Conservatism, growth, and return on investment

Return on Investment (ROI) is widely regarded as a key measure of firm profitability. The accounting literature has long recognized that ROI will generally not reflect economic profitability, as determined by the internal rate of return (IRR) of a firm’s investment projects. In particular, it has been noted that accounting conservatism may result in an upward bias of ROI, relative to the underlying IRR. We examine both theoretically and empirically the behavior of ROI as a function of two variables: past growth in new investments and accounting conservatism. Higher growth is shown to result in lower levels of ROI provided the accounting is conservative, while the opposite is generally true for liberal accounting policies. Conversely, more conservative accounting will increase ROI provided growth in new investments has been “moderate” over the relevant horizon, while the opposite is true if new investments grew at sufficiently high rates. Taken together, we find that conservatism and growth are “substitutes” in their joint impact on ROI.     

The optimal trade-off between interest rate risk and annual return of bond ladders

Bond laddering is a popular fixed-income investment strategy. The main purpose of this paper is to develop a methodology for determining private investors’ most interest rate risk (IRR)-return-efficient investment horizon for bond ladders (BLs), which are virtually free of credit risk. Two IRR measures of a continuously rolling and homogenous BL (CRHBL) are analytically derived under the assumption that interest rates are martingales. The first measure is the modified duration, which assumes a flat term structure of interest rates. However, this assumption is not fully supported by the empirical data and, thus, an additional IRR measure is proposed. Under each of these two measures, the ratios between the annual return in excess of the demand deposit rate and IRR of CRHBLs with different investment horizons are calculated. As expected, CRHBLs with rather low IRR are most risk-return-efficient. The results for the theoretical CRHBLs also apply to “real-world” discrete BLs. Thus, the proposed methodology can help private investors construct IRR-return-efficient discrete BLs.     

EXPONENTIAL DURATION: A MORE ACCURATE ESTIMATION OF INTEREST RATE RISK

We develop a new method to estimate the interest rate risk of an asset. This method is based on modified duration and is always more accurate than traditional estimation with modified duration. The estimates by this method are close to estimates using traditional duration plus convexity when interest rates decrease. If interest rates rise, investors will suffer larger value declines than predicted by traditional duration plus convexity estimate. The new method avoids this undesirable value overestimation and provides an estimate slightly below the true value. For risk‐averse investors, overestimation of value declines is more desirable and conservative.     

What is an Investment Project's Implied Rate of Return?

How to measure a project's implied rate of return has long been an unresolved problem, except for some special cases. This paper derives return on present cost (ROPC) as the correct measure of an investment project's implied rate of return. The IRR is a biased measure except for projects classified as simple projects, and this bias is likely to be substantial in many real‐world applications. Thus while net present values should be used to determine whether to accept/reject projects, I recommend that analysts use ROPC in place of the IRR as a measure of a project's true rate of return.     

Pension risk and corporate investment distortion

Failure to correct for pension risk leads to upward-biased discount rate estimates in firms with pension risk exposure. The result is a negative and economically significant relation between pension risk and corporate investment. The effect is confined to investment decisions that require discount rate estimates. Moreover, it is stronger if project value is more sensitive to such estimates. Because of this bias, firms miss valuable investment opportunities. The results survive robustness tests that address endogeneity concerns and alternative interpretations of the evidence. The general implication is that non-operating risks can distort, if ignored, corporate investment decisions.     

Pricing default swaps: Empirical evidence

In this paper we compare market prices of credit default swaps with model prices. We show that a simple reduced form model outperforms directly comparing bonds' credit spreads to default swap premiums. We find that the model yields unbiased premium estimates for default swaps on investment grade issuers, but only if we use swap or repo rates as proxy for default-free interest rates. This indicates that the government curve is no longer seen as the reference default-free curve. We also show that the model is relatively insensitive to the value of the assumed recovery rate.     

The Irrelevance of Capital Structure for the Impact of Inflation on Investment

Studies concerning the effect of inflation on firms' investment decisions suggest that the form of financing is relevant in assessing the effect of inflation on investment. This paper demonstrates that when the equilibrium relationship between market rates of return on bonds and stocks is considered, the effect of inflation on investment is independent of the capital structure. The paper also shows that when the ‘Fisher effect’ is assumed to hold, the cut-off rate of return on investment declines with anticipated inflation independently of the financing. However, if the real interest rate rises with inflation, inflation may increase the cut-off rate.     

Effects of corporate tax reform on optimum debt maturity

This study investigates effects of selecting maturity years on investment decisions. Ceteris paribus an optimum debt maturity (ODM) maximising net present value exists and its change correlates positively with corporate tax rates but negatively with real interest rates, while its relationship with inflation rate is conditional. Furthermore depreciation does not matter at all. A model simulation carried out for seven selected EU countries demonstrates the most significant role of real interest rate for determining ODM in the period of 1981–2004. Yet corporate tax rate will gain in importance since interest and inflation rates are more rapidly converging in the EMU.     

Ins and Outs of Unemployment in Turkey

This paper analyzes rates of inflow to and outflow from unemployment for Turkey. From 2006 to 2011, the average rate of exiting unemployment (outflow) within a month was 9.5 percent, the average rate of entering unemployment from out of the labor force was 0.1 percent, and the average rate of transiting from employment to unemployment was 1.1 percent. This paper decomposes changes in unemployment into contributions from inflow and outflow rates, revealing that the volatility of inflow rates is the main driving force of the change in the unemployment rate in Turkey. It also shows that incorporating monthly changes in the labor force into the analysis, as opposed to assuming a constant labor force, affects the results quantitatively.     

International evidence on misspecification of the standard money demand equation

This paper tests the proposition that the interest rate in the standard money demand equation acts as a proxy for the expected change in interest rates. If this is true, the interest elasticity in the standard equation will depend on the expectations process for interest rates. Using cross-country data, we find that there does exist a relationship between the observed interest elasticity in the standard equation and the predictability of future interest rates from current interest rates.     

Implications of Social Security Reform on Interest Rates: Theory and Evidence

This article investigates the potential effect that Social Security reform may have on bond and equity returns. We specifically focus on the effect of proposals to shift a portion of the investment of the U.S. Social Security Trust Fund to the equities market. Models are developed to demonstrate the relationship between returns and both the relative size of the Social Security Trust Fund and the portfolio allocation of the Trust Fund. Using these two models, we then show that interest rates will increase from either a decrease in the size of the Social Security Trust Fund or a shifting in the investment mix from bonds to equities. We derive an adjustment factor that relates the magnitude of change in interest rates from either source and use this adjustment factor in conjunction with estimates of the relationship between government debt and interest rates to forecast the potential effect on interest rates from shifting part of the Trust Fund to the equity market. The estimates herein suggest that investing some of the Social Security funds in equities is not a painless cure‐all for the Social Security system and may even have some adverse effects in terms of income transfers from American taxpayers to foreign bondholders.     

Correlated interest rate risk and funding strategies for nonfinancial firms

This paper considers appropriate funding strategies for nonfinancial firms when operating cash flows are correlated with interest rates. An example expression is provided for the optimal funding position when the firm has a two-period investment horizon. The conclusion is that matching will be the best strategy if the unbiased expectations hypothesis of the term structure holds and operating cash flows are uncorrelated with interest rates. Since the optimal funding position will be the minimum-risk one if the expectations hypothesis holds, the properties of the minimum-risk funding strategy are also investigated. The primary result is that maturity matching will not necessarily be the optimal funding strategy even when, on average, the cost of long- and short-term funds is the same. Finally, some empirical estimates of minimum risk funding positions for nonfinancial firms are provided using data from the Quarterly CompuStat files. The data indicate that changes in corporate operating earnings are, on average, significantly positively correlated with changes in short-term interest rates, but that there is substantial cross-sectional variation across companies in our sample.     

On Testing the Assumptions of the Cash Recovery Rate Approach to the Estimation of Economic Performance

The first purpose of this paper is to investigate the necessary (as opposed to sufficient) assumptions underlying the CRR approach to the estimation of corporate economic performance. By so doing, the general circumstances in which an estimate of corporate economic performance based on CRRs will exactly equal a firm's IRR are identified. It is pointed out that these necessary assumptions are related to the concept of corporate economic performance being invoked (within the general idea that we are trying to estimate a firm's internal rate of return). Second, there is a drawing out of the empirical implications, as to the behaviour of corporate cash flows and CRRs, of the necessary assumptions for the CRR approach to produce an estimate of economic performance equal to a firm's IRR for each of these definitions of corporate economic performance. In particular, it is argued that these empirical implications depend upon the specific manner in which the CRR approach is applied in practice. A third purpose of the paper is to provide some empirical evidence as to whether an example of the practice of using the CRR approach employs data consistent with the necessary assumptions for this particular approach to be valid outlined in the paper. In fact, it turns out that this might not be the case. The evidence casts light on the extent to which CRR-based estimates of corporate economic performance are likely to be reasonable proxies of firms' IRRs.     

The impact of duration on management's discount rate choice

Previous research finds that firms increase their assumed discount rates to minimize their reported pension benefit obligation. This paper demonstrates that firms whose pension plans have short durations lower their discount rates (rather than increase them), since a lower discount rate decreases their pension expense. These results are especially relevant in the present climate of low interest rates and more firms freezing their defined benefit pension plans, thereby shortening the duration of their obligations. Given its importance in shaping management motivation we believe that firms should be required to disclose the duration of their future obligations.     

中国信贷市场利率与经济波动:2004-2010

本文基于VAR和VEC模型对我国信贷市场利率与经济波动的关系进行实证分析。研究结果表明:(1)投资、消费对于信贷市场利率的冲击处于负的脉冲响应,投资的响应更显著。投资、消费对信贷市场利率的影响非常有限。(2)投资波动对产出波动起主要作用;产出对投资波动和消费波动的影响程度有限;(3)信贷市场利率与投资、消费、产出之间存在长期均衡关系。基于这些分析结论,文章提出若干政策建议。     

A simplified approach to measuring bond duration

Because interest rates vary over time, the realized return on a fixed-income investment will depend on the price at which the instrument is ultimately liquidated and the rate at which interim cash flows are reinvested. This variation in realized return, known as interest-rate risk, should be addressed by both individual and institutional investors. Tools for measuring the impact and adjusting for the effects of interest rate changes on fixed-income instrument performance have long been available with duration and its companion adjustment factor, convexity. In this article, a simplified alternative to the traditional complex duration calculation is developed and demonstrated. Thus, anyone who can calculate a bond price can quickly estimate the interest rate risk associated with a bond as well as calculate the expected bond price change for a given change in market yield-to-maturity.     

汇率敏感性会影响企业贷款利率吗？——基于中国上市公司的分析

本文基于中国A股上市公司2009-2018年的数据,测算了企业价值对人民币汇率变动的敏感性。在此基础上,实证检验了汇率敏感性(企业价值对汇率变动的敏感程度)对企业贷款利率的影响和作用机制。研究发现:汇率敏感性与企业贷款利率之间显著正相关,且这种关系在拥有境外收入、境外投资和使用外汇衍生品的公司中更加显著。进一步分析发现,对于存在密切银企关系、较大的股东债权人利益冲突以及抵押品价值较低的企业,汇率敏感性与贷款利率之间的正相关关系更加显著。本文研究结果表明,随着我国市场化改革的进一步深化,贷款利率将会更加显著地反映企业的汇率敏感性特征。这种效应对于存在海外业务、银行更了解借款公司信息,以及违约可能性更高的公司更加明显。本文研究对于增强我国企业应对汇率风险能力,完善金融机构风险定价能力,引导金融机构服务实体企业具有一定参考意义。     

含期权债券利率风险的衡量

久期(Duration)和凸度(Convexity)是度量普通债券利率风险的常用指标。含权债券中内嵌的期权会改变债券价格变动和利率变动的关系,使债券面临更大的利率风险,但常用的久期和凸度无法体现这一影响。实际久期和实际凸度可以弥补这一缺陷,是衡量含权债券利率风险的有效指标。对国家开发银行发行的可赎回债券和可回售债券的模拟和实证分析表明,由于内嵌了期权,在有些情况下实际凸度解释了大部分的利率风险,因此建议在投资中使用实际久期和实际凸度来衡量含权债券的利率风险,而且在利率比较高或比较低时不可忽略实际凸度对利率风险的解释作用。     

A Risk Minimizing Strategy for Portfolio Immunization

Consider a fixed-income portfolio whose duration is equal to the length of a given investment horizon. It is shown that there is a lower limit on the change in the end-of-horizon value of the portfolio resulting from any given change in the structure of interest rates. This lower limit is the product of two terms, of which one is a function of the interest rate change only, and the other depends only on the structure of the portfolio. Consequently, this second term provides a measure of immunization risk. If this measure is minimized, the exposure of the portfolio to any interest rate change is the lowest.     

人民币汇率波动如何影响中国企业的对外直接投资?

基于2005-2017 "中国全球投资跟踪数据库"的对外投资微观数据,本文考察人民币汇率波动的不确定性对中国企业对外直接投资的影响。研究发现:人民币汇率波动的增加,不仅减少了中国企业对外直接投资的可能性,也抑制了投资规模,这一结果在考虑内生性问题、样本选择性偏差、不同的汇率波动指标等一系列问题后仍然稳健。基于手工搜集的企业年报数据,研究发现,企业前期的套期保值行为,可以有效规避汇率风险,弱化汇率波动对企业对外投资的抑制作用。进一步研究显示,汇率波动对中国企业对外投资的影响有明显的异质性,投资于不同行业、不同国家的企业以及不同投资方式的企业对人民币汇率波动的反应各异,这又与中国现阶段对外投资的一些独特特征有关。本文研究为汇率波动影响中国企业的对外直接投资行为提供了微观层面的证据。