Do foreign institutional investors monitor opportunistic managerial behaviour? Evidence from real earnings management

Employing a large sample of 13,860 firms in 41 economies from 2000 to 2017, we document that the ownership by foreign institutional investors (FIIs) is negatively associated with firms' real earnings management (REM) but unrelated to their accrual earnings management (AEM). We adopt a few identification strategies to tackle the endogeneity issues, including firm- and year-fixed effects regression, two-stage least squares (2SLS) regression, and difference-in-differences (DiD) estimation based on the passage of the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act (JGTRRA). In addition, we show that the role of FIIs in curbing REM is achieved through the expertise channel and the monitoring channel. These results suggest that when facing disadvantages in curbing AEM, FIIs make the most of their monitoring strengths by curbing firms' REM, where they have both incentives and capabilities to monitor. Overall, this study highlights the important role of FIIs in monitoring opportunistic managerial behaviour.     

Birds of a feather flock together: Institutional investors with disciplinary history and financial reporting

This study examines the role of financial misconduct of institutional investors on financial reporting quality of investee firms. We find that the firms held by institutional investors with disciplinary history (IDH) are more likely to engage in financial misreporting. Our results are not driven by institutional investor characteristics such as activism, incentives to monitor, investment horizon, or portfolio size. The impact of IDH is stronger in the firms that are more likely to engage in financial misreporting (i.e., the firms that barely meet analysts’ expectations and with CEOs with higher career concerns). IDH have stronger impact on financial misreporting when the institution reports multiple disciplinary events, the disciplinary event is recent, or disciplinary action is taken against the institutional investor company rather than just its affiliates. Results continue to hold after implementing various statistical tests to address potential endogeneity issues and alternative measures of financial misreporting.     

Institutional cross-ownership and stock price crash risk

Using manually collected data of Chinese listed firms during the period 2007–2018, we provide strong and robust evidence that institutional cross-ownership is negatively associated with firm-specific stock price crash risk. Building on China’s institutional settings, we document that the negative relation is more pronounced for firms located in provinces with higher political uncertainty, or state-owned enterprises. This paper also conducts several mechanisms analyses and has confirmed three potential influencing mechanisms, such as information advantage, governance improvement and anticompetitive incentives, in explaining the effect of institutional cross-ownership on stock price crash risk. Overall, this paper develops a new perspective to investigate the ways to alleviate stock price crash risk in emerging markets.     

Managing the energy trilemma of reliability,affordability and renewables: Assessing consumer demands with discrete choice experiments

In response to the looming climate crisis, many countries are adopting technologies to reduce the accumulation of greenhouse gases. However, national energy policies are often multiobjective and resolution deeply divisive. The result is a policy trilemma between the energy mix and the trade-offs with other policy objectives, including cost and reliability. Utilising a discrete choice experiment (DCE), the objective of this study is to explore Australian household preferences for alternative electricity contracts containing features reflecting changes in future energy policy. The first set of features include investments in renewable generation and community-based energy storage. The second set of features reflect demand-side management policies, including installing smart meters and consumption limits being imposed on households during peak demand. Two versions of the DCE were developed to obtain both willingness to pay and willingness to accept estimates for the same features. In line with the literature, differences in the two sets of estimates were observed, with the willingness to accept estimates being statistically larger for some features. These dollar value measures can be used to support public policy decision-making – the choice of which depending on the context of the policy problem being considered.     

When does attention matter? The effect of investor attention on stock market volatility around news releases

We empirically investigate how retail and institutional investor attention is related to the way stock markets process information. With a focus on 360 US stocks in the S&P 500 universe, our results show that higher retail investors’ attention around news releases increases the post-announcement stock return volatility, whereas institutional investor attention has a small but negative impact on volatility on days following news releases on average over the cross-section of companies. These findings are in line with the hypotheses that attention of retail investors slows price-adjustments to new information and attention of institutional investors results in the opposite reaction. We show that these effects are heterogeneous in the type of news and the topic of the information being released. A portfolio allocation application highlights that these results are not only statistically significant but also sizeable in economic terms and can lead to an overperformance as large as dozens of basis points.     

Wikipedia pageviews as investors’ attention indicator for Nasdaq

The attempt to measure investors’ mood to find an early indicator of financial markets has evolved and developed with the advancement of technology over the years. The first attempts were based on surveys, a long and expensive process. Nowadays, big data has made it possible to measure the investor’s mood accurately and almost entirely online. This paper analyzes the explanatory and predictive capacity of Wikipedia pageviews for the Nasdaq index. For this purpose, two econometric models have been developed. In both models, the explanatory variable is the number of Wikipedia visits, and the endogenous variable is Nasdaq index return. As an alternative to this approach, an algorithmic trading system has been developed. It uses Wikipedia visits as investment signals for long and short positions to check the predictability power of this indicator. It is determined that the volume of queries about Nasdaq companies is a statistically significant variable for expressing the evolution of this index. However, it has no predictive capacity. Keeping in mind the capacity of Wikipedia to exemplify Nasdaq trends, further studies should be conducted to determine how to make this indicator profitable.     

Other people's money: A comparison of institutional investors

Using unique equity ownership data, we investigate the stock picking preferences and return forecasting performances of institutional investors that manage their own money against those that manage others’. We reveal that these investors’ preferences significantly differ in historical patterns, liquidity and prudence when picking stocks. In particular, ‘own money managers’ display a risk-seeking behaviour whereas “others’ money managers” exhibit risk-averse characteristics. However, our results indicate that both types of investors are well informed, albeit own money managers excel in the short-term while others’ money managers are successful in the long-term.     

机构投资者异质性与企业自主创新

发挥资本市场对企业自主创新的支持作用，是我国实施创新驱动发展战略的重要要求。 论文以 2007-2014 年沪深两市 A 股上市公司为样本，研究机构投资者对企业自主创新的影响，并 进一步探讨机构异质性的作用效果。实证检验结果表明，机构投资者总体对企业自主创新产出水 平有积极影响。进一步地，证券投资基金及其中的长线基金显著促进了企业创新水平，而短线基 金的影响并不显著。同时，产品市场竞争程度与企业自主创新之间存在倒 U 型关系，但产品市场 竞争程度与机构投资者持股的交互作用对企业自主创新的影响不显著。最后，机构投资者总体、 证券投资基金及其中的长线基金持股对企业自主创新的积极影响在非国有企业中更为显著，而国 有企业的治理结构在一定程度上制约了机构投资者发挥积极作用。论文的发现表明，在中国这一 转型经济体中，机构投资者在促进企业自主创新方面发挥了一定的作用，但是这种作用受到机构 投资者类型和企业所有权性质等因素的影响。论文为在持续推进机构投资者发展背景下如何有效 实施中国的创新驱动发展战略，提供了必要的政策依据。     

Common ownership and executive pay-for-performance sensitivity: Evidence from China

This study focuses on the impact of common ownership on executive pay-for-performance sensitivity using a sample of A-share listed firms in China from 2008 to 2020. We find common ownership significantly improves executive pay-for-performance sensitivity and plays a monitoring and governance role. Meanwhile, the impact of common ownership on executive pay-for-performance sensitivity is more significant in non-state-owned firms (non-SOEs) and when a firm faces a highly competitive product market. The mechanism tests indicate that common ownership affects executive pay-for-performance sensitivity through the information and governance mechanisms. Further analyses show that the portion of compensation explained by common ownership significantly enhances future firm performance. Overall, our findings validate the positive role of common ownership in corporate governance.