium by suggesting a nexus between firms’ book‐to‐market ratio and investment irreversibility. They argue that unproductive physical capacity is costly in contracting conditions but provides growth opportunities during economic expansions, resulting in covariant risk between firms’ investment in tangible assets and market‐wide returns. This article uses the Australian accounting environment to empirically test this theory – a test that is not possible using US data. Consistent with the theoretical argument, tangibility is priced in equity returns, and augmenting the Fama and French three‐factor model with a tangibility factor increases model explanatory power.     

No-arbitrage Near-Cointegrated VAR(p) term structure models,term premia and GDP growth

The recent macro-finance literature does not agree either about the empirical properties of the expectation part and of the term premium on long-term bonds or about the importance or even the direction of the relationship between the term premium and future economic activity. This paper proposes a two-step approach to handle both problems. First, in a VAR setting, we extract a reliable measure of the term premium by means of averaging estimator techniques aiming at optimally solving prediction problems when highly persistent processes are present and, thus, providing a so called Near-Cointegrated VAR(p) approach. Second, we analyze the dynamic response of GDP to shocks to the term premium by using the New Information Response Function concept. As far as the first problem is concerned, we find that the NCVAR-based term premium measure is rather stable and counter-cyclical, as suggested by interest rates survey-based estimation of yield curve models and by its risk compensation role. Regarding the second problem, we find that an increase in the long-term spread caused by the term premium induces two effects on future economic activity: the impact is negative for short horizons (less than 1 year), whereas it is positive for longer ones.     

The effect of temporal risk aversion on liquidity preference

In most instances, investors are not indifferent to risk. Their attitudes toward it influence their decisions. Temporal risk aversion, the dynamic analogue of the usual concept of risk aversion, has a marked effect on investors' decisions but is usually ignored in the literature. This paper investigates the liquidity preference of temporally risk-averse investors. The analysis shows that, all other things being equal, temporal risk aversion reduces the liquidity premium investors must receive to hold an asset that is not perfectly reversible. Thus, the optimal investment policy is closer to what one would expect had a frictionless exchange market existed for the irreversible asset. As far as an individual's investment behavior is concerned, temporal risk aversion counters the effects of an asset's irreversibility and tends to compensate for the absence of frictionless exchange.     

The Elastic Provision of Liquidity by Private Agents

I study a model of investment by financially constrained firms that are heterogeneous with respect to their exposure to an aggregate liquidity shock. A firm that is susceptible to the shock will mitigate its exposure by purchasing claims issued by a firm that is not. Liabilities of an unaffected firm may earn a liquidity premium due to their fungibility, and because they are backed by productive investment, their supply is elastic to the demand. This segmentation implies that an aggregate liquidity shock has different consequences across sectors of the economy.     

Uncovering the US term premium: An alternative route

The estimates of the US term premium crucially depend upon the ex-ante decision on whether the short-term rate is either an I(0) or an I(1) process. In this paper we estimate a fractionally integrated (I(d)) model which simultaneously determines both the order of integration of the short-term rate and the associated term premium. We show that the term premium experienced a sharp increase from essentially zero in mid-2007 to almost 3% in 2009. We also show that unemployment and term premium dynamics exhibit a very significant positive co-movement.     

Intangible capital,volatility shock,and the value premium

This paper extends the canonical, neoclassical investment‐based asset‐pricing model through the incorporation of intangible capital and the formulation of a joint productivity distribution with economic uncertainty shocks at the firm level. The distinctive evolutionary dynamics of intangible capital as opposed to that of physical capital mitigate the negative impact of temporary uncertainty shock on production and serve well to explain the value premium with modest assumptions. The value premium is unconditionally positive, but the realized value spread plummets to negative after major transient second‐moment shocks, for example, the Loma Prieta Earthquake and the 9/11 terrorist attack.     

Conditional Equity Premium and Aggregate Corporate Investment

We document a strong negative relation between aggregate corporate investment and conditional equity premium estimated from direct stock market risk measures. Consistent with the investment-based asset pricing model, the comovement with conditional equity premium fully accounts for aggregate investment's market return predictive power. Similarly, conditional equity premium is a significant determinant of classic Tobin's q measure, although q has much weaker explanatory power for aggregate investment possibly because of its measurement errors. Moreover, the positive relation between aggregate investment and investor sentiment documented in previous studies reflects the fact that both variables correlate closely with conditional equity premium.     

Entrepreneurial risk aversion,net worth effects and real fluctuations

This paper examines the combined effect of asymmetric information and private entrepreneurial risk aversion on investment decisions. The standard optimal debt contract becomes modified by the introduction of insurance and a risk premium that entrepreneurs demand due to the uncertainty of their investment returns: the private equity premium. In general equilibrium, the private equity premium may become a mechanism that magnifies the effects of shocks. A structural estimation of the model's parameters using Chilean and U.S. data shows that the entrepreneurial risk aversion assumption has more empirical relevance in an economy where smaller privately-held businesses are relatively more prevalent than where the corporate sector predominates, like the U.S.     

Crude substitution: The cyclical dynamics of oil prices and the skill premium

At the business cycle frequency, energy prices and the skill premium display a strong, negative correlation. This fact is robust to different de-trending procedures. Identifying exogenous shocks to oil prices using the Hoover-Perez [1994. Post hoc ergo propter once more: an evaluation of ‘Does monetary policy matter?’ in the spirit of James Tobin. Journal of Monetary Econonmics 34, 47-73] dates, shows that the skill premium falls in response to such a shock. The estimation of the parameters of an aggregate technology that uses, among other inputs, energy and heterogeneous skills, demonstrates that capital-skill and capital-energy complementarity are responsible for this correlation. As energy prices rise, the use of capital decreases and the demand for unskilled labor—relative to skilled labor—increases, lowering the skill premium.     

The response of the external finance premium in Asian corporate bond markets to financial characteristics,financial constraints and two financial crises

Empirical investigation of the external finance premium has been conducted on the margin between internal finance and bank borrowing or equities but little attention has been given to corporate bonds, especially for the emerging Asian market. In this paper, we hypothesize that balance sheet indicators of creditworthiness could affect the external finance premium for bonds as they do for premia in other markets. Using bond-specific and firm-specific data for China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand during 1995–2009 we find that firms with better financial health face lower external finance premia in all countries. When we introduce firm-level heterogeneity, we show that financial variables appear to be both statistically and quantitatively more important for financially constrained firms. Finally, when we examine the effects of the 1997–1998 Asian crisis and the 2007–2009 global financial crisis, we find that the sensitivity of the premium is greater for constrained firms during the Asian crisis compared to other times.     

Price and Investment Dynamics: Theory and Plant-Level Data

We construct a model of a firm competing for market share in a customer market and making investments in physical capital. The firm is financially constrained and there are implementation lags in investment. Our model predicts that product prices should depend on costs and competitors' prices but respond weakly to demand shocks. Also, prices should be strongly related to investment. We estimate price and investment equations on panel data for Swedish manufacturing plants and find results that are qualitatively in line with these predictions, though the relation between investment and prices is stronger than predicted by our model.     

Investment and Abandonment Decisions with Uncertain Price and Cost

We analyze firms' investment and abandonment decisions when both output price and investment cost change stochastically. The model allows for and makes endogenous the abandonment decision, thereby incorporating irreversibility. We show that the investment trigger may be much higher than the standard net present value rule suggests even when a substantial portion of the investment cost may be recovered. Further, we argue that the correlation between output price and investment costs significantly affects the effect of irreversibility on investment behavior. Empirical implications are discussed with extensive numerical illustrations, along with an application to the banking industry.     

Investment Adjustment Costs: An Empirical Assessment

We evaluate the empirical evidence for costs that penalize changes in investment using U.S. industry data. In aggregate models, such investment adjustment costs have been introduced to help account for a variety of business cycle and asset market phenomena. So far no attempt has been made to estimate these costs directly at a disaggregated level. We consider an industry model with investment adjustment costs and estimate its parameters using generalized methods of moments. The findings indicate small costs associated with changing the flow of investment at the industry level. The weighted average of the industry elasticities with respect to the shadow price of capital, which depends inversely on the adjustment cost parameter, is eight times larger than the largest estimate reported in Levin et al. (2006) . We examine a variety of factors that may account for this discrepancy, but a substantial part of it remains unexplained. Our results therefore suggest that more caution is needed when giving policy advice that hinges on a structural interpretation of large investment adjustment costs.     

Consumption, the persistence of shocks, and asset price volatility

In a general equilibrium setting, a temporary component in consumption introduces a wedge between the volatility of equity returns and the volatility of consumption growth. This paper explores the asset pricing consequences of this property in a model in which consumption is the sum of a permanent and a transitory component. Permanent shocks are assumed to be rare events, while transitory shocks follow a diffusion process. When calibrated to US annual data, the model matches first and second moments of equity and bond returns for preference parameters within acceptable bounds. Permanent and transitory shocks together explain the equity premium, while transitory shocks alone explain the excess volatility of returns.     

Confidence building on Euro convergence: Evidence from currency options

We study the evolution of investor confidence in 1992-1998 over the chance of individual currencies to converge to the Euro, using data on currency option prices. Convergence risk, which may reflect uncertainty over policy commitment as well as exogenous fundamentals, induces a level of implied volatility in excess of actual volatility. This volatility wedge should gradually decrease as confidence grows over time as convergence policy is maintained, and the risk of a reversal is progressively resolved. Empirically, we indeed find a positive volatility wedge which declines over time only for currencies involved in the Euro convergence process. The wedge and other convergence risk measures are correlated with both exogenous fundamentals and proxies for policy commitment uncertainty. We also find that the wedge responds to policy shocks in an asymmetric fashion, suggesting that policy risk is resolved at different rates after negative and positive shocks. Finally, we estimate a regime-switching model of convergence uncertainty, using data on interest rates, currency rates, and currency option prices. The results confirm the time-varying and asymmetric nature of convergence risk, and indicate that investors demand a risk premium for convergence risk.     

Risk aversion and the yield of corporate debt

This paper develops a model to estimate the implied default probability of corporate bonds. The model explicitly considers the risk averse behavior of investors to provide a more precise framework for estimating the implied default probability. A Kalman filter method is used to estimate time-varying risk premium associated with the investor's risk aversion. The results of nonlinear regressions indicate that previous risk-neutrality models consistently overestimate the implied default rates of corporate bonds. The results also suggest that investors may have been adequately compensated for investment in risky bonds.     

Unbiased estimation of expected return using CAPM

Estimation of expected return is required for many financial decisions. For example, an estimate for cost of capital is required for capital budgeting and cost of equity estimates are needed for performance evaluation based on measures such as EVA. Estimates for expected return are often based on the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), which states that expected excess return (expected return minus the risk-free rate) is equal to the asset's sensitivity to the world market portfolio (β) times the risk premium on the “world market portfolio” (the market risk premium). Since the world market portfolio, by definition, contains all assets in the world, it is not observable. As a result, an estimate for expected return is commonly obtained by taking an estimate for β based on some index (as a proxy for the world market portfolio) and an estimate for the market risk premium based on a potentially different index and multiplying them together. In this paper, it is shown that this results in a biased estimate for expected return. This is undesirable since biased estimates lead to misallocation of funds and biased performance measures. It is also shown in this paper that the straightforward procedure suggested by Fama and MacBeth [J. Financ. Econ. 1 (1974) 43] results in an unbiased estimate for expected return. Further from the analysis done, it follows that, for an unbiased estimate, it does not matter what proxy is used, as long as it is used correctly an unbiased estimate for expected return results.     

Estimating Portfolio and Consumption Choice: A Conditional Euler Equations Approach

This paper develops a nonparametric approach to examine how portfolio and consumption choice depends on variables that forecast time-varying investment opportunities. I estimate single-period and multiperiod portfolio and consumption rules of an investor with constant relative risk aversion and a one-month to 20-year horizon. The investor allocates wealth to the NYSE index and a 30-day Treasury bill. I find that the portfolio choice varies significantly with the dividend yield, default premium, term premium, and lagged excess return. Furthermore, the optimal decisions depend on the investor's horizon and rebalancing frequency.