Financial constraints and asset pricing: comprehensive evidence from London Stock Exchange

This study provides comprehensive evidence on the pricing of financial constraints (FC) risk on London Stock Exchange during the period 1988–2013. Utilizing a large number of proxies for FC, we find that investors are not compensated with higher premia for holding shares of financially constrained firms. To the contrary, in most of the cases, the most constrained firms significantly underperform, both statistically and economically, the least constrained ones. Focussing on the Whited–Wu index to construct a zero-cost FC factor that goes long the most constrained firms and sells short the least constrained ones, we find that this factor carries a significantly negative premium and it is priced in the cross-section over and above the commonly used risk factors.     

Press freedom and jumps in stock prices

Press freedom varies substantially across countries. In a free environment, any news immediately becomes public knowledge through mediums including various electronic media and published materials. However, in an unfree environment, (economic) agents would have more discretionary powers to disclose good news immediately, while hiding bad news or releasing bad news slowly. We argue that this discretion affects stock prices and that stock markets in countries with a free press should be better processors of economic information. Using an equilibrium asset-pricing model in an economy under jump diffusion, we decompose the moments of the returns of international stock markets into a diffusive risk and a jump risk part. Using stock market data for a balanced panel of 50 countries, our results suggest that in countries with a free press, the better processing of bad news leads to more frequent negative jumps in stock prices. As a result, stock markets in those countries are characterized by higher volatility, driven by higher jump risk and more negative return asymmetry. The results are robust to the inclusion of various controls for governance and other country- or market-specific characteristics. We interpret these as good stock market characteristics because a free press improves welfare and increases economic growth.     

An estimation of returns to scale of airport airsides under multiple optimal solutions in DEA

The returns to scale (RTS) nature of 37 Chinese airport airsides are investigated in this paper. Multiple optimal solutions in DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) models may lead to error RTS estimation. To address this problem, we use the (Zhu and Shen, 1995) RTS method. The empirical study shows that all those airsides with two runways operate under decreasing RTS and those airsides with only one runway either operate in the area of increasing RTS or in the area of constant RTS.     

中国高新技术企业研发溢出与公司股票收益率:基于吸收能力的实证研究

高新技术企业是中国创新体系中的重要创新主体,其研发活动能够在创新系统中形成溢出效应并影响其它企业的创新活动。运用随机前沿生产函数模型估算高新技术企业对外部研发溢出的吸收能力,利用2009-2015年企业的财务数据和股票行情数据,检验了企业对外部研发溢出的吸收能力对其长期股票收益率的影响。结果表明,在长期层面,企业对外部研发溢出的吸收对其股票收益率有正向滞后性影响。同时,在一定时期内,研发投入对企业吸收能力具有显著正向影响。     

Relationship between oil,stock prices and exchange rates: A vine copula based GARCH method

In this paper, we apply a vine copula approach to investigate the dynamic relationship between energy, stock and currency markets. Dependence modeling using vine copulas offers a greater flexibility and permits the modeling of complex dependency patterns for high-dimensional distributions. Using a sample of more than 10 years of daily return observations of the WTI crude oil, the Dow Jones Industrial average stock index and the trade weighted US dollar index returns, we find evidence of a significant and symmetric relationship between these variables. Considering different sample periods show that the dynamic of the relationship between returns is not constant over time. Our results indicate also that the dependence structure is highly affected by the financial crisis and Great Recession, over 2007–2009. Finally, there is evidence to suggest that the application of the vine copula model improves the accuracy of VaR estimates, compared to traditional approaches.     

Liquidity commonality in order-driven trading: evidence from the Athens Stock Exchange

We examine the presence of liquidity commonality in the order-driven Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). Unlike the majority of liquidity commonality studies that focus on the bid–ask spread, our analysis extends deeper in the Limit Order Book, providing insight on the price impact of both small and large trades. We utilize a 6-month FTSE/ATHEX-20 intraday data set to estimate the liquidity factor model of Chordia et al. (2000). To this end, we conduct single-equation analysis as well as panel data analysis with the use of two-way clustered errors, correcting for simultaneous firm and time correlations. Moreover, we apply standard principal component analysis on stock liquidities to extract the marketwide liquidity component. We find that liquidity commonality is low at the bid–ask spread, whereas it increases deeper in the book; consequently, large traders face liquidity risks associated with both individual stock and marketwide illiquidity. Moreover, our empirical evidence hints that liquidity commonality is asynchronous, suggesting that the ASE trading process includes various levels of information speed. Our analysis contributes to the understanding of liquidity commonality in order-driven trading, especially in emerging markets like the ASE where trading activity is limited and information speed is low.     

The economic benefits of market timing the style allocation of characteristic-based portfolios

Many exchange traded funds track simple characteristic-based equity portfolios such as the market capitalization, the fundamental value or the inverse volatility portfolio. This paper provides theoretical and empirical evidence for the economic benefits in exploiting the timing-gains that result from the time-varying relative performance of these characteristic-based portfolios. Under a factor model for expected returns, we show that this dynamic portfolio allocation can be efficient across the low-dimensional set of characteristic-based portfolios. We assess the out-of-sample performance on the S&P 100 universe over the period 1990–2013 and show gains in stability and significant positive risk-adjusted returns for the dynamic style portfolio. We conduct several robustness tests and extensions confirming the benefits of dynamic style allocation across characteristic-based portfolios.     

New evidence on the efficiency of Italian airports: A bootstrapped DEA analysis

A bootstrapped DEA procedure is used to estimate technical efficiency of 18 Italian airports during the period 2000-2004. Departing from previous studies, we separate the efficiency related to ability to manage airside activities (operational) from that related to the management of all business activities (financial). In general, Italian airports operate at poor levels of efficiency, with slightly better performance in terms of their financial activities. In the current study, selected intrinsic and environmental characteristics are considered as possible drivers of Italian airport performance. In particular, we found that: (i) the airport dimension does not allows for operational efficiency advantages, (ii) on the other hand, the airport dimension allows for financial efficiency advantages for the case of hubs and disadvantages for the case of the smallest airports (iii) the type(s) of concession agreement(s) might be considered as important source of technical efficiency differentials for those airports running marginal commercial activities; (iv) the introduction of a dual-till price cap regulation might create incentives which lead to the increase of financial efficiency at the detriment of the operational performance. Lastly, the development of a second hub (Milano Malpensa), has negatively affected the performance of the country’s national hub (Roma Fiumicino).     

企业技术创新的虚拟与实体产权激励

企业技术创新激励制度的核心是保护创新者的利益,产权激励制度是一种合理的方式。企业技术创新的产权激励制度设计原则是保证创新收益与风险的均衡。知识产权激励是产权激励的重要内容。对技术创新的产权激励不仅仅是企业内部人员的激励或者外围环境的激励,本文力图建立一个以企业作为分析边界的产权激励模式。对技术创新的产权激励从产权形式角度划分为虚拟和实体产权。企业主体虚拟产权包括以品牌价值增值权为体现的声誉收益权,企业内部成员虚拟产权体现为以影子股票或者股票期权等形式的远期剩余索取权。从企业边界角度,内部产权激励中股权激励包括虚拟股权激励和现实股权激励,外部产权激励包括政府的知识产权制度。此外,企业技术创新的产权界定与保护制度是虚拟与实体产权激励制唐的保证．     

股市暴涨暴跌的界定及比较——以中国、美国、英国、日本股市为例

本文运用经验分布函数对中、美、英、日四国股市的暴涨暴跌进行了界定,并对四国股市暴涨暴跌的表现进行了比较分析。相比其它三国,中国股市在过去15年间成长性最强,暴涨暴跌的幅度最大,表现出较强的"政策驱动型"特征。美、英、日股市的暴涨暴跌呈现出明显的"市场和事件驱动型"特征。英国和美国股市波动呈现出较强的同步性,但日本股市波动较为独特。政策建议上,各国应通力合作,以应对全球系统性风险对股市的影响;中国政府应加强股市的市场化建设,同时谨慎开放资本市场。