Political Party Affiliation of the President,Majority in Congress,and Sin Stock Returns

We find that in contrast to the stock market, which performs better during Democratic presidencies, “sin” stocks—publicly traded producers of tobacco, alcohol, and gaming—perform better during Republican presidencies and even more so when the Republican presidency is accompanied by a Republican majority in at least one chamber of Congress. We examine whether sin firms use contributions to establish connections with politicians and find that sin firms contribute more to Republican candidates and that these contributions are greater when Republicans are in power. We also find a positive relation between political contributions and future returns. The relation is stronger for contributions to Republicans.     

The associations among accounting program attributes, 150-hour status, and CPA exam pass rates

This study contributes to the extant literature by providing a better understanding of the associations among attributes of schools providing accounting education, 150-hour status, and CPA exam pass rates. We model program-level pass rates as a function of the state’s 150-hour status and several program-specific attributes, including: the level of AACSB accreditation, student selectivity, the percentage of candidates with advanced degrees, and faculty research productivity. We examine the average pass rates of 520 accounting programs that provided 43,711 first-time candidates for CPA exams given in 1998 and 1999. Similar to most prior studies we find that candidates from more selective schools, candidates with advanced degrees, and candidates who attended schools located in jurisdictions with the 150-hour requirement fully in place have higher average pass rates. However, we also find a significant decline in average pass rates during the 150-hour transition period, and in contrast to the strong positive effects of accreditation reported by [Grant, C. T., Ciccotello, C. S., &; Dickie, M. (2001). Barriers to professional entry: how effective is the 150-hour rule? Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, 21, 71–93], we find only weak evidence of an association between program-level pass rates and college-level or separate AACSB accounting program accreditation.     

Factors affecting classroom participation and how participation leads to a better learning

The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, we analyze various course- and student-related factors that affect participation grades within several college accounting classes. The second purpose is to determine whether in-class participation grades have an effect on exam performance in these classes. We find that, unlike in liberal arts and sciences courses, in accounting courses, participation grades for female students do not differ from participation grades for their male counterparts, regardless of class level. Overall, course level and student major have no direct effect on participation grades; however, the accounting majors and students in the lower level courses have better attendance than do non-accounting majors and students in more advanced courses. We observe that class schedule, in particular class duration and semester, affects students’ participation performance. Lastly, we find that students who participate more in classroom discussions perform 25% better on exams than do those with lower participation grades. This relationship holds for the three elements of participation grading: frequency of participation, consistency of participation, and attendance.     

Are interim CEOs just caretakers?

Interim CEOs are often viewed as caretakers during CEO transition periods. However, the caretaker function does not fully explain the increasing trend in the use of interim CEO appointments. Recent studies suggest that firms also use the interim position to test potential CEO candidates. This paper empirically examines this argument using a hand-collected dataset of 1936 CEO successions between 1994 and 2014. We find evidence that firms consider interim positions as a testing ground for CEO candidates. Specifically, we find that candidates with uncertain managerial abilities are more likely to be initially named as interim CEOs rather than permanent CEOs. We also find that interim CEOs are more likely to be promoted to the permanent CEO position when they have better interim-period performance attributable to managerial skills. Consistent with the testing-ground option hypothesis, we find interim CEOs promoted to the permanent position result in superior long-run performance, suggesting better CEO-firm matches.     

Market concentration,risk-taking,and bank performance: Evidence from emerging economies

This paper investigates the relationship between market concentration, risk-taking, and bank performance using a unique dataset of the BRIC banks over the period 2003–2010. We find a negative association between market concentration and performance, in support of the “quiet life” hypothesis. We also find that banks taking a lower level of risks perform better, in favor of prudential practice. Moreover, the BRICs' banking sectors were all negatively affected by the 2007–2008 global financial crisis with China and Russia being the least and most affected, respectively. On average Chinese and Brazilian banks outperform Indian and Russian ones, indicating that China and Brazil have more favorable institutional infrastructure. These results are robust to alternative model specifications and estimation techniques. Our analysis may have important policy implications for bankers and regulators in the BRICs and other developing and transition countries.     

Being a foreigner among domestic banks: Asset or liability?

Do foreign banks perform better than domestic banks? The existing literature has come up with different answers, in part as data coverage has varied and often been limited. Studying the performance of foreign relative to domestic banks in many countries between 1999 and 2006, we find that the answer importantly depends on a number of factors. Specifically, foreign banks tend to perform better when from a high income country and when regulation in the host country is relatively weak. They also perform better when larger and having a bigger market share. Foreign banks from home countries with the same language and similar regulation as the host country also perform better. Geographical closeness, however, does not improve performance. These findings show that it is important to control for heterogeneity among foreign banks when studying their performance and help reconcile some contradictory results found in the literature.     

Performance and informed trading. Comparing foreigners,institutions and individuals in an emerging stock market

Do local institutions, local individuals or foreigners perform better in a small emerging market? We seek answers to this question by examining the investment performance of each group of investors using two unique databases of Colombian stocks. Our analysis serves as an out-of-sample test of previous findings. We find that local institutions have better outcomes than foreigners and local individuals on all performance measures. Furthermore, local individuals perform better than foreigners on trading execution, while foreigners generate better long-term returns. Using a bid-ask spread decomposition, we provide additional evidence that the better performance of institutions is consistent with informational advantages. Our findings reconcile contradictory statements from previous studies.     

Intangible investment and the importance of firm-specific factors in the determination of earnings

We examine the effect of intangible investment on earnings noncommonality, defined as the extent to which a firm’s earnings performance is determined by firm-specific factors versus market and industry factors. Such insight is important in determining the appropriate weighting of these factors when forecasting a firm’s earnings. For a sample of US firms over the 1980–2006 period, we find that earnings noncommonality is positively associated with intangible asset intensity. This finding is consistent with the resource-based view of the firm, which posits that intangible investments allow firms to differentiate themselves economically from their rivals. We also find that separable recognized intangibles contribute more to earnings noncommonality than do either goodwill or R&D, perhaps because separable recognized intangibles are more likely to arise from contractual or legal rights and thus are less susceptible to expropriation by rival firms. Finally, we find that the positive impact of R&D on earnings noncommonality is significantly greater for those industries where patents and other legal mechanisms are most effective in protecting R&D. This result suggests that the success of intangible investment as a differentiation strategy depends largely on the effectiveness of mechanisms used to protect intangible investments from expropriation.     

Capital controls in Brazil – Stemming a tide with a signal?

Controls on capital inflows have been experiencing a renaissance since 2008, with several prominent emerging markets implementing them in recent years. We focus on Brazil, which instituted five changes in its capital account regime in 2008–2011. Using the synthetic control method, we construct counterfactuals (i.e., Brazil with no policy change) for each of these changes. We find no evidence that any tightening of controls was effective in reducing the magnitudes of capital inflows, but we observe some modest and short-lived success in preventing further declines in inflows when the capital controls were relaxed. We hypothesize that price-based capital controls’ only perceptible effect is to be found in the content of the signal they broadcast regarding the government’s larger intentions and sensibilities. In the case of Brazil, its left-of-center government’s willingness to remove controls was perceived as a noteworthy indication that the government was not as hostile to the international financial markets as many expected it to be.     

The Halloween Effect in U.S. Sectors

U.S. stock market sectors and industries perform better during winter than summer from 1926 to 2006. In more than two-thirds of sectors and industries, the difference in summer and winter returns, known as the Halloween effect, is statistically significant. There are, however, large differences across sectors and industries. The effect is almost absent in sectors related to consumer consumption but is strong in production sectors. We find that neither liquidity changes nor well-known risk factors can explain the anomaly. We illustrate how the differences between sectors and industries can improve the risk-return tradeoff using sector rotation.     

Is there cyclical bias in bank holding company risk ratings?

This paper examines whether bank holding company (BHC) risk ratings are asymmetrically assigned or biased over business cycles from 1986 to 2003. In a model of ratings determination which accounts for bank characteristics, financial market conditions, past supervisory information, and aggregate macro-economic factors, we find that bank exam ratings exhibit inter-temporal characteristics. First, exam ratings exhibit some evidence of examiner bias for several periods analyzed. When the business cycle turns, examiners sometime depart from standards that they set during the previous phases of the cycle. However, this bias is not widespread or systematic. Second, exam ratings exhibit some inertia. Our results suggest that examiners rate on the side of not changing (rather than upgrading or downgrading) an institution’s exam rating. Third, we find robust evidence of a secular trend towards more stringent examination BHC ratings standards over time.     

The power of control: the acquisition decisions of newly public dual-class firms

Many private firms that go public opt for a dual-class share structure which gives insiders stronger voting power, at the expense of shareholder democracy. We examine how the dual-class structure influences the merger decisions of newly public firms, which have a notable appetite for acquisitions. Specifically, we compare acquisition activity, method of payment choice, and the long-run value implications of acquisitions by newly public single-class and dual-class US companies. Our results show that dual-class IPO firms make relatively more acquisitions in innovative industries and are less likely to pay with stock as compared to single-class IPO firms. The reluctance of dual-class firms to pay with stock is positively related to the wedge between the insiders’ voting rights and cash-flow rights. We also find that newly-public dual-class acquirers perform better in the long-run than newly-public single-class acquirers, mainly due to dual-class acquisitions in innovative industries. Our multivariate analysis shows that these findings hold after controlling for relevant risk factors associated with industry, deal, and firm specific characteristics. These results suggest that the dual class structure may enable newly-public firms to make better M&A decisions after going public.     

Measuring security price performance

Event studies focus on the impact of particular types of firm-specific events on the prices of the affected firms' securities. In this paper, observed stock return data are employed to examine various methodologies which are used in event studies to measure security price performance. Abnormal performance is introduced into this data. We find that a simple methodology based on the market model performs well under a wide variety of conditions. In some situations, even simpler methods which do not explicitly adjust for marketwide factors or for risk perform no worse than the market model. We also show how misuse of any of the methodologies can result in false inferences about the presence of abnormal performance.     

Sustainable mutual fund performance and flow in the recent years through the COVID-19 pandemic

Sustainable investing has gained significant momentum over the past few years. In this paper, we study the performance and flows of sustainable equity mutual funds in recent years through the COVID-19 pandemic. We find that the high-sustainable funds perform better than the low-sustainable ones by between 1.32% and 6.96% annually. This outperformance significantly increases during the COVID-19 pandemic-induced market crash and the post-crash pandemic. Similarly, we find that high-sustainable funds attract significantly more investments (or suffer less outflow) than the low-sustainable funds by between 5.28% and 5.76% per annum. These flow differences increase considerably during the market crash, consistent with the ‘flight-to-quality’ effect. We also find that the high-sustainable funds attract significantly more investment during the post-crash pandemic than before the crash. This suggests that investors consider sustainable investing a necessity (not a luxury good), and their taste/attitude towards sustainable investing has changed – now they prioritize ‘investing with a conscience.’     

Downsizing decisions: The joint influence of equity incentives and behavioral biases

Although new investment can be viewed as a decision to pursue projects from a wide number of growth opportunities with easily discernible (and presumably preferable) risk profiles, downsizing (e.g., through layoffs, plant closings, asset divestitures, etc.) is a dichotomous choice to either abandon or continue an existing project where the relative risk between these options is not clear. Our evidence suggests that vega in the pre-downsizing period is associated with risky investment that necessitates future downsizing. We further find that contemporaneous vega is associated with a greater likelihood of downsizing. On the other hand, our evidence suggests that delta is a significant impediment to downsizing. We examine the influence of behavioral factors in the decision-making process and find downsizing decisions are discouraged by managerial overconfidence but encouraged by managers’ aversion to ambiguity. Finally, we investigate whether equity incentives and behavioral factors lead to better downsizing decisions. We find that downsizing firms with high ambiguity perform better after downsizing relative to their matched pair with lower ambiguity.     

La gestión mecanicista de las Instituciones de Educación Superior: un estudio desde la modelación sistémica

The bureaucratic tendencies to organize work in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) of which facilitates personnel control and the mechanical ways to measure educational content are the ones that shatter education in pieces, under the hierarchy criterion, also shattering the professor's labor. This organizational method results in an incompetent education, leaving very negative consequences for teaching development. We address this problem by using systemic modeling and Structural Equations Systems (SEM) to confirm hypotheses from scientific observation. It was proven that there was a negative impact of mechanistic management which affected teacher's development. This was proven in context in two HEIs located in Villahermosa (Tabasco, Mexico).     

Security factors as linear combinations of economic variables

A new framework is proposed to find the best linear combinations of economic variables that optimally forecast security factors. In particular, we obtain such combinations from Chen et al. (Journal of Business 59, 383–403, 1986) five economic variables, and obtain a new GMM test for the APT which is more robust than existing tests. In addition, by using Fama and French's (1993) five factors, we test whether fewer factors are sufficient to explain the average returns on 25 stock portfolios formed on size and book-to-market. While inconclusive in-sample, a three-factor model appears to perform better out-of-sample than both four- and five-factor models.     

Impact of on-field football success on the off-field financial performance of AFL football clubs

In this study, we examine the factors that contribute to the financial performance of clubs in the Australian Football League over the period from 1993 to 2002. Primarily, we examine the association between the on‐field football success of clubs and their level of off‐field financial performance. We find that match attendance is positively related to both short‐term and long‐term success of football clubs and also to the uncertainty as to the match outcome (i.e. the expected closeness of the match). We also find that club membership is highly persistent and is positively related to both the past football success of the club and the marketing expense incurred. Finally, we find that there is a significant association between the level of marketing revenue and the level of on‐field success in the prior 2 years.     

Are outsiders handicapped in CEO successions?

We argue that outsiders are handicapped (chosen only if markedly better than the best insider) in Chief Executive Officer (CEO) successions to strengthen the incentive that the contest to become CEO provides inside candidates. Handicapping implies are that a firm will be more likely to choose an insider to succeed to the CEO position where insiders are more comparable to each other, where outsiders are less comparable to insiders, and where there are more inside candidates. We assess these predictions using a data set containing more than 1,000 observations on CEO succession in large U.S. firms over the period 1974–1995 and a novel measure of the comparability of insiders that identifies those firms with a product or line of business organizational structure. Our evidence is consistent with each prediction. We also explore more carefully our organizational structure variable. We find that where firms switch to a product or line of business structure (making insiders more comparable) the likelihood of outsider succession falls. And we consider the possibility that managers from firms with a product or line of business structure may be more likely to be chosen CEO because their experience as divisional head better prepares them for a CEO's duties. Two tests suggest that this is not the source of our finding that these firms are more likely to promote insiders to be CEO. The first test finds that controlling for prior experience managing a business (a division or a firm) among inside candidates to be CEO, those firms organized along product lines remain more likely to promote from within. The second test finds that when outsiders are chosen CEO, these outsiders do not come disproportionately from firms with a product or line of business structure.     

Repayment behavior in peer‐to‐peer microfinancing: Empirical evidence from Kiva

Based on a sample of microloans (to individuals and to groups) that were refinanced through the peer-to-peer microfinancing platform Kiva, we study the determinants of the repayment behavior of micro-entrepreneurs whose loans are available to international charitable lenders. We perform binary regressions and account for influential factors such as the time required for funding or the type of entrepreneurial activity. The screening and monitoring quality of the microfinance institution which selects the borrowers is a main driver of credit default. We find evidence that the loan size, the loan term and the length of a possible grace period influence the probability of default. Moreover, women demonstrate better repayment behavior which is, however, not the case for groups of women.