Industry Concentration and Average Stock Returns

Firms in more concentrated industries earn lower returns, even after controlling for size, book‐to‐market, momentum, and other return determinants. Explanations based on chance, measurement error, capital structure, and persistent in‐sample cash flow shocks do not explain this finding. Drawing on work in industrial organization, we posit that either barriers to entry in highly concentrated industries insulate firms from undiversifiable distress risk, or firms in highly concentrated industries are less risky because they engage in less innovation, and thereby command lower expected returns. Additional time‐series tests support these risk‐based interpretations.     

Liquidity,Skewness and Stock Returns: Evidence from Chinese Stock Market

In this paper, a capital asset pricing model (CAPM) incorporating liquidity and skewness factors is proposed and tested by using the Chinese stock market data. The empirical results indicate that, under various market conditions, the liquidity-adjusted three-moment CAPM provides a better fit to the realized returns of various stock portfolios. Overall, this research reveals that illiquidity cost, liquidity risk and as well as skewness have important impacts on asset pricing in the Chinese stock market.     

交易偏好、公司特征与股票收益——基于我国个体投资者交易数据的实证检验

噪音交易是影响股票收益的重要风险因素,对于那些噪音交易活跃、套利成本较高的股票,噪音交易者需求变动对股票价格的影响更为显著。本文以我国个体投资者2006年-2011年的交易数据为样本,按照公司特征对样本股进行分组,发现个体投资者对小盘、低价、高账面市值比、高收益和高特质波动的股票具有更强的交易偏好,且对股票需求的变动存在显著的系统相关性,个体投资者需求变动对股票价格的影响程度与其交易偏好有关。本文的研究结论为个体投资者交易行为理论提供了有价值的实证支持。     

Announcement Effects and Asymmetric Volatility in Industry Stock Returns: Evidence from Taiwan

This study employs financial econometric models to examine the asymmetric volatility of equity returns in response to monetary policy announcements in the Taiwanese stock market. The meetings of the board of directors at the Central Bank of the Republic of China (Taiwan) are considered for testing the announcement effects. The asymmetric generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) model and the smooth transition autoregression with GARCH model are used to measure equity returns' asymmetric volatility. We conclude that the asymmetric volatility of countercyclical equity returns can be identified. Our findings support the leverage effect of stock price changes for most industry equity returns in Taiwan.     

Firm Characteristics,Unanticipated Inflation,and Stock Returns

This paper re-examines the effects of nominal contracts on the relationship between unanticipated inflation and an individual stock's rate of return. This study differs in three main ways from previous research. First, announced inflation data are used to examine the effects of unanticipated inflation. Second, a different specification is used to obtain more efficient estimates. Third, additional nominal contracts are considered. The empirical results indicate that time-varying firm characteristics related to inflation predominately determine the effect of unanticipated inflation on a stock's rate of return. A firm's debt-equity ratio appears to be particularly important in determining the response.     

Investor Sentiment and Stock Returns: Evidence from Turkey

This paper investigates the relation between investor sentiment and stock returns on the Istanbul Stock Exchange, employing vector autoregressive (VAR) analysis and Granger causality tests. The sample period extends from July 1997 to June 2005. In the VAR models, stock portfolio returns and investor sentiment proxies are used as endogenous variables. Two dummy variables accounting for natural and economic crises are used as exogenous variables. The analysis results suggest that, excepting shares of equity issues in aggregate issues, stock portfolio returns seem to affect all investor sentiment proxies, namely closed-end fund discount, mutual fund flows, odd-lot sales-to-purchases ratio, and repo holdings of mutual funds. Investor sentiment does not appear to forecast future stock returns; only the turnover ratio of the stock market seems to have forecasting potential.     

Corporate Governance and Expected Stock Returns: Evidence from Germany

Recent empirical work shows evidence for higher valuation of firms in countries with a better legal environment. We investigate whether differences in the quality of firm‐level corporate governance also help to explain firm performance in a cross‐section of companies within a single jurisdiction. Constructing a broad corporate governance rating (CGR) for German public firms, we document a positive relationship between governance practices and firm valuation. There is also evidence that expected stock returns are negatively correlated with firm‐level corporate governance, if dividend yields are used as proxies for the cost of capital. An investment strategy that bought high‐CGR firms and shorted low‐CGR firms earned abnormal returns of around 12% on an annual basis during the sample period.     

Stock Market Returns and Inflation: Evidence from Other Countries

This paper investigates the relation between common stock returns and inflation in twenty-six countries for the postwar period. Our results do not support the Fisher Hypothesis, which states that real rates of return on common stocks and expected inflation rates are independent and that nominal stock returns vary in one-to-one correspondence with expected inflation. There is a consistent lack of positive relation between stock returns and inflation in most of the countries.     

投资者分歧、异常交易量和股票横截面收益率预测——基于中国股票市场的经验证据

本文定义月度异常交易量为本月与上个月交易金额的比值,发现中国市场月度收益率与滞后一个月的异常交易量显著负相关。在控制了公司规模、账面市值比、流动性以及动量效应等指标后仍然具有显著的解释作用。进一步研究表明,在出现高异常交易量后的12个月内,换手率和特质性波动率都有大幅上升。本文认为,交易量上升代表着市场分歧程度和受关注程度的增加,在卖空约束下会使得股票价值高估,从而造成未来收益率下降。     

Firm Size and Cyclical Variations in Stock Returns

Recent imperfect capital market theories predict the presence of asymmetries in the variation of small and large firms' risk over the economic cycle. Small firms with little collateral should be more strongly affected by tighter credit market conditions in a recession state than large, better collateralized ones. This paper adopts a flexible econometric model to analyze these mplications empirically. Consistent with theory, small firms display the highest degree of asymmetry in their risk across recession and expansion states, which translates into a higher sensitivity of their expected stock returns with respect to variables that measure credit market conditions.     

Financial Sector Risk and the Stock Returns: Evidence from Tokyo Stock Exchange Firms

We investigate whether the activity of financial firms creates value and/or risk to the economy within the asset pricing framework. We use stock return data from nonfinancial firms listed in the first section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The value-weighted index that is solely composed of nonfinancial firms is augmented with the index of the firms from the financial sector, and we estimate multivariate asset pricing model with these two indices. We note that our procedure can simultaneously take into account the cross-holding phenomena among Japanese firms, especially between the financial sector and the nonfinancial sector. Our augmented index model performs well both with cross-sectional Fama and MacBeth regression test and GMM test. Our two index model with additional Fama and French's HML factor can capture cross-sectional variations of the returns of sample portfolios better than the original Fama and French model can, when measured by Hansen and Jagannathan distance measure. We find that this additional new sector variable can be a substitute for Fama and French's size factor, but not related to the bond index return. This variable has similar factor characteristic as money supply growth or the term structure, but the latter variables contain more information than the former. Morever, our financial sector model helps explain the return and risk structure of Japanese firms during the so-called bubble period.     

未预期货币政策与股票市场——基于媒体数据的实证研究

经济理论和各国经验表明,股票市场对货币政策操作的反应对货币政策的有效性以及金融稳定具有重要意义。本文基于媒体数据对货币政策预期和未预期部分进行了分解,应用事件研究法,考察了未预期货币政策对股票市场的影响,并探索了该影响的经济机制。分析表明:(1)未预期货币政策对沪深股市有显著的负向影响,1%的未预期降准会引起上证综指上涨0.806%,深证成指上涨0.831%。未预期基准利率调整的影响略大于准备金率调整;(2)货币政策对股票市场的影响存在非对称性,宽松货币政策对股市的影响大于紧缩货币政策;(3)货币政策对股票市场的影响主要通过影响预期未来超额收益实现。     

Investor Attention and Stock Returns: International Evidence

This article examines the asymmetric/discriminative effects of investor attention on expected stock returns among 15 markets through economic expansions and recessions. The predictive power of attention tends to be short-lived and weakens the autocorrelation within returns. Accounting for business cycles not only confirms that the predictability of attention endures with volatility but also explicates the asymmetric effects that underlying pessimism functions better. International evidence contributes to the literature on investor attention and reveals the discrepant effects of attention with three levels of market efficiency: semi-strong, stronger than semi-strong, and weak.     

Bank Concentration and Firm Investment: Empirical Evidence from India

This paper investigates the impact of bank concentration on firm-level investment across firm groups classified according to size, investment destination, and debt maturity structure. Using data of 302 manufacturing firms for the period 2000-2009, we show that elevated financial constraints are associated with small and medium-size enterprises and firms that are dependent on short-term debt and exhibit high levels of sensitivity of investment to cash flow. Our empirical finding confirms that bank concentration exerts a positive impact on firms' financial constraints on investment. This effect is more pronounced for small firms and firms dependent on short-term debt. However, our results are indifferent to domestic versus foreign investing firm groups.     

Dividend Stability, Dividend Yield and Stock Returns: UK Evidence

This paper establishes an empirical role for two measures of dividend stability (as a proxy for dividend policy) in explaining UK stock returns. There is little systematic empirical evidence concerning the relation between dividend stability, dividend yield and stock returns despite the fact that a variety of theoretical models point to dividend policy as an important stock attribute. Here we construct two definitions of dividend stability, one of which involves dividend cuts, and use a sample of all listed UK firms from 1975 to 1997 to explore the relationship between stock returns and a variety of characteristics, including dividend stability. We find an inverse correlation between the stability of past dividend policy and systematic risk. Both stability measures have explanatory power over returns, but this is concentrated in January.     

Equity Ownership and Firm Value: Evidence from Targeted Stock Repurchases

In contrast to the negative average abnormal return associated with the announcement of a control‐related targeted repurchase (greenmail transaction), we find that the announcement of a noncontrol‐related targeted repurchase is associated with a positive and significant average abnormal return. Cross‐sectional analysis indicates that the change in firm value at the announcement of a noncontrol‐related targeted repurchase is negatively related to the resulting changes in both insider ownership and outside blockholdings. We also find significant differences in announcement‐period stock price effects depending on the identity of the selling shareholder.     

Dividend Stability, Dividend Yield and Stock Returns: UK Evidence

This paper establishes an empirical role for two measures of dividend stability (as a proxy for dividend policy) in explaining UK stock returns. There is little systematic empirical evidence concerning the relation between dividend stability, dividend yield and stock returns despite the fact that a variety of theoretical models point to dividend policy as an important stock attribute. Here we construct two definitions of dividend stability, one of which involves dividend cuts, and use a sample of all listed UK firms from 1975 to 1997 to explore the relationship between stock returns and a variety of characteristics, including dividend stability. We find an inverse correlation between the stability of past dividend policy and systematic risk. Both stability measures have explanatory power over returns, but this is concentrated in January.     

Stock Returns,Inflation, and Economic Activity: The Survey Evidence

The primary purpose of this paper is the use of survey expectations data to study the empirical relationships between stock returns, inflation, and economic activity. In the course of this analysis and as a secondary purpose, the paper discusses general considerations involving the use of expectations proxies and makes recommendations for econometric techniques. The main empirical findings are: (1) Hypothesized relationships between expected economic activity and expected inflation do not in practice appear to be important in explaining the negative relationship between expected inflation and stock returns. (2) Nevertheless, the survey data do lend some support to the hypothesis of a quantity theory relationship between expected inflation and expected economic activity, holding constant monetary growth. (3) The cross-forecaster dispersion of economic activity forecasts, a proxy for real uncertainty, appears to be a significant determinant of stock returns. Inclusion of this variable eliminates the negative impact of expected inflation.     

Structural Changes in Expected Stock Returns Relationships: Evidence from ASE

Abstract:  This paper suggests a recursive application of Fama and MacBeth's (1973) testing procedure to assess the significance of macroeconomic factors and firm-specific effects priced in explaining the cross-sectional variation of expected stock returns over time. The paper applies the suggested testing procedure to investigate the source of risks of the Athens Stock Exchange (ASE). Among the variables examined, it finds out that the changes in the short term interest rates and firm size can explain a significant proportion of the variation of the ASE individual returns. The paper argues that the significance of interest rate changes can be associated with monetary policy changes introduced by the Greek authorities after the mid-nineties. These changes were focused on targeting interest rates, instead of monetary aggregates.