Trading Prior to the Disclosure of Material Information: Evidence from Regulation Fair Disclosure Form 8‐Ks*

Regulation Fair Disclosure (Reg FD) Form 8‐K filings provide a venue where managers release information to the market as a whole that they designate as being material. Using this setting, we study trading patterns immediately prior to the public disclosure of material information. We offer three main results. First, using both intraday and daily trading data, we find abnormal trading volume of 21 percent (13 percent) in the hour (day) prior to the public disclosure, respectively. Second, we find that this pre‐disclosure abnormal trading volume is concentrated in firms that are smaller, have more growth opportunities, issue fewer voluntary disclosures, and have weaker external monitoring. Finally, we find that this pre‐disclosure volume is concentrated in subsamples in which the information relates to a firm's material contracts, a firm holds investor/analyst conferences, and there is insider trading activity in a firm's shares. Our results do not concentrate in a small number of firms or industries, and do not appear to be explained by the form through which managers first release the material information (e.g., Form 8‐K, press release, website posting, or social media). Our results are also robust to controlling for the firm's other filings and peer filings that occur around the disclosure. Overall, the trading patterns we document may show that, inconsistent with the spirit of Reg FD, a subset of investors trade on information managers deem material prior to its broad, public release.     

Institutional Investors' Trading in Speculation: Evidence from China

The trading behaviour of institutional investors has attracted much attention. However, many issues related to their trading behaviour cannot be addressed without high‐frequency changes in institutional ownership. Based on a measure of the trading behaviour of institutional investors by using an institutional account dataset from China, we find that (i) active institutions trade speculatively by taking advantage of individual investors; (ii) individuals buying high and selling low offer liquidity only on average; (iii) foreign investors do not show significant patterns in speculation; and (iv) trading of active institutions significantly affects price. This study casts doubt on the conventional wisdom that institutional or sophisticated investors improve market efficiency by correcting mispricing, and provides direct evidence for institutional investors' speculation behaviour and their destabilising effect on the stock market. Results suggest that regulators in emerging markets should monitor institutions' speculation to bring fairness and justice to the stock market.     

Ownership Structure and Risk‐taking Behavior: Evidence from Banks in Korea and Japan

This study analyzes the effects of managerial ownership on the risk‐taking behavior of Korean and Japanese banks during the relatively regulated period of the late 1990s to the early 2000s. It finds that managerial ownership alone does not affect either the risk or the profit levels of Korean banks. In contrast, an increase in managerial ownership adds to the total risk of Japanese banks. However, increased risk‐taking behavior does not produce higher levels of profit for Japanese banks. The coefficients of the interaction term between franchise value and managerial ownership are negative and statistically significant for both the Korean and the Japanese banking industries. This means that an increase in managerial ownership in banks with high franchise values discourages risk‐taking behavior. The results confirm the disciplinary role of franchise value on the risk‐taking behavior of banks. These results also fall in line with previous literature supporting the moral hazard hypothesis based on research into the economies of the USA and other countries.     

Macroeconomic effects of uncertainty shocks: Evidence from Korea

This paper proposes a new measure of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) for Korea by fine-tuning the keywords and exploiting information drawn from a wide variety of local newspapers. The uniqueness of our new EPU index lies mainly in the fact that it uses a set of keywords that correspond much more closely to actual language use and better reflect the economic environment of Korea, which is classified as a small open economy. After shocks to EPU being identified, we employ these shocks to estimate the impulse responses using local projections. Unlike the existing measure, our results show that shocks to EPU lead to a significant decline in macroeconomic aggregates such as output, consumption, investment, and employment. Thus our results suggest a refinement of the EPU index in general for other countries accordingly. We also develop policy-specific uncertainty indices and show that they capture important historical events related to the corresponding policies, such as monetary and fiscal measures.     

Trade liberalization and wage inequality: Evidence from Korea

This paper investigates the heterogeneous income distribution effects of trade liberalization using Korean survey data from years of 2000–2015. Following the Stolper-Samuelson theorem most of previous research studying the effects of trade liberalization on wage differences focus on workers’ characteristics (e.g., skilled or unskilled) while heterogeneity within the same worker group has not been yet substantially investigated. To fill this gap, this paper provides empirical evidence of wage inequality across firms within the same group of workers caused by trade liberalization, potentially implied in the new-new trade models with firm heterogeneity. Employing a difference-in-differences (DID) specification, we find that the wages of unskilled workers in Korea have increased since its FTAs with more advanced countries, such as members of EU and the US, came into effect, while the effects on the wages of skilled workers are negative but not statistically significant. We also show that wage effects are heterogeneous across firms within unskilled and skilled worker groups, while the positive effects are statistically significant and largest for unskilled workers in medium-large sized firms. These findings are in line with both traditional and new-new trade models.     

Foreign Ownership and Firm Innovation: Evidence from Korea

ABSTRACT

This study examines whether foreign equity investment promotes domestic firms’ innovation activities. Using panel data on the Korean firms during the 1999–2013 period, we find that foreign ownership has a positive effect on firms’ innovation activities. Furthermore, we also show that, as compared to non-chaebol firms, chaebol firms’ innovation activity becomes much greater with the increase of foreign ownership. Finally, we investigate industry-level spillover effects of innovation. Specifically, we find that foreign ownership promotes innovation activities via forward linkage, the effect of which is also more pronounced in chaebol firms.     

中国股市自相关性与反馈交易行为实证研究

本文通过对股市内不同类型交易者的行为进行分析,利用Watanabe(2002)的模型,对中国股市交易者的反馈交易行为进行了实证检验.结果表明:股市的波动率与自相关性之间具有反向的变动关系;股市收益在价格下降时,比价格上升时更具有负自相关性;股市中存在着正反馈交易行为,而且波动率越大,正反馈交易越显著.     

Business Ties and Information Advantage: Evidence from Mutual Fund Trading

This article examines whether ties to portfolio firms’ management via pension business relationships provide mutual funds with an informational advantage. Funds become related to portfolio companies when fund families serve as trustees for firms’ employee pension plans. Selling by related funds is more likely to be motivated by an information advantage than their buying, because the latter is heavily influenced by the desire to secure pension inflows. We find that stocks with larger net sales by related funds experience lower future returns. Information appears related to firm fundamentals, as the return predictability of related funds’ selling concentrates in stocks with negative future earnings surprises. Consistent with an information‐based explanation, the predictive power of related funds’ selling for future returns is more pronounced when information uncertainty about the stock is higher. Our results contribute to a growing literature that shows the sources of informed trading by institutions.     

The Walk‐down to Beatable Analyst Forecasts: The Role of Equity Issuance and Insider Trading Incentives*

It has been alleged that firms and analysts engage in an "earnings‐guidance game" where analysts first issue optimistic earnings forecasts and then "walk down" their estimates to a level that firms can beat at the official earnings announcement. We examine whether the walk‐down to beatable targets is associated with managerial incentives to sell stock after earnings announcements on the firm's behalf (through new equity issuance) or from their personal accounts (through option exercises and stock sales). Consistent with these hypotheses, we find that the walk‐down to beatable targets is most pronounced when firms or insiders are net sellers of stock after an earnings announcement. These findings provide new insights on the impact of capital‐market incentives on communications between managers and analysts.     

Pandemic and employment: Evidence from COVID-19 in South Korea

Using two complementary approaches, this study examines the deterioration of the Korean labor market during the first 10 months of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Applying the synthetic control method, we first find that the COVID-19 outbreak has eliminated 1.1 million jobs (4.2% of nonfarm employment) nationwide in April 2020. However, a difference-in-differences approach shows that local variation in COVID-19 intensity, which captures the “regional” effect of the pandemic, explains only 9% of the national shock. The portion of the regional effect remains low until December. This is mainly because the nationwide fear and policies such as social distancing measures also have a “common” effect on local economies. Our findings suggest that the COVID-19 shock may last long in the labor market due to this common effect unless the risk of infection is completely eliminated.     

Positive Feedback Trading Under Stress: Evidence from the US Treasury Securities Market

Abstract

A vector autoregression (VAR) is estimated on tick-by-tick data for quote-changes and signed trades of 2-year, 5-year and 10-year on-the-run US Treasury notes. Confirming the results found by Hasbrouck and others for the stock market, signed order flow tends to exert a strong effect on prices. More interestingly, however, there is often a strong effect in the opposite direction, particularly at times of volatile trading. Price declines elicit sales and price increases elicit purchases. An examination of tick-by-tick trading on an especially volatile day confirms this finding. At least in the US Treasury market, trades and price movements appear likely to exhibit positive feedback at short horizons, particularly during periods of market stress. This suggests that the standard analytical approach to the microstructure of financial markets, which focuses on the ways in which the information possessed by informed traders becomes incorporated into market prices through order flow, should be complemented by an account of how price changes affect trading decisions.     

Investor Reaction to the Ambiguity and Mix of Positive and Negative Argumentation in Favorable Analyst Reports

This study experimentally tests the hypothesis that investor reaction to favorable investment ratings is influenced by attributes of analysts’ supporting arguments. Specifically, I argue that argument ambiguity and the mix of positive and negative argumentation interact to influence how investors process and, in turn, react to information contained in analysts’ arguments. When positive arguments are unambiguous, I predict and find that investors react to the content of the arguments because they perceive the arguments provide sufficient support for the rating. In this case, investors react more favorably when the report includes strictly positive argumentation (i.e., one‐sided argumentation) than when it includes a mix of positive and negative argumentation (i.e., two‐sided argumentation). In contrast, when positive arguments are ambiguous, two‐sided argumentation acts as a credibility cue and leads to a higher likelihood of investment than one‐sided argumentation. These results provide important insights about the conditions under which investors react to justifications in favorable analyst reports and shed light on how analysts can credibly convey favorable information.     

机构投资者持股与内部人交易——基于中国A股市场的证据

作为证券监管机构的监管重点与难点，内部人交易一直以来备受关注。如何有效监督内部人交易，维护证券市场秩序与公平，保护中小投资者利益，是一个重要且具有现实意义的问题。基于2007-2015年中国A股上市公司内部人交易数据，文章探究了机构投资者持股对内部人交易获利能力的影响，发现：（1）机构投资者的存在会提高内部人买入行为的获利能力，会抑制内部人卖出行为的获利能力；（2）机构投资者对内部人交易的影响在卖出样本中存在截面差异，具体表现为在国有企业样本组和非两职合一样本组更显著；（3）机构投资者异质性分析发现，基金投资者会提升内部人买入交易的获利能力，合格的境外投资者会抑制内部人交易的总体获利能力，其他机构投资者一方面会促进买入行为的获利能力，一方面会抑制卖出行为的获利能力；（4）机制路径检验发现，机构投资者对内部人卖出交易的抑制作用存在提高公司盈余质量、提升治理水平和改善信息披露水平三种机制路径。总之，文章验证了机构投资者影响内部人交易的研究推论。     

Insider Trading Restrictions and Insiders’ Supply of Information: Evidence from Earnings Smoothing

We exploit the setting of first‐time enforcement of insider trading laws to investigate the relationship between insider trading opportunities and insiders’ supply of information. Insider trading opportunities motivate insiders to reduce their supply of information by concealing firm performance, thereby increasing their information advantage over outsiders, resulting in higher insider trading profits. Using data from 40 countries over the 1988–2004 period, we find that reporting opacity, as captured by earnings smoothness, decreases significantly after the initial enforcement of insider trading laws in countries with strong legal institutions. The decrease in earnings smoothness is positively related to the strictness of insider trading laws. The decrease in earnings smoothness is also more pronounced for countries that have more persistent insider trading law enforcement and for countries that impose more severe penalties on insider trading cases. Further analyses show that the decrease in earnings smoothness following insider trading enforcement is concentrated among firms that are not closely held and among high‐growth firms. In addition to uncovering a channel through which insider trading restrictions affect the information environment, our evidence highlights the importance of country‐ and firm‐level governance structures in determining the consequences of insider trading restrictions.     

Comparison of Effects from Different Institutions: Public Credit Guarantee in Korea*

We aim to compare the activities of the two main credit guarantee institutions in Korea. There has been mounting criticism that although these institutions were mandated to play different roles in financing small and medium‐sized enterprises (SME), their operations are, in fact, similar, and many SME receive overlapping support from both institutions. Using the propensity score matching method (allowing for multiple, mutually exclusive support scenarios) to compare the effects of PCG on different institutions, the present study provides suggestions to help the government make decisions regarding the consolidation of PCG funds. The results suggest that the institutions function differently and target different SME. However, overlapping support enables firms to expand their sales only, indicating the existence of inefficiency in the case of overlapping support to firms.     

Public Policy Environment and Entrepreneurial Activities: Evidence from China

What determines the effectiveness of government entrepreneurship policies on the regional development of entrepreneurial activities in China? Using panel data analysis, this study develops a comprehensive framework that examines the effects of various factors, including government efficiency and government support for business, finance and technology, on facilitating the creation of new ventures. Based on provincial data collected between 2009 and 2014, we find that the level of infrastructure development, government incubators and venture capital‐guided funds have positive and significant effects on entrepreneurial activities. The findings of our study suggest that local government efficiency is a fundamental precondition for entrepreneurship policies to effectively boost the regional economy.     

Expectations and Macro-Housing Interactions in a Small Open Economy: Evidence from Korea

Open Economies Review - This paper studies the interaction between the housing sector and the macroeconomic environment in Korea. Besides serving as a typical small open economy, Korea provides an...     

Global Outsourcing and Wage Inequality in Middle-Income Countries: Evidence from South Korea

A substantial number of studies have suggested that global outsourcing can induce wage inequality. As Feenstra and Hanson [(1996a) Foreign investment, outsourcing, and relative wage, in: R. C. Feestra, G. M. Hanson, and D. A. Irwin (Eds.) Political Economy of Trade Policy: Essays in Honor of Jagdish Bhagwati (Cambridge: The MIT Press), pp. 89–127] argued, global outsourcing is comparable to skill-biased technological change in that global outsourcing is more likely to increase the wage of skilled workers rather than their unskilled counterparts. We examine the effects of outsourcing on wage of skilled and unskilled workers in Korea's manufacturing sector with a focus on the dissimilar effects of outsourcing to developed countries (DCs) and less developed countries (LDCs) on relative wage. The results of system and difference GMM estimation based on manufacturing data from 1992 to 2006 indicate that outsourcing to DCs and LDCs have opposite (and significant) effects on relative wage, that is, outsourcing to DCs (LDCs) decreases the wage of skilled (unskilled) workers.