The investment opportunity set,director ownership,and corporate policies: evidence from an emerging market

This paper provides evidence of the association between a firm's investment opportunity set (IOS), director ownership, and corporate policy choices. Using a sample of growth and non-growth firms in an emerging Asian market, we find that the IOS theory has significant explanatory power in the financing, dividend, executive compensation, and leasing aspects of corporate policies. Growth firms have lower debt-to-equity ratios and dividend yields, pay higher cash compensation and bonus amounts to their top executives, and finance a higher proportion of their asset acquisitions through operating leases. We also find that director ownership moderates and counteracts the association between IOS and corporate policies. Our results are consistent with contracting theory predictions that high director ownership mitigates the need for incentive or bonus compensation plans in growth firms.     

Profitability,multinationality and the investment opportunity set

This study examines the role of multinationality and profitability as determinants of the investment opportunity set. The results based on a sample of 600 firm year observations from the Forbes' “The Most International 100 American Manufacturing and Service Firms” from the 1987 to 1992 period indicates a significant positive relation with multinationality and profitability, conditioned by inflation and growth rate, size of the firm and the index of business formation.     

中国新的增长引擎和投资契机

中国经济目前面临两大问题：一是从长期看,经济长期增长潜力和结构变化带来的投资机会;二是从短期看,宏观经济与政策的变化趋势。     

Firm investment,finance constraint and voluntary asset sales: the evidence from Indian manufacturing firms

This paper examines the importance of finance constraints for firm investment expenditures by looking at the investment-asset sales sensitivity in financially healthy Indian manufacturing firms. Voluntary asset sales is a cleaner indicator of firms' liquidity than cash flows since it is unlikely to influence firms' growth opportunities unless they are financially constrained. We take care of the endogeneity and the implicit monotonicity problems, which are much debated in the literature, by using an endogenous regime switching regression model. We find that the investment-asset sales sensitivity is significantly greater for firms that are likely to be financially constraints.     

The use and effectiveness of macroprudential policies: New evidence

Using a recent IMF survey and expanding on previous studies, we document the use of macroprudential policies for 119 countries over the 2000–2013 period, covering many instruments. Emerging economies use macroprudential policies most frequently; especially foreign exchange related ones while advanced countries use borrower-based policies more. Usage is generally associated with lower growth in credit, notably in household credit. Effects are less in financially more developed and open economies, however, and usage comes with greater cross-border borrowing, suggesting some avoidance. And while macroprudential policies can help manage financial cycles, they work less well in busts.     

The relationship between capital structure and product markets: evidence from New Zealand

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the capital structure of New Zealand firms influences their product-market performance in the period from 1984 to 2008. Our main findings are that the use of leverage by publicly listed New Zealand companies leads to an increase in relative-to-industry sales growth, but a decrease in relative-to-industry return on assets (ROA). We also conduct a reverse causality test by examining whether sales growth and ROA influence leverage. We find no evidence that sales growth has an impact on the use of debt, but significant evidence that ROA is negatively correlated with its use. Our results suggest that New Zealand firms use debt to compete more aggressively in their product markets, even though this strategy comes at a cost of lower relative-to-industry profitability. A possible explanation for this behavior is the more competitive trading environment that has developed in New Zealand over the last 25 years.     

The role of investment banker directors in M&A

We examine how directors with investment banking experience affect firms? acquisition behavior. We find that firms with investment bankers on the board have a higher probability of making acquisitions. Furthermore, acquirers with investment banker directors experience higher announcement returns, pay lower takeover premiums and advisory fees, and exhibit superior long-run performance. Overall, our results suggest that directors with investment banking experience help firms make better acquisitions, both by identifying suitable targets and by reducing the cost of the deals.     

Ownership concentration, voluntary disclosures and information asymmetry in New Zealand

This paper investigates the impact of different classes of ownership concentration on information asymmetry conditional upon corporate voluntary disclosures in New Zealand. The current paper attempts to extend this stream of research by incorporating three mutually exclusive ownership structures and considering the interactive relationship between such ownership structures and corporate voluntary disclosures. Results reveal that ownership concentration in general is significantly positively associated with bid-ask spreads (proxy for information asymmetry) observed around annual report release dates. This finding supports the adverse selection hypothesis and importantly this effect is found to be most pronounced for financial institutions and management-controlled ownership categories. When voluntary disclosure is taken into account, the findings demonstrate that disclosures significantly attenuate information asymmetry risk associated with ownership concentration. This effect is particularly pronounced for firms with management-controlled ownership structures. The findings highlight the importance of corporate disclosures under concentrated ownership structures especially management-controlled ownership structures in reducing information asymmetry and enhancing market efficiency in New Zealand.     

The effects of financial distress and capital structure on the work effort of outside directors

This paper investigates the conflict of interests between shareholders and debtholders by examining the work effort of outside directors when a company experiences financial distress or has a high financial leverage. We find that at both company level and individual director level: (i) outside directors of a firm with higher financial distress exert less work effort in controlling for financial leverage; (ii) outside directors of a firm with a higher financial leverage work harder controlling for financial distress.     

Limits‐to‐arbitrage,investment frictions,and the investment effect: New evidence

This study comprehensively reexamines the debate over behavioral and rational explanations for the investment effect in an updated sample. We closely follow the previous literature and provide several differences. Our tests include five prominent measures of corporate investment and corporate profitability in q‐theory and recent investment‐based asset pricing models. Both classical and Bayesian inferences show that limits‐to‐arbitrage tend to be supported by more evidence than investment frictions for all investment measures. When idiosyncratic volatility and cash flow volatility are used in measuring investment frictions, the inference is more favorable for the rational explanation.     

Unnatural selection of outside directors: Consequences of Japanese corporate governance reforms

We examine how Japanese listed companies increase the number of outside directors to comply with corporate governance reforms. We find that, after the reforms, there has been an increase in the number of cases in which former company auditors (kansayaku) become outside directors in the same company. This trend is more pronounced for hitherto noncompliant firms with insufficient outside directors before the reforms. Moreover, the firms appointing company auditors as outside directors tend to change their corporate structures to maintain existing practices and minimize compliance costs. Our findings imply that Japanese reforms have increased the unnatural selection of outside directors.     

The profitability and investment premium: Pre-1963 evidence

I investigate the profitability and investment premium in stock returns using hand-collected data from Moody's Manuals for 1940–1963. Controlling for value, the profitability premium emerges as important in this period. In contrast, there is no reliable relation between investment and returns, regardless of whether investment is measured using growth in total assets or book equity and even after extending the data back to 1926. In spanning regressions, factors constructed from profitability and book-to-market ratios (RMW and HML, respectively) improve the mean-variance efficient tangency portfolio but the investment factor (CMA) does not.     

Same information,different value: New evidence on the value of voluntary assurance

This paper examines whether there is a difference in the value of voluntarily assured financial statements of private firms, depending on the availability of other information for the users of the statements. By using a within-firm estimator that completely controls for firm fixed effects, we find that the loan interest rate for private firms with voluntarily assured financial statements is lower when the firms have longer relationships with their banks. This finding suggests that the value of assured financial statements differs among the same type of users (banks), and is larger for those that accumulate soft information through long-term lending relationships. We also find that this larger value is not present when the tenure of the auditor with the client is very long.     

Dividend payout and executive compensation: theory and evidence from New Zealand

Using a model based on Bhattacharyya (2007), we predict a positive (negative) relationship between the earnings retention ratio (dividend payout ratio) and managerial compensation. We use tobit regression to analyse data for New Zealand firms' dividend payouts over the period 1997–2015 and find results consistent with Bhattacharyya (2007). These results hold when the definition of payout is modified to incorporate both common dividends and common share repurchases. Our results indicate that corporate dividend policy among New Zealand firms is perhaps best understood by considering the dividend payout ratio, rather than the level of, or changes in, cash dividends alone.     

The effect of accounting firm mergers on the market for audit services: New Zealand evidence

This article examines the outcomes of accounting firm mergers using data about the frequency of audit switches, the numbers of partners in the respective firms, and perceptions revealed in interviews with partners. Evidence from client switches does not show any evidence that the mergers were followed by cost reductions, or of collusion to force prices up. The effects of the mergers appear to have been elsewhere—the merging firms reduced partner numbers substantially, increasing partner leverage so that individual remaining partners were better off. Data from interviews confirm these findings, and show that the culture of individual firms had a significant effect on determining which group of partners controlled the merged firm.     

The investment behavior of buyout funds: Theory and evidence

We analyze the determinants of buyout funds’ investment decisions. We argue that when there is imperfect competition for private equity funds, the timing of funds’ investment decisions, their risk-taking behavior, and their subsequent returns depend on changes in the demand for private equity, conditions in the credit market, and fund managers’ ability to influence perceptions of their talent. We investigate these hypotheses using a proprietary dataset of 207 U.S. buyout funds that invested in 1,957 buyout targets over a 30-year period. Our dataset contains precisely dated cash inflows and outflows in every portfolio company, links every buyout target to an identifiable buyout fund, and is free from reporting and survivor biases. Thus, we are able to characterize every buyout fund's precise investment choices. Our findings are as follows. First, established funds accelerate their investment flows and earn higher returns when investment opportunities improve, competition for deal flow eases, and credit market conditions loosen. Second, the investment behavior of first-time funds is less sensitive to market conditions. Third, younger funds invest in riskier buyouts, in an effort to establish a track record. Finally, following periods of good performance, funds become more conservative, and this effect is stronger for first-time funds.     

The use of earnings and cash flows in investment decisions in the U.S. and Mexico: Experimental evidence

In this study, we investigate which of two accounting performance measures, earnings or cash flows, is used more in valuation decisions by non-professional investors in the United States and in Mexico. This issue is relevant for the Mexican Stock Market (Bolsa Mexicana de Valores) because the Bolsa's growth has stagnated compared with markets of other Latin American countries. Results of the study reveal that the majority of participants in the U.S. rely on earnings while the majority of participants in Mexico rely on cash flows. Results also suggest that the users’ predisposition can be dysfunctional to the extent that they do not consider using the other accounting measure, even when doing so made it easier to arrive at the correct valuation result (i.e. they did not choose to use the more persistent and therefore easier to forecast accounting measure). However, results are mixed for participants using earnings, since we document a higher chance of forecasting errors for participants in both countries when using earnings rather than cash flows in their calculations for the failure of these participants to adjust earnings for depreciation.This study extends the existing international literature by documenting a country-specific predisposition to use cash flows or earnings as a valuation tool by non-professional investors. Moreover, this study also shows that this predisposition can be dysfunctional, leading participants to make incorrect valuation decisions as a result of their failure to consider the differential persistence of the two accounting measures presented in the experiment.     

Corporate tax aggressiveness,outside directors,and debt policy: An empirical analysis

This study examines the influence of corporate tax aggressiveness on corporate debt policy (the debt-substitution effect) and the influence of outside directors on both debt and the debt-substitution effect. Based on a sample of 6967 firm-year observations over the 2001–2010 period, we find that tax aggressiveness is negatively correlated with debt. We also observe a negative correlation between debt and the proportion of outside directors on the board, and find that outside directors magnify the debt-substitution effect. Finally, we obtain similar results in analysis based on firms' debt issuance decisions.     

Stock liquidity and investment opportunities: New evidence from FTSE 100 index deletions

This paper examines the relationship between stock liquidity and investment opportunities in a sample of firms experiencing a negative exogenous liquidity shock, captured by deletion from the FTSE 100 stock index. We find no statistical association between stock liquidity and investment opportunities. These findings are in sharp contrast to the positive relation between liquidity and investment opportunities reported in US equity markets. This unique result in the London Stock Exchange suggests that deletion from a major stock index does not influence corporate investment decisions because there is no significant change in the cost of capital.