Adopting better corporate governance: Evidence from cross-border mergers

Cross-border mergers allow firms to alter the level of protection they provide to their investors, because target firms usually import the corporate governance system of the acquiring company by law. Therefore, cross-border mergers provide a natural experiment to analyze the effects of changes in corporate governance on firm value, and on an industry as a whole. We construct measures of the change in investor protection induced by cross-border mergers in a sample of 7330 ‘national industry years’ (spanning 39 industries in 41 countries in the period 1990–2001. We find that the Tobin's Q of an industry — including its unmerged firms — increases when firms within that industry are acquired by foreign firms coming from countries with better shareholder protection and better accounting standards. We present evidence that the transfer of corporate governance practices through cross-border mergers is Pareto improving. Firms that can adopt better practices willingly do so, and the market assigns more value to better protection.     

关于利用税收杠杆调节跨境资金流动的设想

近年来,伴随着我国经济平稳较快增长与经济开放程度的不断扩大,我国跨境资金流动规模明显增加,且波动频率和幅度逐渐增大,由此增加了国内宏观调控的复杂性。本文借鉴托宾税的思想,在介绍税收杠杆国际经验和实施难点的基础上,提出在国内利用税收杠杆收窄跨境资金套利空间、增强对跨境资金流动分类管理的初步设想,以期为完善跨境资金调控政策提供参考。     

Method of payment and risk mitigation in cross-border mergers and acquisitions

We argue that the method of payment in cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) can mitigate country-level governance risk for the acquirer. We find a greater use of stock as the method of payment in cross-border deals involving targets from countries with high governance risk relative to that in the acquirer's country. This increased use of stock in riskier cross-border deals is consistent with the optimal reaction of the acquirer to avoid overpayment, even though we also show that the use of stock (instead of cash) as the method of payment in cross-border deals is associated with a lower likelihood of deal completion. Furthermore, for more recent periods (i.e., after 2000) we show that the use of stock (cash) has increased (decreased) significantly in cross-border deals, resulting in convergence with the method of payment used in domestic deals.     

跨境支付清算业务的历史演变与发展建议

＂十二五＂规划纲要明确指出,要进一步扩大人民币跨境使用,而完善我国跨境支付清算体系建设对于推进人民币跨境使用具有重要意义。文章根据清算方式的演变回顾了世界跨境支付清算业务的不同发展阶段,以及我国跨境支付清算业务的发展历程,针对工作中存在的问题,从增强与全球跨境支付清算体系的有机联系等方面提出改进和完善我国跨境支付清算工作的发展建议。     

Explaining bank market-to-book ratios: Evidence from 2006 to 2009

This paper examines the market-price to book-value ratio for 6604 bank stock observations from December 31, 2006 through June 30, 2009. We relate each bank’s market-price to book-value ratio to several fundamental ratios and whether the bank took funds from the US Treasury under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The results of this study show that banks who took TARP funds have lower market-price to book-value ratios. In addition, lower relative costs, higher non-interest income, and lower assets in non-accrual or foreclosed status are associated with higher market-price to book-value ratios while controlling for size and other bank attributes.     

International order flows: Explaining equity and exchange rate returns

Macroeconomic models of equity and exchange rate returns perform poorly at high frequencies. The proportion of daily returns that these models explain is essentially zero. Instead of relying on macroeconomic determinants, we model equity price and exchange rate behavior based on a concept from microstructure–order flow. The international order flows are derived from belief changes of different investor groups in a two-country setting. We obtain a structural relationship between equity returns, exchange rate returns and their relationship to home and foreign equity market order flow. To test the model we construct daily aggregate order flow data from 800 million equity trades in the U.S. and France from 1999 to 2003. Almost 60% of the daily returns in the S&P100 index are explained jointly by exchange rate returns and aggregate order flows in both markets. As predicted by the model, daily exchange rate returns and order flow into the French market have significant incremental explanatory power for the daily S&P returns. The model implications are also validated for intraday returns.     

Explaining returns on venture capital backed companies: Evidence from Belgium

Using a unique database of 990 VC-backed Belgian firms, we study whether compatibility between corporate and environmental characteristics matters. We address two questions: (i) Does the interplay of company, industry, and product factors affect the expected returns of the VC-backed firms? (ii) Does the joint compatibility between these factors results in a non-linear increase in performance? Panel data analysis shows a significant influence of factor compatibility on returns. Quantile regression analysis indicates a non-linear relationship between the return and its determinants. Conjoint analysis identifies certain combinations of factors, which collapse into classifiable patterns described in the strategic management literature.     

Explaining Underutilization of Tax Depreciation Deductions: Empirical Evidence from Norway

Many corporations do not claim all of their allowable tax depreciation deductions. Intuitively, this kind of behavior might seem odd. However we propose several possible explanations. First, we find strong evidence that firms facing current tax losses or carrying forward past losses underutilize depreciation in order to recover tax losses before they expire. Second, corporations with bad economic performance tend to underutilize their deductions, suggesting that corporations use costly windowdressing on their accounting measures. Third, we find support for the hypothesis that tax compliance costs discourage the utilization of accelerated depreciation, especially by small firms. We do not find much support for other hypotheses. For example, we find no evidence of substitution between tax depreciation and private debt due to competition between the benefits of private bank monitoring and the tax savings from using tax allowances to postpone tax payments, as suggested in earlier literature. We also study the effects of the uniform reporting accounting system (typical of many European countries) which can, under certain circumstances, constrain dividends. Forgoing some tax depreciation can loosen the dividend constraint, but the evidence does not support this motivation. Unusual access to extremely detailed individual firm tax return forms in Norway made our empirical analysis possible. In addition, the 1992 Norwegian tax reform provided a natural experiment for testing some of the hypotheses. We use the time-series and cross-sectional variation across Norwegian corporations in 1988, 1991, 1992 and 1993.     

Explaining share price disparity with parameter uncertainty: Evidence from Chinese A- and H-shares

The price disparity between the A- and H-share markets for dual-listed firms in China is one of the most intriguing puzzles in the Mainland and Hong Kong financial markets. In this paper, we revisit this price disparity puzzle using the channel of parameter uncertainty. In the presence of information asymmetry and market segmentation, investors have different views on a firm’s asset volatility, and hence different valuations of the same reference firm. We estimate a structural model for equity pricing using a Bayesian approach, in which the uncertainty of investor model parameters is represented by the posterior standard deviation of the firm’s asset volatility. Our regression analysis shows that in addition to other market-based and macro factors, parameter uncertainty explains variations in price disparity.     

Uncertainty and currency crises: Evidence from survey data

How does uncertainty about fundamentals affect speculation in the foreign exchange markets? This paper studies empirically the role of uncertainty in currency crises. Uncertainty, which is measured using the dispersion of survey forecasts of key macroeconomic variables, is found to have a non-monotonic effect on exchange rate pressures: it heightens speculative pressures when expected fundamentals are good and eases them when they are bad. This prediction is consistent with a broad class of currency crisis theories, ranging from first-generation to global-game models. The proposed empirical strategy remains valid in the presence of forecasters with strategic objectives and addresses potential endogeneity bias by building a novel set of instrumental variables.     

Explaining underpricing of IPOs in frontier markets: Evidence from the Nigeria Stock Exchange

The paper provides empirical analyses of IPO underpricing on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, from the period 1990 to 2006. The results indicate an average abnormal initial day returns of 43.1%. There is evidence of long-run underperformance of 0.6%. Results from our regression model explaining initial abnormal returns for the IPOs of Nigeria show that size of firm and audit quality are important variables affecting underpricing. The results also show the presence of a non-linear relationship between the offer price and underpricing.     

金融危机以来跨境资金流动与人民币汇率预期、境内外利差间互动关系的实证研究

跨境资金流动、人民币汇率预期、境内外利差是影响我国金融市场稳定的三个重要因素。文章通过对这三者时间序列的实证分析,考察这三个因素之间的长短期内在影响效应,并根据实证分析结论,从维护我国国际收支平衡与深入推进利率、汇率市场化改革大局着眼,就营造和谐市场环境提出相关政策建议。     

当前江苏省银行涉外金融创新产品的特点及其对跨境资金流动的影响

近年来江苏省外汇指定银行涉外金融产品创新步伐加快,业务量快速发展。文章分析了金融产品创新的影响因素,系统介绍了这些金融创新产品的类别、模式与功能,总结了金融产品创新的特点,并分析其对跨境资金流动的影响。文章指出,这些产品创新主要是出于为企业套利和规避政策监管等目的,这些创新产品的大幅增长,造成大量套利资金频繁跨境进出、放大市场价格变化对跨境收支和结售汇的影响等负面影响。为此,建议在鼓励银行金融创新的同时,应加大统计监测和产品创新规范力度。     

Destination taxation and evasion: Evidence from U.S. inter-state commodity flows

Tax evasion has been an important issue in the accounting literature for several decades, but the focus has been on corporate income taxes. We develop a new way to examine tax evasion that focuses on corporate transactions, rather than corporate profits. Specifically, we examine how commodity flows respond to destination sales taxes, allowing for tax evasion as a function of distance between trade partners. After accounting for transportation costs, we find that the effect of taxes decreases as distance increases. This is consistent with the notion that longer distances between trade partners hinder government oversight and increase the likelihood of successful tax evasion. Our results are robust with respect to outliers, strategic neighbor effects, information sharing agreements and other re-specifications. These results are important to policymakers because they evidence the difficulty of enforcing destination taxation in open economies such as U.S. states and the European Union.     

Monetary policy matters: Evidence from new shocks data

The evidence suggests that monetary policy post 1988 became more forward-looking, invalidating the identifying assumptions in conventional methods of measuring monetary policy's effects, leading to spurious and unlikely results for this period. We propose a new identification scheme that uses factors extracted from Fed Funds futures to measure exogenous changes in policy. Using this shock series in a VAR, we recover the contractionary effect of monetary tightening on output. Moreover, we find that as much as half of the variability in output was driven by monetary policy shocks, and that there is a mild price puzzle.     

How people pay: Evidence from grocery store data

Empirical evidence based on grocery store transaction data shows that consumer payment behavior at the point of sale is important for understanding models of money demand. There are statistically significant effects of transaction costs, opportunity costs, and product characteristics on the choice of payment instrument, which then, in turn, affect money demand. These results emphasize the overlap between the work of empirical researchers in payment choice and theoretical modelers of monetary economics and should inform both literatures.     

后金融危机时代我国银行卡跨境网上支付的发展及特点

在国际金融风暴的冲击下,全球经济百废待兴,而我国电子商务产业却连年稳定快速增长,呈现出支付工具层出不穷、支付领域日益细分以及向综合化发展与渗透的态势,网上支付的高效率和低成本在后金融危机时代尽领风骚.与此同时,跨境网上支付已悄然成为我国电子商务备受关注的新增长点.     

Evaluating the Nordea experiment: Evidence from market and accounting data

This paper discusses results and difficulties of comparing banks’ performance based on publicly available data for the case of Nordea, a pan-Nordic bank created through mergers of important national banks. The objective is to determine whether Nordea’s unique strategy of functional integration across four countries can be advantageous. For stock-market data, however, Nordea does not have stable betas on risk factors, and thus the comparables method must be used with great care. The Nordea holding company performed about as well as the comparables, both in terms of stock-market and accounting data. Nordea banks in individual countries outperformed comparable holding companies; by arithmetic, Nordea non-bank operations are not as profitable as its bank operations. In event studies, the data lend only the weakest support to the hypothesis that the market viewed Nordea’s acquisitions as adding value.     

Market incompleteness and the equity premium puzzle: Evidence from state-level data

This paper investigates the importance of market incompleteness by comparing the rates of risk aversion estimated from complete and incomplete markets environments. For the incomplete-markets case, we use consumption data for the 50 US states. We find that the rate of risk aversion under the incomplete-markets setup is much lower. Furthermore, including the second and third moments of the cross-sectional distribution of consumption growth in the pricing kernel lowers the estimate of risk aversion. These findings suggest that market incompleteness ought to be seen as an important component of solutions to the equity premium puzzle.