Evaluating the properties of analysts’ forecasts: A bootstrap approach

Previous research has reported that analysts’ forecasts of company profits are both optimistically biased and inefficient. However, many prior studies have applied ordinary least-squares regression to data where heteroskedasticity and non-normality are common problems, potentially resulting in misleading inferences. Furthermore, most prior studies deflate earnings and forecasts in an attempt to correct for non-constant error variances, often changing the specification of the underlying regression equation. We describe and employ the wild bootstrap—a technique that is robust both to heteroskedasticity and non-normality—to assess the reliability of prior studies of analysts’ forecasts. Based on a large sample of 23,283 firm years covering the period 1981–2002, our main results confirm the findings of prior research. Our results also suggest that deflation may not be a successful method of correcting for heteroskedasticity, providing a strong rationale for using the wild bootstrap in future work in this, and other areas of accounting and finance research.     

Openness and the finance-growth nexus

Rajan and Zingales (2003) hypothesize that openness—trade and financial—is a crucial determinant of financial development. The main policy implication emerging from this hypothesis is that openness should be promoted as a means of facilitating economic growth through financial development. While subsequent research confirms that openness affects financial development, we study whether finance continues to be growth promoting as economies become increasingly open—a key implicit assumption behind the policy recommendation. Using data from 78 economies for the period 1981–2006, we find that very high levels of financial openness generally erode the growth-promoting role of financial development while high trade openness strengthens it. These worldwide findings by and large hold for subsamples of Sub-Saharan African, Latin American and OECD economies. Notable exceptions are the invariance of the finance-growth (FG) nexus on trade openness in OECD economies and the positive effect of financial openness on the FG link in Latin American economies.     

中国上市公司初始审计的定价折扣考察——来自审计师变更的经验证据

初始审计的定价折扣具有重要的与审计独立性相关的公共政策含义。本文基于DeAngelo(1981)和Dye(1991)关于初始审计定价折扣的竞争性理论预期,利用2002——2004年我国审计市场的数据对初始审计的定价行为与特征进行了较为细致的实证考察。经验结果支持中国证监会关于审计费用的强制性公开披露政策,准租金和低价折扣引起的潜在的审计独立性问题会随着审计费用的公开披露而得到消除或减轻。本文还具有重要的监管含义:对审计师变更的监管应着重关注那些大型上市公司在小型会计师事务所之间进行变更的行为。     

Random Walks and Market Efficiency Tests of Latin American Emerging Equity Markets: A Revisit

The few existing studies on equity price dynamics and market efficiency for Latin American emerging equity markets show conflicting results. This study uses multiple varianceratio and auto-regressive fractionally integrated moving-average tests and new data (U.S. dollar-based national equity indices for the 1987–1997 period) to clarify these results. Documented evidence shows that equity prices in major Latin American emerging equity markets — Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico—follow a random walk, and that they are, generally, weak-form efficient. In sum, therefore, the evidence suggests that international investors in these markets cannot use historical information to design systematically profitable trading schemes because future long-term returns are not dependent on past returns.     

Bubbles in food commodity markets: Four decades of evidence

We use daily prices from individual futures contracts to test whether speculative bubbles exist in 12 agricultural markets and to identify whether patterns of bubble behavior exist over time. The samples begin as far back as 1970 and run through 2011. The findings demonstrate that all 12 agricultural markets experienced multiple periods of price explosiveness. However, bubble episodes represent a very small portion—between 1.5 and 2%—of price behavior during the 42-year period. In addition, most bubbles are short-lived with 80–90% lasting fewer than 10 days. Though receiving far less attention, negative bubbles contribute significantly to price behavior, accounting for more than one-third of explosive episodes. Markets over-react during both positive and negative explosive episodes, leading to a correction as they return to a random walk. This adjustment back to fundamental values is most pronounced with positive bubbles particularly in the earlier part of the sample. While the magnitudes of the corrections are generally small, there were a few instances of significant increases in prices and large over-reactions, most notably in the softs (e.g., cocoa 1973, coffee 1994, cotton 2010). We also find that explosive periods did not become more common or last longer in the second half of the sample period and that the most recent bubble episodes may not have been as severe as in mid-1970s.     

Ex-dividend Day Pricing in New Zealand

Controversy continues over the question of tax clientele effects in the pricing of shares that pay dividends. The empirical results remain inconclusive, with variations in testing methods and sample formation the probable causes of much of the variation in outcomes. This study focuses on testing for the presence of a tax clientele effect consistent with prior tests for the same effect using a sample from a particular tax regime period in New Zealand in which companies could pay either or both taxable and non-taxable dividends. The results are generally consistent with the presence of a tax clientele effect in the New Zealand market for the time period, while providing essentially no support for the short term trading hypothesis.
JEL classification: G10; G15     

An annual money demand and supply model for the U.S.: 1924–1940/1949–1966

This paper describes the monetary sector in the Hickman-Ceen medium-range forecasting model, which is estimated on annual data from 1924 to 1966. A characterization of the individual bank as a profit maximizing firm is used to derive a ‘portfolio-balance’ model of the money supply mechanism. The estimation results: suggest that, for the sample period at least, M2 is the appropriate definition of money; corroborate earlier findings that there is no evidence of a so-called ‘low-level liquidity trap’ in the Thirties; confirm the reliability of earlier annual- data estimates of the demand for money; and provide indirect evidence that non-monetary disturbances to macroeconomic equilibrium were relatively unimportant during the sample period.     

THE TERM STRUCTURE OF INTEREST RATES AS A COINTEGRATED SYSTEM: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM THE EUROCURRENCY MARKET

In this paper I examine the term structure of Eurocurrency interest rates from six countries (with maturities of one, two, three, and six months) using unit root tests and cointegration tests that are robust to departures from independent and identically distributed errors. The main conclusions are: (1) Eurocurrency interest rates have one (and only one) unit root when viewed individually, and (2) for each of the countries examined, Eurocurrency interest rates are cointegrated—with one equilibrium relationship—when viewed jointly. These conclusions are consistent with the weak form of the efficient market hypothesis and suggest that in efficient markets arbitrage generally prevents rates on different maturities of a given asset from drifting too far for an extended period.     

Re-Examining Variance-Bounds Tests for Asset Prices

The hypothesis of market efficiency is typically rejected by standard variance-bounds tests which assume stationary asset prices. A number of researchers, however, argue that tests used in previous studies are inappropriate since asset prices appear to be generated by nonstationary processes. In this paper, we propose a regression-based variance-bounds test that is valid when the asset price is an integrated process. We apply this test to annual U.S. data over the 1889 to 1985 sample period using measures of the perfect-foresight price constructed from a nonlinear asset-pricing equation that allows for a stochastic discount parameter. The results suggest that the data appear consistent with a version of the efficient-market hypothesis detailed in this paper.     

审计失败中的审计责任认定与监管倾向:经验分析

监管者对审计责任的认定倾向是审计执业环境的重要构成。本文选取1999—2006年间中国证券市场发生的72例财务报表审计失败进行观测,发现:(1)在监管实践较早期间(1999—2002年间)的审计失败样本观测中,88.2%的审计师遭到处罚;而2003—2006年间的审计失败观测中仅有23.6%的审计师遭到处罚;(2)在控制了审计失败观测的公司受处罚严厉度、舞弊期跨度、舞弊期间审计意见类型以及审计师规模后,仍能检测到近年来审计责任认定的显著缓和趋势;(3)即使对于审计师受到处罚的审计失败观测,在1999—2002年间平均82.7%的虚假陈述事项需要由审计师承担审计责任,而在2003—2006年间仅有平均41.2%的虚假陈述事项须由审计师承担责任。综上,监管机构在近年来对会计师事务所或签字注册会计师的审计责任认定显著趋于缓和与稳健;审计执业环境的这种变化趋势亦可为未来监管和司法实践中的审计责任界定提供有益的借鉴。     

Fiscal Policy Shocks in the Euro Area and the US: An Empirical Assessment*

We analyse the impact of fiscal policy shocks in the euro area as a whole, using a newly‐available quarterly data set of fiscal variables for the period 1981–2007. To allow for comparability with previous results on euro‐area countries and the US, we use a standard structural vector autoregressive (VAR) framework, and study the impact of aggregated and disaggregated government spending and net‐tax shocks. In addition, to frame euro‐area results, we apply the same methodology for the same sample period to US data. We also explore the sensitivity of the results to the inclusion of variables aiming to control for underlying financial and fiscal conditions. The main new findings are that: expansionary fiscal shocks have a short‐term positive impact on GDP and private consumption, with government spending shocks entailing, in general, higher effects on economic activity than (net) tax reductions; output multipliers to government expenditure shocks are of similar size in the euro area and in the US; the persistence of a fiscal spending shock is higher in the US than in the euro area, which appears to be related to military spending in the US; and fiscal multipliers have increased over the recent past in both geographical areas.     

A COMPARISON OF INTERVENTION AND RESIDUAL ANALYSIS

By comparing intervention and residual analysis abnormal return metrics, this study illustrates the impact that cross-sectional return dependencies can have on empirical tests of the semi-strong form of the efficient market hypothesis. The source of the dependencies encountered in this study appears to be the result of nine value altering information releases (e.g., events) that occurred in a seven-month period in 1982. For one sample of bank equity returns, the abnormal return metrics obtained with residual analysis are generally smaller than those obtained with intervention analysis. In addition, the intervention analysis results suggest that two of the nine events led to significant shifts in the banks' systematic risk. These findings suggest that tests of the semi-strong form of the efficient market hypothesis conducted with a less-than randomly constructed sample need to examine the restrictions that accompany the specification of an expected return metric.     

An empirical examination of the implications of arbitrage pricing theory

This paper presents a comprehensive set of tests of the implications of the Arbitrage Pricing Theory. We find, unlike previously reported results, a very limited relationship between the expected returns and the covariance (factor loadings) measures of risk. Furthermore, unique variance measures of risk, while generally making only small contributions to the explanation of asset returns, turn out to be significant about as frequently as the coveriance measures of risk — which is inconsistent with the Arbitrage Pricing Theory model. The intercept tests are more mixed but provide only limited support to the model.     

Some curious power properties of long-horizon tests

Based on simulations and asymptotic results, I highlight three distinct properties of long-horizon predictive tests. (i) The asymptotic power of long-horizon tests increases only with the sample size relative to the forecasting horizon. Keeping this ratio fixed as the sample size increases does not lead to any power gains asymptotically. (ii) Although the power of long-horizon tests increases with the magnitude of the slope coefficient for alternatives close to the null hypothesis, there are no gains in power as the slope coefficient grows large. That is, the power curve is asymptotically horizontal when viewed as a function of the slope coefficient. (iii) For endogenous regressors—i.e., when the innovations to the regressand are contemporaneously correlated with the innovations to the regressor—traditional tests based on the standard long-run OLS estimator result in power curves that are sometimes decreasing in the magnitude of the slope coefficient.     

Competition and geographical integration in commercial bank lending

This paper tests the hypothesis that interest rates on bank commercial loans in the regions of the United States are generated in an integrated national market. The tests — of a joint hypothesis compounded of integration, behavioral models, and the absence of systematic errors in the data — are applied to 60 series of data (short-term and long-term loans in five size classes in six regions). The joint hypothesis is not rejected for five of the six regions and four of the five size classes. The exceptional region is the Southeast; the exceptional loan-size class is $1,000 to $9,000, the smallest in the sample.     

Factors Determining Net Interest Margins in Australia: Domestic and Foreign Banks

This study tests the application of the Ho and Saunders (1981) model of bank net interest margins (NIMs), and its subsequent developments, using Australian data. The core elements of this model apply in Australia. Bank market power is found to increase NIMs, consistent with McShane and Sharpe (1985) , with evidence of bank buying market share and mispricing for risk. Operating costs also have an important role in determining NIMs, together with implied payments and management quality. Bank NIMs are found to have fallen over the study period.     

An empirical test of the efficiency of the ADR market

This study examines the weak form efficiency of foreign equities — American Depository Receipts — traded in the U.S. The results of serial correlation and runs tests on a sample of listed and NASDAQ ADRs for the years 1974–1978 were consistent with weak form efficiency.     

The standard-setters’ toolkit: can principles prevail over bright lines?

We study lease accounting in an international panel data set to examine how accounting outcomes vary with two features of accounting standards: the emphasis on using professional judgement to apply principles, and the presence or absence of bright-line tests. We study four countries—Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US—and companies in two lease-intensive industries—retail and transportation. Our primary study period spans the time when Australia and the UK switched from domestic to international accounting standards, and in one test, we also consider Canada’s transition to international standards. We find that neither an explicit requirement to apply a principle nor omitting bright-line tests materially increases the use of capital lease treatment among these firms. Overall, we conclude that this financial reporting outcome is relatively insensitive to these standard-setting tools.     

Are Asian stock markets efficient? Evidence from new multiple variance ratio tests

This paper tests for the martingale hypothesis in the stock prices of a group of Asian markets. We use new multiple variance ratio tests based on the wild bootstrap and signs. These are non-parametric finite sample tests, which do not rely on large sample theories for statistical inference. This paper also presents Monte Carlo results that these non-parametric tests show superior small sample properties to those of the conventional Chow–Denning test. Both weekly and daily data from 1990 are considered, while moving sub-sample windows are used for the latter to control the sensitivity of the results to a particular sample period. It is found that the Hong Kong, Japanese, Korean and Taiwanese markets have been efficient in the weak-form. The markets of Indonesia, Malaysia and Philippines have shown no sign of market efficiency, despite financial liberalization measures implemented since the eighties. We have also found evidence that the Singaporean and Thai markets have become efficient after the Asian crisis. In general, the results point toward the notion that the pricing efficiency of a market depends on the level of equity market development as well as the regulatory framework conducive of transparent corporate governance.     

The cost of capital- the practitioners view

The application of a SWARCH model to stock market returns allows one to endogenously determine the regime dependence of the stock market volatility. Comparison of the results from a sample of daily data from five major stock markets shows that the majority of the markets switch regimes simultaneously. This fact is used to investigate the relation between market volatility and the behaviour of the variance—;covariance matrix. It is found that the international variance—;covariance matrix is not stable and that changes in the matrix are dependent on the volatility regime. A high level of variance causes an increase in the average correlation coefficient. The co-movement of the markets is further described by a steady increase in the covariance over the whole sample period. It can be shown that both the time component and the regime dependence of the average correlation have separate and significant explanatory power.