Seasonality in Australian capital markets: Market efficiency and empirical issues

Following a report of a possible seasonal in Australian share prices [Praetz (1973)], a study was made of the behaviour of share returns using different data and methodology to that of the original report. The test included forecasts of the seasonal using Box and Jenkins methods. Although the results indicate some evidence of a seasonal, it is shown that this is not prima facie evidence of market inefficiency. It is suggested that a more likely explanation is related to the structure of the economy, e.g., changing opportunity cost of money through the year.     

Subsidiary debt,capital structure and internal capital markets

I study external debt issued by operating subsidiaries of diversified firms. Consistent with Kahn and Winton's [2004. Moral hazard and optimal subsidiary structure for financial institutions. Journal of Finance 59, 2537–2575] model, where subsidiary debt mitigates asset substitution, I find firms are more likely to use subsidiary debt when their divisions vary more in risk. Consistent with subsidiary debt mitigating the free cash flow problem, I find that subsidiaries are more likely to have their own external debt when they have fewer growth options and higher cash flow than the rest of the firm. Finally, I find that subsidiary debt mitigates the “corporate socialism” and “poaching” problems modeled in theories of internal capital markets.     

The deregulation of capital markets in France

This paper investigates how the deregulation of French capital markets affected corporate investment in the 1980s. Access to public financial markets may be less important in countries that have traditionally relied on institutional investors to finance their corporate investment projects. This should be true for France where, contrary to the US, banks and government agencies have always been involved in firms’ long term activities. In this study, French firms are categorized based on their ownership structure and trading characteristics. Two investment models are augmented with measures of corporate liquidity in order to test the role of internal funds on investment. Empirical results show that only small French firms trading on the secondary stock market have to rely on liquid assets to finance their capital expenditures. French firms with strong bank ties avoid this constraint since they are allowed to maintain higher debt levels.     

Information disclosure and the feedback effect in capital markets

Are more informative credit ratings always preferred and how should regulators intervene to promote investment efficiency? To answer these questions, we develop a model in which a manager seeks financing for a project. The main frictions are that the manager is privately informed about the project’s quality and cannot commit not to divert resources away from it. This setting gives rise to a feedback effect in which creditors’ beliefs about whether the manager diverts resources can become self-fulfilling. A critical consequence of this feedback effect is that more precise ratings can be detrimental for investment efficiency. Intuitively, by revealing that a firm is of worse quality and increasing its cost of finance, more informative ratings strengthen the manager’s incentive to withdraw resources away from the project and default. We show that the regulation of credit rating agencies should be lenient during good times and strict during bad times.     

Labor markets and capital tax competition

Ogawa et al. (J. Urban Econ. 60:350, 2006) analyze capital tax competition in a fixed-wage approach and show that the original results of Zodrow and Mieszkowski (J. Urban Econ. 19:356, 1986) are not preserved in the presence of unemployment. In the present paper, we challenge this view and investigate capital tax competition for some arbitrary institutional setting of the labor market. We find that if the labor market is characterized by some efficient bargaining solution, the results of Zodrow and Mieszkowski (J. Urban Econ. 19:356, 1986) are preserved.     

Geographical segmentation of US capital markets

Demographic variation in savings behavior can be exploited to provide evidence on segmentation in US bank loan markets. Cities with a large fraction of seniors have higher volumes of bank deposits. Since many banks rely heavily on deposit financing, this affects local loan supply and economic activity. I show a positive effect of local deposit supply on local outcomes, including the number of firms, the number of manufacturing firms, and the number of new firms started. The effect is stronger in industries that are heavily dependent on external finance. The deregulation of intrastate branching reduced the effect of local deposit supply by approximately a third.     

World markets for raising new capital

We examine the extent to which firms from different countries rely on alternative sources of capital, the locations in which they raise capital, and the factors that affect these choices. During the 1990–2001 period, firms raised about $25.3 trillion of new capital, including $4.9 trillion from abroad. International debt issuances are substantially more common than equity issuances, with debt (equity) issues accounting for 87% (9%) of all securities issued internationally, and about 20% (12%) of all public debt issuances. Market timing considerations appear to be important in security issuance decisions in most countries.     

Determinants of capital structure in emerging markets: Evidence from Vietnam

Capital structure decision is an important corporate behavior which draws strong interest from different stakeholders. It is more important in emerging markets due to their unique legal, cultural and institutional characteristics. This paper sheds further light on the question of whether capital structure determinants are different in emerging markets. We utilize a new and unique data set containing firm specific attributes over the period from 2006 to 2015. Employing GMM estimator to control for endogeneity, the results indicate that the determinants of capital structure are different for long-term and short-term indicators.     

Financial nexus: Efficiency and soundness in banking and capital markets

Based on a modified version of the model used in Corvoisier and Gropp (2002) and De Guevara et al. (2005), we argue that banks' soundness, the structural characteristics and efficiency of the banking sector along with the development of the capital markets constitute a financial nexus. For a data set of 63 developed and developing countries, we find evidences that efficiency significantly modulates the linkages between concentration and soundness. We also find that capital markets' development supports a stable evolution in banking sector. For the relationship between capital markets and soundness, our findings appear to be robust for various measures of the considered variables as well as for different estimation techniques. Regarding the impact of the concentration upon soundness, the results obtained display a certain sensitivity about the way concentration is measured.     

Risk taking and taxation in complete capital markets

In general equilibrium, with complete conventional securities markets and endogenous asset supply, taxes on risk remuneration are ineffective but harmless. They do not alter the real allocation of goods or the distribution of wealth, they impose no excess burden, and, in particular, have no impact on risk taking.     

Factor-product markets and firm's capital structure: A literature review

We present an overview of the literature that links capital structure and factor-product markets. These studies relate some elements of the modern financial theory to the stakeholder theory, industrial organization, and firms' strategic management. Three main points are highlighted. First, the relevant role of non-financial stakeholders in capital structure design. Second, the interactions between capital structure and market structure. Third, the two-direction effect between the firm's capital structure and its strategic behavior in product markets. Our study aims to build an index for the existing works to guide researchers for new ideas and possible advances.     

Dismantling internal capital markets via spinoff: effects on capital allocation efficiency and firm valuation

We investigate the linkage between changes in firm value and changes in capital allocation efficiency resulting from dismantling internal capital markets via spinoffs. We find no evidence of wholesale misallocation of capital pre-spinoff. On the average, excess value increases following spinoffs. Furthermore, changes in excess value are positively linked to changes in capital allocational efficiency following spinoff. We find that spinoff announcement returns are greater (smaller) when the parent allocates capital to the unit to be spun off in a seemingly less (more) efficient manner. Divested division capital expenditures move toward industry levels after spinoff, regardless of their relative investment opportunities.     

Efficiency and the programs to develop capital markets : The Brazilian experience

Recent studies suggest that the main avenue to obtain benefits of international portfolio diversification would be direct portfolio investments in the domestic securities of the various countries. There are many barriers to such investments, the most important being the nature of foreign capital markets. Given the potential for attracting foreign portfolio investments and more efficient mobilization of indigenous resources, many less developed countries (LDCs) have embarked upon programs to develop their local capital markets. Among LDCs, the Brazilian effort stands out as the most innovative and systematic. The efforts to develop the Brazilian market have been quite successful with positive effect on the mobilization and allocation of resources. It also exhibits the institutional- and other characteristics associated with developed markets. Further, the Sao Paulo exchange seems to be at least as efficient as most of the European markets. Unfortunately, the apparent shift since 1975 in government policy toward public sector dominance in the domestic savings transfer process may reverse the market development process.     

Investment decisions and internal capital markets: Evidence from acquisitions

In this paper, we examine the workings of internal capital markets in diversified firms that engage in related and unrelated corporate acquisitions. Our evidence indicates that bidders invest outside their core business (diversify) when the cash flows of their core business fall behind those of their non-core lines of business. However, bidders invest inside their core business (i.e., undertake non-diversifying investments) when their core business experiences superior cash flows. We also find that bidders whose core business are in industries with low growth prospects engage in diversifying acquisitions while bidders whose core business are in high growth industries undertake non-diversifying acquisitions. The pre-acquisition evidence, then, suggests that firms tend to diversify when the cash flows and the growth opportunities of their core business are considerably lower than those of their non-core business. Subsequent to acquisitions we find that diversifying bidders continue to allocate financial resources from less profitable business segments (i.e., core business) to more profitable business segments (i.e., non-core business). Given the low profitability of diversifying bidders’ core business, this capital resource allocation suggests that diversification increases do not result in capital allocation inefficiencies. The evidence for non-diversifying bidders, however, supports the existence of “corporate socialism” in the sense that there is transfer of funds from the profitable (core) to the less profitable (non-core) business segments in multi-segment bidders. We find that the capital expenditures of bidders’ non-core business segments rely on both core and non-core cash flows.     

Internal capital markets and employee wage: Evidence from China

The existing literature mainly focuses on the economic consequences of the internal capital market at firm level, while rarely literatures explore the effect on individual perspective. Based on manually collected data of the internal capital market from 2007 to 2018 in Chinese business groups, we examined whether and how internal capital market affects the employee wage. We find that internal capital market can add the employees wage. Further, the mechanism analysis shows that internal capital market can improve the employees wage by reducing operating risks, improving capital intensity and alleviating financing constraints. Heterogeneity analysis shows that this effect is more significant for private enterprises. This paper provides useful guideline for the improvement of employee's welfare and then benefit for enhance firm productivity.     

Venture capital investment cycles: The impact of public markets

It is well documented that the venture capital industry is highly volatile and that much of this volatility is associated with shifting valuations and activity in public equity markets. This paper examines how changes in public market signals affected venture capital investing between 1975 and 1998. We find that venture capitalists with the most industry experience increase their investments the most when public market signals become more favorable. Their reaction to an increase is greater than the reaction of venture capital organizations with relatively little industry experience and those with considerable experience but in other industries. The increase in investment rates does not affect the success of these transactions adversely to a significant extent. These findings are consistent with the view that venture capitalists rationally respond to attractive investment opportunities signaled by public market shifts.     

The internal workings of internal capital markets: Cross-country evidence

We derive empirical predictions from the standard investment-cash flow framework on the functioning of internal capital markets (ICM), but circumvent its criticism by focusing on parent cash flow and investment opportunities. We test these predictions using a unique dataset of parent firms and their listed and unlisted subsidiaries in 90 countries over the period 1995–2006. We find that company and country institutional structures matter. (1) Ownership participation of the parent firm in the subsidiary plays a crucial role for the proper functioning of ICMs. The larger the ownership stake of the parent, the better the functioning of the ICM. (2) The best functioning cross-border ICMs can be found in the sub-sample of firms with parents from a country with “strong” institutions and subsidiaries from a country with “weak” institutions. (3) Unlisted subsidiaries are much more dependent on the ICMs their parents provide than listed subsidiaries. Thus, ICMs are not per se “bright” or “dark”, their proper functioning depends on how they are set up.     

Internal control and internal capital allocation: evidence from internal capital markets of multi-segment firms

We investigate the impact of internal control over financial reporting on management decisions in directing corporate resources to alternative investment projects in multi-segment firms. Results from cross-sectional and inter-temporal analyses indicate that internal control weaknesses (ICWs) are associated with distortionary internal capital allocations. The adverse impact on internal capital markets is more pronounced for firms with company-level ICWs. Our analyses also show that firms with weak existing governance mechanisms benefit more from maintaining effective internal control. We further document that the negative impact of ICWs on firms’ internal capital transfers manifests in a lower excess value of diversification.     

World capital markets and Finnish stock returns

The paper explores issues related to time-varying global equity market integration from a Finnish perspective. Finland is an interesting market since profound economic changes and financial deregulation have taken place since the mid-1980s. Using Finnish firm size ranked portfolios and a conditional four-factor asset pricing model, several restrictions on asset behaviour are examined. It is found that a proxy for changing market integration — lagged foreign equity ownership — has a significant impact on the relative importance of local and global risk factors. Significant differences are found between the pricing of shares that were freely-available to all (unrestricted shares) and domestic investors only (restricted shares). Results also suggest that major capital market reforms profoundly affect the degree of market integration, but local risk factors do not become redundant.