Do heterogeneous oil price shocks really have different effects on earnings management?

Under the modern corporate governance structure, there is a knowledge gap in how companies' financial reporting practices respond to oil price shocks in China. To fill this gap, we employ China's A-share listed companies and follow Kilian (2009) study to investigate how the three types of classical oil shocks affect corporate earnings management heterogeneously. We also consider the role of oil implied volatility in this relationship and further examine the possible heterogeneity between energy-related and non-energy-related subsamples. The empirical results show that there are variant effects among the heterogeneous oil price shocks on earnings management. Specifically, oil supply shocks stimulate firms to manipulate more accrual and real earnings, and firms are more likely to carry out accrual earnings management downward. Oil aggregate demand shocks weaken the degree of accrual earnings manipulation and mainly reduce the negative accrual earnings manipulation. Oil-specific demand shocks constrain the earnings management behavior of companies and improve their accounting quality. Besides, the increased uncertainty of oil price weakens the promotion effect of oil supply shocks on earnings manipulation, and the moderating effect occurs mainly in downward earnings management. Furthermore, the subsample estimated results reveal that oil price shocks do not affect the degree of accrual earnings management of energy-related companies. Instead, they impact the non-energy-related companies. Overall, our findings provide a series of targeted policy recommendations to mitigate the principal-agent problems and cope with energy price volatility risks.     

Asymmetric impacts of disaggregated oil price shocks on uncertainties and investor sentiment

This paper aims to examine short- and long-run asymmetries in the impacts of disaggregated oil price shocks on economic policy uncertainty, stock market uncertainty, treasury rates, and investor (bullish and bearish) sentiment in the US. To this end, we use a nonlinear auto-regressive distributed lag cointegration approach, which allows us to capture both positive and negative disaggregated oil shocks. We find that oil demand shocks are the main drivers of both measures of uncertainty, while oil supply shocks affect treasury rates. However, both oil demand shocks and oil supply shocks affect investor sentiment, with certain differences in the effects of positive and negative shocks. The overall effects of both oil demand and supply shocks—whether positive or negative—are stronger in the long-run than in the short-run. Additionally, we apply rolling causality and reveal evidence of a rather homogenous causal flow from disaggregated oil shocks to the variables studied, particularly around global stress periods. Our findings have implications for asset pricing and portfolio risk management and suggest policy formulations that differentiate between disaggregated positive and negative oil price shocks.

     

Oil price shocks,policy uncertainty,and stock returns of oil and gas corporations

This paper investigates the effects of oil price shocks and economic policy uncertainty on the stock returns of oil and gas companies. We find that an oil demand-side shock has a positive effect on the return of oil and gas companies on average, whereas shocks to policy uncertainty have a negative effect on the return. Historical decomposition shows that the effects of oil shocks on the stock return are amplified by the endogenous policy uncertainty responses. These results are consistent with those for major integrated oil and gas companies. The return responses, however, show heterogeneous effects of structural shocks on upstream, midstream, and downstream oil and gas companies, suggesting that a well-diversified portfolio is obtainable.     

Oil price shocks and the US stock market: A nonlinear approach

We study the response of US stock market returns to oil price shocks and to what extent it behaves asymmetrically over the different phases of the business cycle. For this purpose, we decompose the oil price changes into supply and demand shocks in the oil market and assess the state-dependent dynamics of structural shocks on US stock returns using a smooth transition vector autoregression model. When nonlinearity is considered, quantitatively very different asymmetric dynamics are observed. Our findings show that the responses of US stock returns to disaggregated shocks are asymmetric over the business cycle and that the impact of demand-driven shocks on US stock returns is stronger and more persistent, especially when economic activity is depressed. Furthermore, the contribution of shocks to expectation-driven precautionary demand in recessions accounts for a larger share of the variability of US stock market returns than that predicted by standard linear vector autoregressions.     

Oil prices and economic policy uncertainty: Evidence from global,oil importers,and exporters’ perspective

Containing various information, economic policy uncertainty reflects significant rises and declines when facing shocks like financial crisis, oil-price change, and other specific economic or policy events. This paper empirically studies the interaction between oil prices and the newly formulated economic policy uncertainty indices using a time-varying parameter vector autoregression framework. Generally, the results of this study suggest that economic policy uncertainty reveals fluctuating responses to oil price shocks, while the oil price has a negative response to the uncertainty. The findings also reveal that the economic policy uncertainty indices for oil-importers and oil-exporters respond to oil price shocks differently. The oil price shock has a larger fluctuation to the economic policy uncertainty of oil-exporters than that of importers. Moreover, for the oil-exporters, the negative response to the oil price shock is greater than that of the oil-importing countries. This paper also discusses the impact of asymmetric shocks of oil price on economic policy uncertainty. In particular, after two financial crises, positive shocks decrease the uncertainty and vice versa. These findings are robustly verified.     

Nonlinear effects of climate policy uncertainty and financial speculation on the global prices of oil and gas

With the acceleration of global energy transition and financialization, intense climate policy uncertainty and financial speculation have significant impacts on the global energy market. This paper uses TVP-VAR-SV models to analyze the nonlinear effects of climate policy uncertainty (CPU), financial speculation, economic activity, and US dollar exchange rate on global prices of crude oil and natural gas respectively, and then compare the time-varying response of oil prices and gas prices to six representative CPU peaks. The results show that responses of energy prices to various shocks have significant nonlinear effects: the time-varying effect of CPU on energy prices from positive to negative over time is significant, and financial speculation has the opposite effects on oil and gas prices. The effect from economic activity is mainly positive, while the effects of US dollar exchange are negative and stable. These results provide important implications for policymakers and investors dealing with high levels of climate policy uncertainty, financial speculation, and global economic activity.     

Banks’ external financing costs and the bank lending channel: Results from a SVAR analysis

We analyze the dynamic response of banks’ financing costs to structural, macroeconomic shocks, which we identify by imposing combinations of zero and sign restrictions on impulse responses. For the estimation we combine US bank balance sheet data from the Call reports with macroeconomic aggregates over the period from 1984Q1 to 2007Q3. We find that banks’ financing costs mainly respond to monetary policy and aggregate demand shocks. Furthermore, funding costs of undercapitalized and illiquid banks increase more strongly after a contractionary monetary policy shock as compared to better capitalized and more liquid banks. These results provide support for the view that banks’ financing costs represent an important element of the bank lending channel.     

Asymmetric Impact of Oil Price Shock on Stock Market in China: A Combination Analysis Based on SVAR Model and NARDL Model

This article integrates the SVAR model and nonlinear ARDL (NARDL) model to analyze the long-run and short-run asymmetric effect of structural oil price shocks on the Chinese stock market. We reveal that the demand-side shocks of oil price have a significant impact on the Chinese stock market in both short and long run, but the supply shock is an exception. In terms of asymmetric nature, there is no evidence of asymmetric impact when it refers to the supply shock and the oil-specific demand shock on stock market, and only the aggregate demand shock has asymmetric effect in short run.     

International spillovers from Euro area and US credit and demand shocks: A focus on emerging Europe

In this paper, we examine the international effects of contractions in loan supply, loan demand and aggregate demand in the euro area and the USA. All three shocks have been at the forefront in spreading stress during the period of the global financial crisis and in particular so to countries that are strongly integrated with the euro area. We find that these shocks decrease international output and total credit to a varying degree. Loan demand and aggregate demand shocks in the euro area trigger significant negative spillovers on output in most other regions. Evidence for global negative output effects of euro area loan supply shocks is fraught with considerable estimation uncertainty. When these three types of shocks emanate from the USA, we find significant negative spillovers on output also for loan supply shocks. In general, international effects on total credit are an order of magnitude larger than those on output, with again more evidence that is significant for US than euro area shocks. Last, and taking a regional stance, our results indicate that economies from emerging Europe are most vulnerable to all shocks considered. Through their strong economic integration with the euro area, these economies are likewise exposed to euro area and US shocks, and spillover effects are often larger than the domestic response in the country of shock-origin.     

COVID-19 pandemic,oil prices,stock market,geopolitical risk and policy uncertainty nexus in the US economy: Fresh evidence from the wavelet-based approach

In this paper, we analyze the connectedness between the recent spread of COVID-19, oil price volatility shock, the stock market, geopolitical risk and economic policy uncertainty in the US within a time-frequency framework. The coherence wavelet method and the wavelet-based Granger causality tests applied to US recent daily data unveil the unprecedented impact of COVID-19 and oil price shocks on the geopolitical risk levels, economic policy uncertainty and stock market volatility over the low frequency bands. The effect of the COVID-19 on the geopolitical risk substantially higher than on the US economic uncertainty. The COVID-19 risk is perceived differently over the short and the long-run and may be firstly viewed as an economic crisis. Our study offers several urgent prominent implications and endorsements for policymakers and asset managers.     

The effects of oil price shocks on U.S. stock order flow imbalances and stock returns

This paper investigates for the first time the effects of oil demand shocks and oil supply shocks on stock order flow imbalances leading to changes in stock returns. Through the estimation of a structural VAR model, positive oil demand shocks are able to explain almost 36% of the observed variation in the daily average stock order flow imbalances measured by the buy/sell trades ratio; which consequently lead to a negative rather than positive stock returns reaction. In contrast, oil supply shocks exhibit a negative and marginally significant effect on stock order flow imbalances. Our aggregate analysis suggests that positive shocks on stock order flow imbalances are negatively related to stock returns. These effects are stronger for oil-related sectors when compared with the rest of the equities sectors.     

Oil price shocks and their transmission mechanism in an oil-exporting economy: A VAR analysis informed by a DSGE model

This paper examines the macroeconomic effects of oil price shocks and the oil shock transmission mechanism in an oil-exporting country, Canada. We use a structural VAR with sign restrictions that comes from a two-country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to jointly identify oil price, domestic supply and U.S. and domestic monetary policy shocks. This identification strategy not only controls for reverse causality from the Canadian and U.S. macroeconomic conditions to the real oil prices, but more importantly, it also allows for contemporaneous interactions between the Canadian and U.S. variables. We find that oil shocks have a stimulative effect on Canadian aggregate demand, appreciate the Canadian dollar, improve the terms of trade and reduce real wages. Foreign disturbances, including innovations in oil prices and the U.S. interest rate, have a significant influence on Canadian economic activities. Our counterfactual analysis indicates that the reaction of the U.S. interest rate as an indirect transmission channel for oil price shocks plays a moderate role in explaining the real exchange rate and inflation, but has negligible impacts on the Canadian output and interest rate.     

The Effects of Oil Supply and Demand Shocks on U.S. Consumer Sentiment

This paper investigates how the University of Michigan's Index of Consumer Sentiment responds to oil price shocks. While oil supply shocks play only a limited role, the effect of aggregate demand shocks is positive for the first few months and negative thereafter. A typical other oil demand shock has a significant negative impact for up to 2 years. By studying the responses of individual survey questions, we find that expectations of future inflation and a change in real household income as well as perceived vehicle and house buying conditions are the main transmission channels of oil supply and demand shocks.     

The non-linear response of US state-level tradable and non-tradable inflation to oil shocks: The role of oil-dependence

This paper investigates the effects of oil supply, oil-specific consumption demand, oil inventory demand shocks, and global economic activity shocks on state-level tradable and non-tradable inflation in the US. We use oil shock data following the work of Baumeister and Hamilton (2019) and estimate both linear and non-linear impulse responses using a lag-augmented local projections model in a panel context. Our results from a linear model show that both supply and demand-side oil shocks have a statistically significant impact on both types of inflation. While supply, global economic activity, and demand shocks have a greater impact on tradable inflation, non-tradable inflation responds more strongly to inventory shocks. Further, the non-linear model results provide evidence of heterogeneity in the magnitude and persistence of impact between high- and low-oil dependence regimes. Non-tradable inflation is more sensitive to nearly all components of oil price shocks in the high-oil dependence regime.     

Business cycle implications of mortgage spreads

How do aggregate quantities at the business cycle frequency respond to shocks to the spread between residential mortgage rates and government bonds? Using a structural VAR approach, we find that mortgage spread shocks impact the real economy by both economically and statistically significant magnitudes: a 100 basis point decline in the spread causes a peak increase in consumption, residential investment and GDP by 1.6 percent, 6.2 percent and 1.9 percent, respectively. Presumably, these effects are magnified when the policy rate is held fixed, as was the case in the US during the recent implementation of unconventional monetary policy.     

Monetary instruments and policy rules in a rational expectations environment

This paper explores the implications of rational expectations and the aggregate supply theory advanced by Lucas (1973) and Barro (1976) for analysis of optimal monetary policy under uncertainty along the lines of Poole (1970), returning to a topic initially treated by Sargent and Wallace (1975). Not surprisingly, these two ‘classical’ concepts alter both the menu of feasible policy choice and the desirability of certain policy actions. In our setup, unlike that of Sargent and Wallace (1975), the systematic component of monetary policy is a relevant determinant of the magnitude of ‘business fluctuations’ that arise from shocks to the system. Central bank behavior — both the selection of monetary instruments and the framing of overall policy response to economic conditions — can work to diminish or increase the magnitude of business fluctuations. However, the ‘activist’ policies stressed by the present discussion bear little (if any) relationship to the policy options rationalized by the conventional analysis of monetary policy under uncertainty. In particular, in contrast to Poole's analysis, money supply responses to the nominal interest rate are not important determinants of real economic activity. Rather, the central bank should focus on policies that make movements in the general price level readily identifiable by economic agents.     

Corporate decision making in the presence of political uncertainty: The case of corporate cash holdings

Using a quarterly panel of U.S. corporations over the period 1985–2014, we show that corporate managers respond to political uncertainty and economic policy uncertainty shocks in different ways. We proxy for political uncertainty using the Partisan Conflict Index and employ a prevalent empirical macroeconomic methodology to construct structural shocks that are orthogonal to shocks captured by the Economic Policy Uncertainty Index. Following a political uncertainty shock, corporations increase cash but do not adjust investment. Alternatively, following an economic policy uncertainty shock, firms appear to draw on cash and reduce capital spending to increase research and development spending.     

The expectations theory works for monetary policy shocks

In practice, the expectations theory of the term structure is employed extensively in monetary policy analysis despite its empirical failure. This paper performs a conditional test of the theory that is directly relevant to monetary theory and policy. It finds that the theory holds quite well conditional on identified monetary policy shocks, but fails conditional on aggregate supply shocks that prompt an immediate jump in prices. It also finds that policy responses to movements in the term structure play an important role in uncovering evidence for the theory as predicted by McCallum [1994. Monetary policy and the term structure of interest rates. NBER Working Paper Series, no. 4938].     

Stock market reactions to monetary policy surprises under uncertainty

This article investigates how uncertainty impacts the effect of monetary policy surprises on stock returns. Using high-frequency US data, we demonstrate that stock markets respond more aggressively to monetary policy surprises during periods of high uncertainty. We also show that uncertainty asymmetrically influences the transmission of positive and negative monetary policy surprises to stock market prices. The amplifying effect of uncertainty is found to be stronger for expansionary shocks than for contractionary shocks. Our robustness analysis confirms that financial uncertainty has a significant role in shaping the influence of monetary policy on the stock market.     

原油价格与经济政策不确定性对大宗商品市场非对称冲击效应研究

利用面板分位回归模型,考量不同市场环境下原油价格与经济政策不确定性对大宗商品市场非对称性冲击效应。结果表明：油价冲击对中国大宗商品收益的影响具有非对称性,正负油价冲击对其均有促进作用,但随着市场环境好转,正油价冲击的作用逐渐增强,负油价冲击则逐渐减弱;政策不确定性对大宗商品收益有促进作用,但在牛市环境下有抑制作用;且危机前后,油价冲击对大宗商品收益的影响存在非对称性效应。