Board Structure and Intragroup Propping: Evidence from Family Business Groups in Hong Kong

Using earnings announcement events made by group member firms in Hong Kong, this study examines the governance role of boards of directors in curbing propping activities within family business groups. We find that earnings released by group member firms affect the stock prices of their nonannouncing group peers in a manner consistent with intragroup propping. More importantly, this effect is less pronounced when the announcing firms have a larger board or a board with a higher proportion of independent directors, but more pronounced when they have an executive director from their controlling families acting as board chairperson. Furthermore, the monitoring effect of boards of directors is strengthened for firms subject to new regulations increasing board power. Our results suggest that board oversight can mitigate propping activities.     

Investor protection and price informativeness about future earnings: international evidence

This study draws on the investor protection literature to identify structural factors in a country’s information environment that are likely to explain cross-country differences in the extent to which future earnings information is capitalized in current stock returns. Using a sample of 55,900 firm-years from 32 countries, we find that greater financial disclosure, higher quality earnings, and greater information dissemination through news media are associated with stock prices that are more informative about future earnings, whereas strong enforcement of insider trading laws is associated with stock prices that are less informative about future earnings. We also find that, on average, price informativeness about future earnings is greater in countries with strong investor protection. Our results illuminate the importance of structural factors constituting a country’s information environment in explaining cross-country variation in price informativeness about future earnings.     

The contribution of stock repurchases to the value of the firm and cash holdings around the world

Using corporate payout data from 33 economies, this study investigates the contribution of stock repurchases to the value of the firm and cash holdings in different country-level investor protection environments. We find that stock repurchases contribute more to firm value in countries with strong investor protection than in countries with weak investor protection. We also report that dividends contribute approximately 60% more to firm value than repurchases in countries with weak investor protection. Furthermore, as the proportion of repurchases in total payouts increases, the marginal value of cash increases in countries with strong investor protection, whereas it declines in countries with weak investor protection. In a poor investor protection environment, the marginal value of cash for a firm that makes 100% of its payouts via repurchases is 12 cents lower than that for a firm that distributes 100% of its payouts via dividends. Overall, our findings highlight that stock repurchases are less effective than dividends in mitigating agency problems associated with free cash flow in countries with poor investor protection.     

Legal Institutions,Ownership Concentration,and Stock Repurchases Around the World: Signal Mimicking?

One of the central puzzles of signaling theory is how to assess signal quality, in particular the potential for signal mimicking. Our study provides evidence of signal mimicking in the context of stock repurchases. Employing an ex-ante proxy for the likelihood of mimicking stock repurchases and data on open market stock repurchases from 30 countries, we find that long-term operating and market performance following stock repurchases improve less for suspected mimicking firms. This finding contradicts the conventional characterization that managers use stock repurchases to signal undervaluation and enhanced future performance. We find that mimicking firms have smaller capital investments, need greater external financing, buy back fewer shares, and issue more new shares (and/or resell more treasury shares) in the year of the repurchase. Our analysis further shows that mimicking is more likely in countries with weak investor protections and in firms with higher ownership concentration. Further, mimicking associated with concentrated ownership is mitigated in countries with stronger investor protections and by the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Altogether, our findings provide evidence of signal mimicking in stock repurchases in international data that is influenced by market, ownership, legal, and financial reporting characteristics of countries.     

Labor protection,ownership concentration,and cost of equity capital: international evidence

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - In this study, we investigate how labor protection institutions and the presence of controlling shareholders interact to determine a firm’s...     

A supply‐side analysis of agritourism: Evidence from farm‐level agriculture census data in Taiwan

Due to consumers’ increased demand for leisure and farmers’ need for income diversification, researchers and policymakers have significant interest in topics related to agritourism. This study provides a supply‐side analysis on agritourism using Taiwan as a case study. Utilising a sample of 720,148 family farms from the 2010 agriculture census survey in Taiwan, we quantify the effects of engaging in the agritourism business on farm income, on farm succession, and on family members’ labour supply decisions between on‐farm and off‐farm work. An analytical framework that combines the doubly robustness regression model and semiparametric estimation is proposed to address the endogeneity bias. Results indicate that participation in agritourism increases farm income and family farm succession. Farms engaging in agritourism also have more family members working on the farm, and fewer family members working off‐farm, compared to farms not engaging in agritourism. Although agritourism enterprises are developed to meet consumers’ demand for leisure, our results show that they also improve the economic welfare of farm households.