Game changer? The impact of the VW emission-cheating scandal on the interrelation between large automakers’ equity and credit markets

This paper investigates the change in the securities market pricing behavior of 16 large, global automakers following disclosure of the Volkswagen (VW) emission-cheating scandal on September 18, 2015, when the EPA issued a notice of violation to VW, stating that VW had intentionally circumvented the US clean air rules for diesel automobile emissions. We contend that this event unblocked an informational cascade, in that much of the information was already known to outside parties, yet no significant market response occurred until the September 18 EPA notice. We also find a significant change in the evolution of equity and credit default swap (CDS) prices in the automobile industry consistent with more-informed trading in the equity market. A test of economic significance further supports this finding by showing a decrease in the profitability of a trading rule based on a predictive relation between CDS spread changes and lagged equity returns.     

Governance and bank characteristics in the credit and sovereign debt crises – the impact of CEO power

The global financial sector recently suffered from two interrelated crises: the credit crisis and the sovereign debt crisis. A common question is whether the recent experience with the credit crisis has helped in dealing with the sovereign debt crisis. We study more specifically whether banks with powerful CEOs perform better or worse than other banks, and if there is any difference in this relationship between the two crises. Using unique hand-collected data for 378 large global banks, we find that CEO power has a significant positive relation to bank profitability and asset quality, but also to insolvency risk, during the sovereign debt crisis. Thus, strong CEOs do not appear to be detrimental to bank performance. Our results also support the idea that deposit insurance may have contributed to the credit crisis.     

Time-varying risk premia in foreign exchange and equity markets: evidence from Asia–Pacific countries

This paper examines the validity of the risk premia hypothesis in explaining deviations from Uncovered Interest Parity (UIP) and the role of deviations from Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) in the pricing of foreign exchange rates and equity securities in five Asia–Pacific countries and the US. Using weekly data from 1 January, 1988 to 27 February, 1998, I find that conditional variances are not related to the deviations from UIP in any statistical sense based on an univariate GARCH(1,1)-M model. As I consider both foreign exchange and equity markets together and test a conditional international CAPM (ICAPM) in the absence of PPP, I cannot reject the model based on the J-test by Hansen (Econometrica 50 (1982), 1029–1054) and find significant time-varying foreign exchange risk premia present in the data. This empirical evidence supports the notion of time-varying risk premia in explaining the deviations from UIP. It also supports the idea that the foreign exchange risk is not diversifiable and hence should be priced in both markets.     

On the effects of banks�� equity ownership on credit markets

Recent deregulation of the banking sector in the US and in Europe allows commercial banks to hold equity in non-financial firms. We develop a model to investigate the effects of bank equity stakes in firms on credit market competition. The main result is that an equity stake confers a competitive advantage to the holding bank, which in equilibrium results in decreased competition in credit markets and higher interest rates being charged to firms. However, regulatory limits on the size of a bank’s stake may, under certain conditions, be counterproductive: they could actually strengthen the equity-owning bank’s competitive advantage. Our findings shed new light on the role of equity in lending relationships, and highlight that, in addition to the well-known prudential aspects, there is an antitrust dimension in the separation of banking and commerce.     

The impact of multi-dimensional corporate transparency on us firms’ credit ratings and cost of capital

This study examines corporate transparency in the US market for a sample of 319 S&P 500 firms. We examine whether a number of disparate measures of corporate transparency used by other researchers are distinct, cohere as measures of a single factor of corporate transparency, or capture multiple different dimensions. Next, we begin to examine the impact of corporate transparency, conceived in the broadest sense, and not limited to financial reporting, on US firms. We develop a model of corporate transparency based on a broad definition and framework proposed by Bushman, Piotrowski and Smith, which we extend in several ways, and then study the effect of corporate transparency on cost of debt, credit rating, and cost of equity. First, we find that corporate transparency is neither a unitary concept nor merely an ambiguous term for multiple distinct concepts: factor analysis of ten corporate transparency variables identifies four independent underlying dimensions: public disclosure information, intermediary information, earnings quality information and insider information. Second, we find that corporate transparency has significant power to explain cross-sectional variation in credit rating and cost of capital. More specifically, (i) credit rating, cost of debt, and beta are significantly associated with disclosure information transparency; (ii) credit rating, cost of equity, and beta are significantly associated with intermediary information transparency; and (iii) cost of equity and beta are significantly associated with insider information transparency. Our findings offer a more comprehensive evaluation of corporate transparency than prior studies, and we demonstrate direct economic implications for both US firms and markets.     

State uncertainty in stock markets: How big is the impact on the cost of equity?

We propose a novel Bayesian framework to incorporate uncertainty about the state of the market. Among others, one advantage of the framework is the ability to model a large collection of time-varying parameters simultaneously. When we apply the framework to estimate the cost of equity we find economically significant effects of state uncertainty. A state-independent pricing model overestimates the cost of equity by about 4% per annum for a utility firm and by as much as 3% for industries. We also observe that the expected return, volatility, risk loading, and pricing error all display state-dependent dynamics that coincide with the business cycle. More interestingly, the forecasted market and Fama–French factor risk premiums can predict the future real GDP growth rate even though the model does not use any macroeconomic variables, which suggests that the proposed Bayesian framework captures the state-dependent dynamics well.     

Dependence structure between the equity market and the foreign exchange market–A copula approach

This paper investigates the dependence structure between the equity market and the foreign exchange market by using copulas. In particular, several copulas with different dependence structure are compared and used to directly model the underlying dependence structure. We find that there exists significant symmetric upper and lower tail dependence between the two financial markets, and the dependence remains significant but weaker after the launch of the euro. Our findings have important implications for both global investment risk management and international asset pricing by taking into account joint tail risk.     

Sovereign ceilings “lite”? The impact of sovereign ratings on corporate ratings

Although credit rating agencies have gradually moved away from a policy of never rating a corporation above the sovereign (the ‘sovereign ceiling’), it appears that sovereign credit ratings remain a significant determinant of corporate credit ratings. We examine this link using data for advanced and emerging economies over the period of 1995–2009. Our main result is that a sovereign ceiling continues to affect the rating of corporations. The results also suggest that the influence of a sovereign ceiling on corporate ratings remains particularly significant in countries where capital account restrictions are still in place and with high political risk.     

Investors’ perception of CEO overconfidence: evidence from the cost of equity capital

Prior literature documents that CEO overconfidence plays an important role in corporate financial reporting and accounting decisions. However, an unexplored issue is how investors perceive the risks associated with CEO overconfidence. This study examines the effect of CEO overconfidence on the cost of equity capital. We find that the association between CEO overconfidence and the cost of equity is nonlinear: a moderate level of CEO overconfidence results in the lowest cost of equity capital after controlling for other known determinants of the cost of equity. We also find an inverted nonlinear relation between CEO overconfidence and equity issuance, which corroborates our main conclusion of the nonlinear effect of CEO overconfidence on the cost of equity. Our results are robust to alternative overconfidence measures, cost of equity measures, and change analysis.     

Coming of age – a comparative study of emerging foreign exchange markets

We developed a market maturity index as a composite of the relative liquidity index (which was used historically to measure market maturity) and a market sophistication index, constructed by analyzing market volume and transaction data. We also constructed a risk management index using volatility and V2 (volatility of the volatility) to measure ease of risk management. Five (out of 14) emerging markets we studied – India, Brazil, Malaysia, Turkey and Poland – improved their risk management index scores from 2007 to 2009, suggesting increasing maturity. On the other hand, South Africa, Taiwan and South Korea, all markets that had seemed reasonably mature in 2007, performed extremely poorly from a risk management perspective in 2009, suggesting that their original high market maturity index scores were probably not very stable.     

U.S. takeovers in foreign markets: Do they impact emerging and developed markets differently?

We investigate the effect that U.S. acquisitions of targets in emerging and developed countries have on the targets' rivals by measuring their stock price reaction to the acquisition announcement. On average, emerging market rivals react positively to these acquisitions while the reaction in developed markets is insignificant. In developed markets, the main factors explaining the reaction of rival firms are individual rival characteristics such as rival size, efficiency, growth opportunities, and leverage. In contrast, in emerging markets, country, industry, and acquisition characteristics such as economic development, shareholder protection, and the target's public status, industry, and percent acquired, play a more important role.     

Do the stock and CDS markets price credit risk equally in the long-run?

In this paper, we examine the existence and stability of the long-run equilibrium relation between the price of credit risk in the stock and CDS markets for a sample of non-financial iTraxx Europe companies during the 2004–2017 period. We show that standard cointegration tests with no breaks frequently fail to detect cointegration. Once we formally account for the breaks in the cointegrating vector, we are able to detect cointegration over the entire sample period for the vast majority of the companies considered. An application of these results to CDS-equity trading shows that the profitability of traditional trading strategies crucially depends on the presence of cointegration and on the stability of the cointegrating vector. Finally, we find that CDS illiquidity factors decrease the likelihood of the stock and CDS market cointegration.     

SEC monitoring of foreign firms’ disclosures in the presence of foreign regulators

SEC comment letters indicate that the SEC has reviewed the firm’s filings and identified a disclosure issue. Using the existence of an SEC comment letter as a proxy for SEC monitoring, we document a negative association between the level of SEC monitoring of foreign firms and the strength of those foreign firms’ home-country institutions, consistent with the idea that the SEC implicitly shares its regulatory duties with international securities regulators. We find that foreign cross-listed firms are subject to lower monitoring intensity than foreign firms listed only on US exchanges, but do not find a statistically significant difference in monitoring between foreign firms listed only on US exchanges and US firms. These findings suggest that it is the presence of another regulator that drives the intensity of SEC monitoring. We also find that US investor holdings are positively associated with the level of SEC oversight, suggesting that the SEC focuses its resources on firms that pose a greater risk to US investors. Collectively, our analyses show that two countervailing forces drive the SEC’s choice to monitor foreign firms. On the one hand, the SEC reduces monitoring intensity when it can rely on the public and private enforcement institutions in the foreign firm’s home country. On the other hand, the SEC provides increased monitoring of certain foreign firms when investors on US exchanges have greater investment exposure in those firms.     

Does the disclosure of unsolicited sovereign rating status affect bank ratings?

This paper integrates three themes on regulation, unsolicited credit ratings, and the sovereign-bank rating ceiling. We reveal an unintended consequence of the EU rating agency disclosure rules upon rating changes, using data for S&P-rated banks in 42 countries between 2006 and 2013. The disclosure of sovereign rating solicitation status for 13 countries in February 2011 has an adverse effect on the ratings of intermediaries operating in these countries. Conversion to unsolicited sovereign rating status transmits risk to banks via the rating channel. The results suggest that banks bear a penalty if their host sovereign does not solicit its ratings.     

Shareholders’ tax incentives and changes in the organizational form of foreign operations

This study examines whether the tax incentives of home-country shareholders influence the organizational form changes of foreign operations. While a corporation and a limited company (LC) in South Korea are treated the same for Korean tax purposes, an LC can be treated as a pass-through entity for U.S. tax purposes. This tax treatment of LCs can create incentives for U.S. owners to convert their Korean corporations to LCs. We find that private corporations owned by U.S. shareholders are more likely to convert to LCs than those owned by non-U.S. shareholders. We also find that the tax costs and benefits of conversion affect the likelihood of LC conversion for U.S.-owned firms. Overall, our results suggest that multinational corporations use organizational form changes as a tool for international tax strategies.     

The determinants of Norwegian exporters’ foreign exchange risk management

Abstract

This paper examines foreign exchange (FX) hedging by Norwegian exporting firms to provide empirical evidence on the determinants of the hedging decision. The paper contributes to prior studies by, first, focusing on exporters to ensure that the companies in the sample have FX exposure, thereby allowing a more rigorous test of the theoretical determinants of hedging, and, secondly, in contrast to most previous studies that have focused on FX external hedging instruments, the use of both internal and external instruments is examined. Univariate, multivariate and multinominal analyses all provide evidence consistent with the firm value maximization hypotheses of underinvestment and risk aversion. Also, the following characteristics of firms—size, extent of internationalization and liquidity—are found to be related to the decision to hedge FX risk. However, the evidence on the links between the firm characteristics and the decision to hedge is not consistent across internal and external FX hedgers, and also varies for individual hedging instruments. Therefore it is argued that the empirical evidence on the theoretical determinants cannot be generalized to cover the full range of FX hedging strategies (which includes internal hedging instruments). Unlike empirical studies for other countries the evidence for Norwegian firms does not support the hypothesis that the avoidance of financial distress and the need to resort to external capital markets is a significant determinant of the hedging decision. Whilst the evidence suggests that country-specific factors may play a role in determining the use of FX hedging, it does not imply that the different policies adopted are necessarily inconsistent with the firm value maximization hypothesis.     

Do foreign investors improve stock price informativeness in emerging equity markets? Evidence from Vietnam

Most of previous studies on stock price informativeness tend to focus on the context of mature stock markets while this issue is more acute in emerging equity markets where regulatory and institutional structure are weak. This paper examines the relationship between foreign ownership and stock price informativeness in Vietnam stock market. We utilize a data set covering firm attributes of non-financial firms listed on the Ho Chi Minh City stock exchange over the period 2007–2015. Employing different estimation techniques for panel data, the empirical results indicate that foreign investors improve stock price informativeness in Vietnam stock market. The finding from this paper confirms the important role of foreign investors in emerging equity markets.     

Can technical trading beat the foreign exchange market in times of crisis?

I examine the profitability of three simple foreign exchange technical trading rules (moving average, momentum, and relative strength index) before, during, and after the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. These rules significantly improve profitability during the crisis (as opposed to before and after it). The moving average rule significantly increases profitability for exchange rate changes during the crisis. The momentum and relative strength index rules generate significant positive excess currency returns (defined as the difference between the forward premium and spot rate changes), but this profitability is not visible in spot rate changes. These findings are robust for portfolios of developed and emerging market currencies as well as for bilateral exchange rates.     

Australia’s equity home bias and real exchange rate volatility

The main purpose of this paper is to consider the effect of real exchange rate volatility on equity investment by Australian investors. Equity investment is of major importance to savers and investors in Australia. Also real exchange rate volatility is an important influence on Australia’s financial integration in the global economy. Analysis of the effect of real exchange rate volatility on Australia’s equity home bias is important since Australian dollar is a commodity currency. There is a close relationship between Australia’s terms of trade and real exchange rate volatility. Home bias is measured on the basis of free float-adjusted market capitalization in recognition of the fact that closely held shares are not available to ordinary investors. Real exchange rate volatility is measured by deviations from purchasing power parity on a bilateral basis between Australia and 35 countries. The cross-border equity investment data over the period 2001–2007 are from International Monetary Fund’s Coordinated Portfolio Investment Survey. Australian investors are found to invest significantly less in a country if the real exchange rate volatility of that country is relatively high (results that are robust to standard control measures and generalized method of moments).