Exchange traded funds: leverage and liquidity

This paper examines the differences between leveraged and unleveraged Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), particularly for liquidity and volatility characteristics. The impact of leverage on intraday liquidity (spread and depth) is analysed in two periods – one of normal volatility and the other of abnormal/high volatility. There is a significant difference in spread and depth of leveraged and unleveraged ETFs in periods of both normal volatility and high volatility; however, this difference is more pronounced in higher volatility periods. In high volatility periods, liquidity typically diminishes in all ETFs, and this is even more so for the leveraged ETFs. When leveraged ETFs are segregated into multiples based on their power to replicate the underlying benchmark (i.e. multiples of ?3, ?2, ?1, 2, 3), the difference in spreads between normal and high volatility periods is typically larger. The double-leveraged ETF has the most significant difference between the positive and negative counter parts. However, the relationship in the progression of the multiples does not change linearly to correspond with the level of volatility. This may be due to the nonlinear relation between volume and volatility. We shed light on the magnification effect of financial leverage on microstructure of the ETFs.     

Why does bad news increase volatility and decrease leverage?

A recent literature shows how an increase in volatility reduces leverage. However, in order to explain pro-cyclical leverage it assumes that bad news increases volatility, that is, it assumes an inverse relationship between first and second moments of asset returns. This paper suggests a reason why bad news is more often than not associated with higher future volatility. We show that, in a model with endogenous leverage and heterogeneous beliefs, agents have the incentive to invest mostly in technologies that become more volatile in bad times. Agents choose these technologies because they can be leveraged more during normal times. Together with the existing literature this explains pro-cyclical leverage. The result also gives a rationale to the pattern of volatility smiles observed in stock options since 1987. Finally, the paper presents for the first time a dynamic model in which an asset is endogenously traded simultaneously at different margin requirements in equilibrium.     

Capital structure and corporate governance quality: Evidence from the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS)

Grounded in agency theory, this study explores how capital structure is influenced by aggregate corporate governance quality. We measure governance quality using broad-based comprehensive governance metrics provided by the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). The empirical evidence reveals a robust inverse association between leverage and governance quality. Firms with poor governance are significantly more leveraged. It appears that leverage substitutes for corporate governance in alleviating agency conflicts. Further, we utilize empirical methods that control for endogeneity and show that poor governance quality likely brings about, and does not merely reflect, higher leverage. Our results are important as they show that the overall quality of corporate governance has a material impact on critical corporate decisions such as capital structure choices.     

财务杠杆对公司成长性影响的实证研究

本文认为财务杠杆对公司成长性具有积极、消极双重影响.鉴于现有文献中财务杠杆对公司成长性的消极作用,本文选取1998-2001年深沪两市2798个混合样本作为研究对象,研究上市公司在不同经营业绩条件下财务杠杆对成长性的影响.研究结果表明,与国内外已有的研究结果不同,不同经营业绩下公司财务杠杆对成长性的影响作用存在差异.对于业绩优良的公司,财务杠杆具有积极作用,举债经营可以促进公司的成长,而且,随着公司业绩的增强,财务杠杆所起的积极作用更为显著;对于业绩较差的公司,财务杠杆具有消极作用,财务杠杆对成长性有一定的抑制作用.     

基于二项分布的“杠杆效应”以及实例分析

类似于物理学的"杠杆原理"和经济学的"杠杆效应",在概率统计学中也同样存在将微小变化不断放大,最终可能出现极端值的"杠杆作用"。以二项分布X~B(n,p)为例探讨了统计中的杠杆效应,并分别以社会、生活等方面的实例,具体论述阐明这一规律,从实践中得到启发与深思。     

Impact of Leverage on Investment by Major Shareholders: Evidence from Listed Firms in China

In this paper, we analyze whether leverage had impacts on investment in the period 1999–2009, and whether these impacts, if they exist, differed among companies with different investment opportunities and with different major shareholders. In order to identify governance with different major shareholders, we grouped China’s listed firms into central government owned firms (CSOEs), local government owned firms (LSOEs) and non-state-owned firms (NONSOEs). Our results are as follows. First, our analysis reveals that leverage does have significantly negative impacts on CSOE, LSOE and NONSOE investments. Secondly, in LSOEs and NONSOEs, negative leverage impacts on low-growth firms are stronger than average firms, implying that a disciplinary effect of leverage over investment can be found in LSOEs and NONSOEs. Finally, however, no such effect can be observed in CSOEs. We have provided a first finding that the effect of leverage varies according to a firm’s major shareholders.     

Empirical Evidence of the Leverage Effect in a Stochastic Volatility Model: A Realized Volatility Approach

Increasing attention has been focused on the analysis of the realized volatility, which can be treated as a proxy for the true volatility. In this paper, we study the potential use of the realized volatility as a proxy in a stochastic volatility model estimation. We estimate the leveraged stochastic volatility model using the realized volatility computed from five popular methods across six sampling-frequency transaction data (from 1-min to 60- min) based on the trust region method. Availability of the realized volatility allows us to estimate the model parameters via the MLE and thus avoids computational challenge in the high dimensional integration. Six stock indices are considered in the empirical investigation. We discover some consistent findings and interesting patterns from the empirical results. In general, the significant leverage effect is consistently detected at each sampling frequency and the volatility persistence becomes weaker at the lower sampling frequency.     

The crisis,Fed, Quants and stochastic optimal control

The Dodd–Frank (D–F) Financial Reform Bill authorizes the Federal Reserve to monitor the financial services marketplace to identify potential threats to the stability of the US financial system. Alan Greenspan's retrospective indicates what he has learned from the crisis. He argues that the crisis, the housing price bubble, was unpredictable and unavoidable. Greenspan now focuses on desirable capital requirements, or leverage, for banks and financial intermediaries. I explain why the Fed's and Greenspan's views stem from a lack of the appropriate tools of analysis of what is an excessive debt or leverage. The Quants who devised the highly leveraged financial derivatives ignored systemic risk.My theme is that the application of stochastic optimal control (SOC) is an effective approach to implement what the D–F bill is authorizing. I explain: first, what is the optimal capital requirement/leverage that balances expected return against risk. Second, what is a theoretically derived early warning signal of a crisis. Third, I derive an excess debt ratio, equal to the difference between the actual and optimal ratios. The probability of a debt crisis is directly related to the excess debt ratio. The excess debt ratio starting from 2004–05 indicated that a crisis was most likely. The Fed should use this SOC analysis in implementing the Dodd–Frank bill.     

The Influence of Financial Factors on Corporate Investment

Abstract
Recent theoretical developments have shown that cash flows and the structure of a firm's balance sheet may have an important influence on investment. Establishing a link between cash flows, leverage and investment provides insights into the way that monetary policy and cyclical factors more generally influence the corporate sector. If cash flows are an important determinant of investment then changes in monetary policy (by changing interest rates) will influence investment through a cash flow effect as well as through altering the rate at which the returns to investment are discounted. If this is the case, the higher leverage of the corporate sector implies, other things being equal, that monetary policy may have a larger impact on investment than in the past .
In this article we use panel-data analysis to examine the impact of financial factors on investment decisions of firms in the Australian corporate sector. We find strong support for the influence of financial factors on investment decisions. Leverage, internally generated cash flows, and the stock of cash and liquid financial assets are all important influences on investment behaviour, particularly for smaller firms, highly leveraged firms, and firms with high retention ratios .     

基于GARCH模型对人民币汇率波动的实证研究

本文建立了人民币汇率波动的GARCH族模型,实证检验了汇率制度改革以来人民币汇率波动的特征。结果显示,2005年7月21日至今,人民币的汇率收益具有显著的左厚尾特征;汇率的波动并不服从正态分布,具有集聚性;并且人民币的波动具有记忆性,随时间变化不会衰减;通过TGARCH模型的实证结果显示,人民币的汇率波动存在一定的杠杆效应,人民币汇率还不具备浮动汇率的特征。根据分析,本文认为杠杆效应的存在源自于汇率升值的单向预期,给出以下建议：通过有节奏的汇率市场化改革,以及改善国际收支双顺差,减少对升值的单向预期;央行对汇率的波动适当控制;培育人民币汇率衍生市场,增加进出口贸易企业规避汇率风险的金融产品;增加对附加值高的出口企业非汇率贸易政策支持。     

Capital structure in South Korea: a quantile regression approach

Knowledge of how South Korean firms choose their capital structures has particular value due to the country's specific corporate structure and the role of leverage in the evolution of its financial crisis of 1997 and recovery. Using a large panel for the years 1992–2001, we investigate the evolution and determinants of Korean firms' capital structure and focus on differences between firms in different quantiles of the debt–capital distribution. Conditional quantile regressions show that while variables associated with standard models of asymmetric information costs are significant throughout the distribution, there are considerable differences, including differences in sign, in their impact on firms with different degrees of leverage. Those observed nonlinearities in the determinants of capital structure are consistent with a model of capital structure that includes both costs resulting from asymmetric information and an upper bound on the debt–capital ratio.     

Asymmetry and leverage in GARCH models: a News Impact Curve perspective

Models for conditional heteroskedasticity belonging to the GARCH class are now common tools in many economics and finance applications. Among the many possible competing univariate GARCH models, one of the most interesting groups allows for the presence of the so-called asymmetry or leverage effect. In our view, asymmetry and leverage are two distinct phenomena, both inspired by the seminal work of Black in 1976. We propose definitions of leverage and asymmetry that build on the News Impact Curve, allowing to easily and coherently verify if they are both present. We show that several GARCH models are asymmetric but none is allowing for a proper leverage effect. Finally, we extend the leverage definition to a local leverage effect and show that the AGARCH model is coherent with the presence of local leverage. An empirical analysis completes the paper.     

创新型科技企业杠杆率的研发强度效应研究

企业研发有助于驱动科技型企业建立创新机制,实现企业持续稳健发展。从杠杆率角度,运用两阶段最小二乘法,结合我国科技型上市公司2010 -2015年创新投入数据,探讨杠杆率如何影响企业研发强度效应,进而影响企业价值。研究发现,杠杆率削弱了研发强度效应,对于高杠杆率企业,增长机会对研发强度效应的积极影响转变为消极影响;研发强度提高,则企业价值呈递减趋势。     

机构投资者"分心"与公司杠杆操纵

本文以机构投资者在其投资组合中注意力分配差异而产生的不同“分心”程度作为识别监督外在变化的手段,验证了其对企业杠杆操纵的重要影响。研究发现,上市公司会趁机构投资者“分心”而监督弱化时实施更多杠杆操纵行为,经稳健性检验后该结论依然成立。影响机制分析发现,机构投资者“分心”通过弱化其监督治理效应、降低公司股价信息含量进一步加剧企业杠杆操纵现象,使得企业得以隐藏真实杠杆水平,误导债权人以更低的资本成本借出资金,但也为企业的未来埋下隐患,致使企业潜在债务违约风险与财务风险增大。此外,在机构投资者“分心”加剧企业杠杆操纵的关系中,“去杠杆”政策实施和去杠杆压力发挥了正向调节作用。本文丰富了机构投资者“分心”经济后果研究,也为监管部门强化对企业监管提供了重要启示。     

Modelling and predicting the competitive effects of vertical mergers: The bargaining leverage over rivals effect

A new competitive effect of vertical mergers, based on the Nash bargaining model, has begun to play an important role in antitrust authorities’ evaluations of vertical mergers in the United States, Canada and abroad. The key idea is that a vertical merger will increase the bargaining leverage of the merged firm over its downstream rivals. Its bargaining leverage increases because it now takes into account the additional profit that its own downstream division will earn if it withholds inputs from downstream rivals, which changes its threat point in the bargaining game with downstream rivals. Consequently, the merged firm can increase the price that it charges rival downstream firms for inputs. One strong appeal of this theory is that it provides a simple and very intuitive formula to measure the upward pricing pressure caused by a vertical merger due to changes in bargaining leverage, based on variables whose values can generally be estimated using available data. This article describes this new competitive effect, which will be called the bargaining leverage over rivals (BLR) effect, and derives the upward pricing pressure formula. It also explains why this new competitive effect is distinct from the older raising rivals’ costs (RRC) effect that has been widely discussed in the economics literature, and discusses the relationship between the two different effects.     

Modeling recovery rate for leveraged loans

Leveraged loan has become an import risk contributor to the wholesale portfolio of a financial institution and an accurate evaluation of the recovery rate of leveraged loans is crucial for risk-based decision making by banks. To achieve this, we utilize a simple two-stage model framework conditional on loan and its borrower's characteristics. Under this framework, three kinds of models and two combining mechanisms are studied by using a subset of leveraged loan data filtered from Moody's Ultimate Recovery Data (URD). The in-sample and out-of-sample results show that three-split model with parallel combining mechanism yields more accurate predictions of ultimate recovery rates for leveraged loans. It is shown that the percentage of debt that is junior relative to the issuance in the issuer's capital structure is the most important determinant of the leveraged loan recovery outcomes. Recovery rates for Leveraged loans and for non-leveraged-loan debts are also compared. Empirical studies show that they have different influential factors.     

产权性质、资本结构与企业创新*

本文以2008—2018年A股非金融上市企业的面板数据为研究样本，探究了资本结构和产权性质对企业创新的影响机制和效果。研究发现，企业存在最优的非经营性杠杆率区间，且资本结构对企业创新的作用会因产权性质不同而存在差异性，即最优区间内，企业增加非经营性杠杆率可以在不影响创新投入和创新风险的情况下提高创新产出，而非国有企业更适合增加杠杆率，并会对创新产出有显著的促进作用。据此，本文提出优化企业资本结构、提高国有企业信贷资源的配置效率和切实缓解民营企业融资约束等政策建议。     

中国外商投资存量估算及扩展分析

通过对外资基本概念应用误区的辨析,搭建关于外商投资规模的指标框架,我们可以发现,外方资本对国内权益资本的带动作用并不大,外资企业权益资本对国内债权资金的杠杆作用却比较明显。     

Financial leverage and market volatility with diverse beliefs

We study a general equilibrium model of asset trading with financial leverage, where the investors can engage in speculative trading with diverse beliefs about the asset??s fundamental value. We show that an increase in the leverage ratio causes the stock price to rise in the current period through a ??leverage effect??, and will result in more borrowing and more stock purchase that pumps the stock price higher in the subsequent period, known as the ??pyramiding effect??. There can also be a ??depyramiding effect?? when the price falls because lenders issue margin calls and force stock sales, contributing to further stock price plummeting. Price changes from depyramiding effect, however, may not take effect when margin calls are not triggered. We demonstrate that, under certain conditions, decreasing leverage ratios leads to lower stock price volatility, measured by the variation of prices caused by an exogenous shock, when the shock is unanticipated. The influences of dispersion of beliefs and available investment funds on the relation between financial leverage and market volatility are also examined. When the shock is anticipated, we demonstrate that reducing leverage ratios may not lower stock price volatility, which poses an important challenge to future studies on this issue.     

Corruption and corporate leverage in an emerging economy: The role of economic freedom

This study investigated the effects of corruption and economic freedom on corporate leverage. We also evaluated how economic freedom shapes the effect of corruption on corporate leverage. Using a sample of Vietnamese firms covering a nine-year period from 2010 to 2018, we find evidence that increased control of corruption has a significant positive impact on firm leverage, whereas the opposite is true for economic freedom. This effect is robust to alternative measures of control of corruption as well as advanced estimation methods, such as firm-fixed effects and quantile regressions. Our results also reveal that the positive impact of corruption controls on corporate leverage is more pronounced for firms with high economic freedom. Econometrically, our findings indicate that firms with better control over corruption prefer debt financing, as demonstrated by their higher leverage ratio.