Foreign Ownership and Firm Value: Evidence from Australian Firms

The paper employs various measures of foreign ownership and investigates impact of foreign ownership on value of firms in Australia. We find that both, traditional measure and free float measure of foreign ownership has a positive and significant impact on firm value. We also find that foreign institutional holdings in Australian firms’ have a significant and positive impact on firm value. Results are robust to various econometric estimation techniques. Our results have implications for investors and corporate financial policies.     

Nonlinear Effects of Debt on Investment: Evidence from Dutch Listed Firms

Abstract

Nonlinear effects of debt on investment are investigated using an unbalanced panel of 94 Dutch listed nonfinancial firms during the period 1985–2000. Evidence shows that the nonlinear relation between debt and investment can be represented by a U curve, which contradicts the financial constraints theory. One possible explanation of the U curve relation between debt and investment may be the debt capital gain in the presence of inflation.     

The Value of Financial Statement Verification in Debt Financing: Evidence from Private U.S. Firms

I examine how verification of financial statements influences debt pricing. I use a large proprietary database of privately held U.S. firms, an important business sector in which the information environment is opaque and financial statement audits are not mandated. I find that audited firms have a significantly lower cost of debt and that lenders place more weight on audited financial information in setting the interest rate. Further, I provide evidence of a mechanism for this increased financial statement usefulness: accruals from audited financial statements are better predictors of future cash flows. Collectively, I provide novel evidence that audited financial statements are more informative and that this significantly influences lenders’ decisions.     

Credit Allocation and Firm Productivity Under Financial Imperfection: Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing Firms

The role of the financial system, especially the credit market, in productivity enhancement has interested many researchers. However, how credit allocation affects firms’ productivity in emerging economies remains unanswered. Using data from the Annual Survey of Industrial Firms (ASIF) during 1999–2007, this article examines whether credit allocation impacts Chinese firms’ productivity under financial imperfection. Our results show that the size of credit market has no influence on Chinese firms’ total factor productivity (TFP), while allocating more credit to non-SOEs significantly promotes firm TFP. Our further analysis shows that firms which are less subsidized, smaller, more external financially dependent, and more labor intensive are affected more by credit allocation. As China is the largest emerging economy, our analysis also sheds light on the development of firms in emerging economies.     

Insider Ownership and Firm Value: Evidence from Real Estate Investment Trusts

Real estate investment trust (REIT) provides a unique laboratory to study the relation between insider ownership and firm value. One, a REIT has to satisfy special regulations which weaken alternative mechanisms to control agency problems. Empirically, I find a significant and robust nonlinear relation between Tobin's Q and REIT insider ownership that is consistent with the trade-off between the incentive alignment and the entrenchment effect of insider ownership. Two, many REITs are Umbrella Partnership REITs (UPREITs) which have dual ownership structure. They have both common shares and Operating Partnership Units (OP units). Property owners can contribute their properties to the UPREIT in exchange for OP units. Their capital gains taxes remain deferred as long as they hold onto their OP units and the UPREIT does not sell the properties they contributed. OP units owners are locked in with the firm and have incentive to monitor firm management, but their interests diverge from the common shareholders because their tax bases are much lower. Consistent with the trade-off between positive monitoring effect of OP units and tax-induced agency costs, I find that UPREIT's firm value increases with the fraction of OP units, but the effect is significantly weaker for the UPREITs where insiders hold OP units.     

持股金融机构对企业负债融资与债务结构的影响——基于上市公司的实证研究

本文通过对2007年至2011年我国A股615组配对公司的实证研究发现:持股金融机构不仅能够为企业带来更多的债务资金,包括短期债务资金和长期债务资金,而且有利于企业改变负债结构,即提高融资成本较低的短期债务融资比重,降低融资成本较高的长期债务。此外,相对于国有上市企业而言,民营上市公司持股金融机构更有利于改变其债务融资水平与债务结构。进一步区分金融机构类型后发现,持股金融机构对企业负债融资和债务结构的影响主要来自于持股非银行类金融机构。     

The Relationship Among Managerial Sentiment,Corporate Investment,and Firm Value: Evidence from Taiwan

This study has two objectives: to examine the relationship between managerial sentiment and corporate investment and to examine the relationship between investment and firm value. We use a sample of Taiwanese firms and find that an optimal level of investment that maximizes a firm's value does exist and that it depends upon the quality of the investment opportunities. In addition, the empirical results show that when firms have valuable (nonvaluable) investment opportunities, managerial optimism (pessimism) makes overinvestment (underinvestment) more likely. Interestingly, the overinvestment (underinvestment) phenomenon for optimistic (pessimistic) managers differs significantly between valuable project and nonvaluable project firms.     

外资参与、融资约束与企业生存——来自中国微观企业的证据

生存问题是企业面临的头等重要大事。本文采用1999-2007年期间新成立的非国有企业样本数据刻画了中国企业的生存时间。数据显示非外资参与企业相对于外资参与企业具有较低的生存率。通过使用COX比例风险回归模型发现外资参与确实可以有效缓解企业的融资约束,从而降低企业的失败风险。相比利用外资带来融资约束缓解效应而言,加快金融市场改革、消除基于所有制性质的信贷歧视才是真正缓解民营企业融资约束,进而提升中国企业竞争力的切实有效的路径。     

金融危机、财务弹性与企业投资

基于现金持有量和财务杠杆的视角,研究财务弹性对企业投资行为的影响,并进一步探讨金融危机下财务弹性对企业投资的影响。实证结果表明,企业财务弹性与企业投资成正相关;企业投资对现金弹性的依赖较小,对负债融资弹性依赖较大;与正常经营时期相比,危机时期下财务弹性对企业投资的影响更显著。     

企业财务弹性与投资行为关系：一个金融危机环境下的数据检验

采用1200家中国上市公司金融危机期间2007~2011年的面板数据和随机效应模型,对财务弹性与公司投资行为的关系进行检验,研究发现：不同行业、不同所有权控股、不同板块上市公司的财务弹性及投资行为存在明显差异;财务弹性对投资规模具有较为明显的促进作用,对投资方向的影响作用不明显。     

Debt Maturity Structure and Firm Investment

This study shows that the maturity structure of a firm's debt has a significant impact on its investment decisions. We show, after controlling for the effect of the overall level of leverage, that a higher percentage of long-term debt in total debt significantly reduces investment for firms with high growth opportunities. In contrast, the correlation between debt maturity and investment is not significant for firms with low growth opportunities. The results are strong at the firm level and at the business segment level. These results hold even after controlling for the endogeneity problem inherent in the relationship between total leverage, the maturity composition of leverage, and investment.     

Hedging Affecting Firm Value via Financing and Investment: Evidence from Property Insurance Use

I provide evidence about the value effects of alternative risk management by examining corporate purchase of property insurance, a commonly used pure hedge of asset-loss risks. Using an insurance data set from China, I find that there is an inverted U-shape effect of the extent of property insurance use on firm value measured by several versions of Tobin's Q. Therefore, the use of property insurance, to a certain degree, has a positive effect on firm value; however, over insurance appears detrimental to firm value. Given that the inflection points occur at relatively high levels of the observed insurance spending, insurance use appears beneficial to the majority of my sample firms. The estimated average hedging premium is about 1.5%. I demonstrate that an avenue for insurance to create value in China is that it helps firms secure valuable new debt financing and enhance investment.     

Ownership Structure, Corporate Governance, and Firm Value: Evidence from the East Asian Financial Crisis

We use a sample of 800 firms in eight East Asian countries to study the effect of ownership structure on value during the region's financial crisis. The crisis negatively impacted firms' investment opportunities, raising the incentives of controlling shareholders to expropriate minority investors. Crisis period stock returns of firms in which managers have high levels of control rights, but have separated their control and cash flow ownership, are 10–20 percentage points lower than those of other firms. The evidence is consistent with the view that ownership structure plays an important role in determining whether insiders expropriate minority shareholders.     

Ownership Structure as a Determinant of Firm Value: Evidence from Newly Privatized Czech Firms

Using a sample of 988 newly privatized Czech firms, with part of the ownership structure exogenously determined prior to voucher privatization, we find that share values are positively related with the ownership stakes of foreigners, insiders, and restituents. While the findings for foreigners and insiders can be attributed to their superior ability to identify more profitable firms, we interpret the findings on restituents as evidence of the beneficial effect of blockholdings. On the other hand, we find that the ownership of the fund with the largest stake is not significantly related with share value, suggesting that the value of external blocks depends on the identity of the owner. However, when the fund is also the largest blockholder in the firm, it has an adverse effect on share value. The negative effect of the dominant block owned by a fund is mitigated when a bank sponsors the fund. Although funds are legally separated from their sponsoring institutions, bank‐sponsored funds may nevertheless have inherited a better access to the innards of these firms, and may be in a better position to monitor them.     

Debt Financing and Voluntary Adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards: Evidence from Korean Unlisted Firms

We investigate the effect of debt financing on the voluntary adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) by unlisted firms and such adoption’s effect on bond credit rating. We find that unlisted firms with public debts are more likely to voluntarily adopt IFRS. Subsequent to the voluntary application of IFRS, the unlisted firms exhibit, on average, enhanced credit ratings. These findings suggest that the public debt market’s demand for high-quality financial reporting may drive those unlisted firms to voluntarily adopt IFRS. Furthermore, rating agencies seem to reward such firms by elevating their bond credit ratings.     

Financial Constraints,Institutions, and Firm Productivity: Evidence from China

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates whether Chinese firms utilize trade credit as an alternative financial intermediation to alleviate financial constraints, and whether trade credit matters for firm productivity. The results show that trade credit significantly affects firm productivity in private and foreign-owned firms but not state-owned enterprises, indicating that trade credit is an efficient financial intermediation for non-state firms. Second, trade credit better helps firms that have severe financial constraints grow. Third, the mechanism of trade credit and TFP is by the substitution effect of cash flow, the smoothing effect of working capital and the drive of innovation. Finally, the impact of trade credit on productivity is driven by the regions under a more institutionally developed environment.     

Financial Reporting Quality,Debt Maturity,and the Cost of Debt: Evidence from China

This paper investigates the influence of different financing channels—bond issuance or bank loans—as well as debt maturity and the quality of financial reporting on the cost of debt in China. The authors find that conservative accounting is an important characteristic of high-quality financial reporting that can reduce the cost of longer maturity debt such as bank loans and bonds. Even state-owned enterprises, which have fewer financial constraints than non-state-owned enterprises, benefit from accounting conservatism's ability to reduce financial costs. Moreover, the findings indicate that bond investors are concerned about the issuer's fundamentals, while banks are more likely to focus on the operation and bankruptcy risk of borrowers.     

会计软件采用与企业生产率——来自非上市公司的证据

现有关于会计信息化经济后果的研究主要关注ERP系统,而现实中大部分公司仍在使用相对简单的会计核算软件。本文利用企业纳税申报表信息,首次大样本实证分析了非上市公司中会计软件应用情况及其对生产率的影响。我们发现75%的非上市公司采用了功能不等的各类会计软件,但其中仅有6%为ERP。控制其他因素后,采用会计软件的企业生产率显著高于未采用会计软件的企业,且会计软件性能与生产率显著正相关。企业会计信息利用能力和增长机会强化了这一效应。本文采取格兰杰因果检验和工具变量回归等方法缓解内生性问题。本文有助于更全面理解会计信息系统的经济后果,并为促进经济高质量发展提供重要决策参考。