Do Corporate Site Visits Impact Stock Prices?

We examine the stock price impact of corporate site visits using a unique data set of site visits to listed firms in China. Our main findings are as follows. First, the market reaction around corporate site visits is statistically and economically significant and is stronger for group visits, visits conducted by mutual fund managers, visits covering accounting and finance topics, visits to firms with poor information environments, and visits to manufacturing firms. Second, the stock returns around site visits are positively associated with firms’ future performance. Third, the changes in visiting funds’ holdings are more predictive of firms’ future performance than those of nonvisiting funds. Overall, this study contributes to the literature by providing evidence that site visits are important venues for investors to collect information about firms and make informed trades.     

Do Capital Inflows Matter to Asset Prices? The Case of Korea*

In the present paper, we investigate whether capital flows induce domestic asset price hikes in the case of Korea. This issue is relevant for crisis‐hit economies trying to prevent a boom–bust cycle as well as in the formulation of macroeconomic policy objectives in emerging market economies. Korea has recently experienced large capital inflows, in particular a surge in portfolio inflows. Furthermore, asset prices, including stock prices, land prices and nominal and real exchange rates, have also appreciated. The empirical results, obtained using a vector autoregression model, suggest that capital inflow shocks have caused stock prices but not land prices to increase. The effects on the nominal and real exchange rates have been limited, which relates to the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves.     

Do Investors Respond to Explanatory Language Included in Unqualified Audit Reports?

This article investigates whether investors respond to explanatory language (EL) added to unqualified audit reports. Although prior research finds an association between auditor EL and lower financial reporting quality, surveys suggest that many investors limit their attention to the unqualified nature of the opinion. We use three‐day abnormal returns and abnormal trading volume to measure investor response to EL in unqualified audit reports issued from 2000 to 2014. We find little evidence to indicate that investors respond to auditor EL at the audit report release date. In further analyses, we find that the lack of investor response is attributable both to incomplete investor reactions (55 percent of EL occurrences) and previous incorporation of EL (40 percent of EL occurrences). Overall, the results support policymakers’ initiatives to improve the usefulness of unqualified audit reports.     

How should Central Banks Respond to Non-neutral Inflation Expectations?

This paper investigates the net real inflation effect on output in ten countries, comprising both advanced and developing countries. An indicator is introduced to compute the net inflation effect on output (NIEO) based on the difference between two concepts of core inflation, where both are computed using the decomposition of VAR residuals. We find that for all countries, when inflation is increasing the NIEO is significantly positive and is negative during periods of decreasing inflation. Typically, countries which follow anti-inflationary policies if the NIEO is of small magnitude suffer relatively minimal damage in output, whereas if the same policies are undertaken when the NIEO is large the damaging effects on output could be much greater. This suggests that the NIEO could be a useful indicator of the likely effects of policy, especially for countries which have frequent episodes of high inflation, and in those countries which employ inflation-targeting policy, as the timing of monetary policy actions could be optimized to take account of this real effect of inflation.     

Do small firms compete with large firms?

Despite the pervasive phenomenon of scale economies, the majority of firms have always been small firms. The emergence of small firms as a means of economic development on both sides of the Atlantic has been one of the major new topics of economic policy since the 1980s. This has drawn renewed attention to the question: How are small firms able to exist? The theories of strategic niches and dynamic complementarity imply that small firms seek out markets where they are able to avoid competition with their larger counterparts. This paper tests the validity of these theories by examining the extent to which small-firm profitability is set by large-firm profitability. Considerable evidence shows that the price-cost margins of small firms do not tend to follow those of large firms. This supports the theory that small firms pursue a strategy of producing in distinct product niches.     

How Do Audit Offices Respond to Audit Fee Pressure? Evidence of Increased Focus on Nonaudit Services and their Impact on Audit Quality

We investigate whether audit offices respond to audit fee pressure by increasing their focus on nonaudit services (NAS), as well as the combined effect of audit fee pressure and an increased focus on NAS on audit quality. We find a positive association between audit fee pressure and changes in NAS at the audit office level. We also find increased rates of client misstatement among audit offices that increase focus on NAS in the presence of audit fee pressure compared to audit offices that do not, suggesting a joint effect on audit quality. We find that the reduction in audit quality occurs in large audit offices. Overall, we provide evidence that audit offices’ provision of additional NAS in the presence of fee pressure is an important dimension to consider when examining the effects of declining audit fees on audit quality.     

Do shocks to animal spirits cause output fluctuations?

We evaluate whether shocks to “animal spirits” affect real outcomes at business cycle frequencies, using data on consumer confidence and region- and state-level coincident activity indexes in a vector autoregression (VAR) with long run restrictions. We assume that animal spirits shocks do not affect the long run level of activity. Innovations in fundamentals explain most variation in the level of activity, but animal spirits have economically significant effects at business cycle frequencies. A positive innovation in animal spirits causes real activity to rise by between 0.2 and 0.6% in the medium term, and animal spirits may explain up to about half of real fluctuations in the medium run.     

Do local firms employ political activities to respond to political uncertainty?

Using hand-collected data in China from 2001 to 2019, we examine how political uncertainty affects corporate political activities, including corporate corruption and corporate charitable donations, and whether the anti-corruption campaign moderates the relationship between political uncertainty and corporate political activities. First, we find that when city government officials change, local firms significantly increase corporate charitable donations while reducing corporate corruption. Second, the anti-corruption campaign strengthens the effects of political uncertainty on corporate political activities. Third, our results also show that political uncertainty has stronger effects 1) when new government officials come from external appointments, and 2) when former government officials experience abnormal turnover. In addition, the effects of political uncertainty on corporate charitable donations are stronger in non-state-owned enterprises and firms belonging to regulated industries. Finally, political uncertainty increases firms’ government subsidies through corporate political activities. It’s clear that political activities have mediating effects.     

What to Target? Inflation or Exchange Rate

This study empirically compares, for the first time, the popular exchange‐rate–targeting regime with the recently emerged inflation‐targeting framework in developing countries. Applying a variety of propensity score matching methods and dynamic panel generalized method of moments (GMM) regressions to a sample of 50 developing countries for the years 1990–2006, we find strong and robust evidence that, compared to exchange‐rate targeting, inflation targeting leads to a significantly lower inflation rate, and the lower inflation rate does not come at a cost of slower growth.     

Do trade agreements increase Vietnam's exports to RCEP markets?

The paper reviews recent developments in trade relations between Vietnam and members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) agreement, and analyses the impacts on Vietnam's exports of tariff reductions in RCEP trading partners. The margin of tariff preferences is adopted as a proxy for the degree of trade liberalisation and a gravity model is used to assess the impacts of the tariff preferences under the AFTA and ASEAN+1 FTAs on Vietnam's major exports. The results show that the effects of tariff preferences differ between the types of preferences and products. The FTA tariff preferences do not exert a stimulating effect on the export of agricultural products but they have positive effects on several manufacturing exports such as garments and footwear.     

Do oligopolistic firms benefit from being forced to act non-strategically?

The present study seeks to answer the question of whether acting non-strategically can benefit firms. In a static Cournot framework, if a subset of firms are constrained to the equilibrium level of output, being non-strategic will have no impact on profits of neither constrained nor strategic firms and provided that sufficiently large number of firms are restricted, a marginal quantity contraction can be to their benefit. In contrast, using a dynamic Cournot framework, we find that the constraint set at the equilibrium level or moderately deviated from it, leads to increased profits for all firms irrespective of the number of non-strategic ones.     

Live or Let Die? Alternative Routes to Industry Exit

Each year around 8% of Swedish manufacturing firms leave an industry. Of the exit routes available, the least likely is firm closure. Firms are more likely to merge, become acquired or switch to a new industry. We investigate the importance of a range of firm and industry characteristics for the exit decision of Swedish firms from 1980–1996. From our analysis two patterns are evident. First, firms that close down appear to be the most distinct compared to those that remain within the sector. Second the same characteristics can have quite different associations with different exit strategies.

What Do OECD Countries Cut First When Faced with Fiscal Adjustments?

Following the present scale of fiscal imbalances in developed countries, significant fiscal consolidation will be inevitable in the coming years. Fiscal discipline will require cuts in government expenditure, leading to trade‐offs between different components of government expenditure. In this article, we explore the relationship between components of government expenditure and government size during the period 1970‐2007 for a sample of 25 developed countries to shed light on how fiscal discipline might influence public spending composition in the coming years. Using the Pooled Mean Group estimation we find that fiscal adjustments protect functions that have both a social and productive character, such as education and health spending. In addition, the most productive spending, that related to transport and communications, is also isolated from budgetary cuts. This result shows evidence of governments reacting to the voter's increasing realization that reducing productive expenditures harms long‐term economic growth by striking a balance between utility and economic‐growth‐enhancing expenditure.