Performance of Value Line's Recommendations: The Canadian Case

The present study examines the peformance of Canadian stocks surrounding changes in their Value Line timeliness rankings. These stocks offer a particularly interesting sample since most of the firms represented are in resource based industries. To the extent that commodity prices move randomly, predicting the future performance of resource companies is a challenging task. Moreover, differences in accounting rules, regulatory environments and so forth make the valuation of Canadian companies relatively difficult.     

Valuation of complex financial instruments via basic components

This article presents a graphical approach to measuring financial instruments. It observes that the payoff contingencies of a large number of single-payoff financial instruments can be reduced to a piecewise-linear cash flow, which can be replicated with a handful of basic building blocks. Four such building blocks are identified, and they all relate to the concept of options. To demonstrate, this method is used to value several financial instruments: truncated standard call options, truncated standard put options, truncated binary call options, and hybrid foreign-currency put options.     

What moves German Bund futures contracts on the Eurex?

The German 10‐year Bund futures contract traded on the Eurex futures and options exchange in Frankfurt became the world's most actively traded derivative product by the end of 1999. In this article, we provide a detailed exploration of the interday and intraday return volatility in the Bund futures contract using a sample of five‐min returns from 1997 to 1998. The evolution of interday volatility is described best by a MA(1)‐fractionally integrated process that allows for the long‐memory features. At the intraday level, we find that macroeconomic announcements from both Germany and the U.S. are an important source of volatility. Among the various German announcements, we identify the IFO industry survey of business climate, industrial production (preliminary), and Bundesbank policy meeting as being by far the most important. The three most significant U.S. announcements include the employment report, the National Association of Purchasing Managers (NAPM) survey, and employment costs. Overall, U.S. macroeconomic announcements have a far greater impact on the Bund futures market than their German counterparts. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 22:679–696, 2002     

INFORMATION ASYMMETRY AND THE UNDERPRICING OF INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERINGS: FURTHER EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

Information Asymmetry is usually assumed in most explanations of the underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs). In Baron's (1982) model, the underwriter is better informed than the issuing firm concerning the demand for the IPO. The greater uncertainty associated with the demand will lead to a greater underpricing due to the enhanced value of the underwriter's expertise. In the case that the issuer is also an informed investment banker, Baron's hypothesis predicts no underpricing. Our results based on Canadian investment bankers do not support Baron's hypothesis.     

Accumulation of reserves and keeping up with the Joneses: The case of LATAM economies

In this paper we explore the ‘Mrs. Machlup's Wardrobe’ hypothesis to understand the growing trend of Latin American economies amassing large stocks of international reserves. Using annual data from 1980 to 2007, we examine the relevance of the argument that economies continue to add to their existing reserves stock in order to keep up with the Joneses. We find strong evidence of presence of the Joneses effect. The effect is robust to the inclusion of traditional determinants of reserve accumulation as well as region specific factors including commodity exports that set the Latin American economies apart from other emerging economies.     

Exchange rate dynamics under alternative optimal interest rate rules

We explore the role of interest rate policy in the exchange rate determination process. Specifically, we derive exchange rate equations from interest rate rules that are theoretically optimal under a few alternative settings. The exchange rate equation depends on its underlying interest rule and its performance could vary across evaluation criteria and sample periods. The exchange rate equation implied by the interest rate rule that allows for interest rate and inflation inertia under commitment offers some encouraging results — exchange rate changes “calibrated” from the equation have a positive and significant correlation with actual data, and offer good direction of change prediction. Our exercise also demonstrates the role of the foreign exchange risk premium in determining exchange rates and the difficulty of explaining exchange rate variability using only policy based fundamentals.     

How does customer motivational orientation affect satisfaction?

This study examines the link between customer motivational orientation and customer satisfaction in the Chinese context. The customer motivational orientation–satisfaction model was tested on 349 Chinese bank customers in Macao, China. Results of structural equation modelling indicated that task-oriented and interaction-oriented customers were not equally responsive to the financial services provided. Specifically, task motivational orientation was directly and indirectly related to customer satisfaction through customer perceived service quality, whereas interaction motivational orientation only linked to customer satisfaction through customer perceived service quality as a mediator. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Blockholding and market reactions to equity offerings in China

We examine the impact of blockholding on shareholders' wealth in equity offerings in China. We find that investors generally react negatively to equity-offering announcements by firms with high blockholding. A one-standard-deviation (12%) increase in blockholding leads to a 0.59% reduction in firm valuation over a seven-day window and a 5.50% reduction over a 2-year period surrounding the announcement. Private (non-governmental) blockholding is associated with a more negative valuation effect than governmental blockholding over the long-term event window. The above result holds only for financially constrained firms but not unconstrained firms. Further analysis shows that firms with private blockholding have greater positive cash–cash flow sensitivity than firms with governmental blockholding, and again, the result holds for financial constrained firms only. Collectively, the findings suggest that equity offerings in China signal the issuers' future financial constraints, but the findings do not support the agency hypothesis of state ownership.