Anomalous security price behavior following management earnings forecasts

This study provides evidence that most of the stock price reactions to bad news management forecasts of annual earnings are reversed in the 60 days following the forecast. In addition, a significant amount of the price reaction to bad news forecasts of quarterly earnings is reversed in the market's reaction to the following quarterly earnings announcement. Unlike the previous overreaction evidence, this study is not subject to the criticisms of beta-shifts, cross-firm comparisons, or lengthy intertemporal comparisons. In addition, the results are robust to include many additional variables that could be hypothesized to affect the observed results.     

Measuring corporate environmental performance

As shareholders, government regulators, consumers, employees, and the general public pay more attention to companies' environmental performance, measurement issues are becoming increasingly important and demand is growing for relevant information to assist stakeholders in making key decisions. Despite the enhanced interest in and attention to companies' environmental activities, the accounting profession has been slow to take on the role of defining, measuring, and controlling this broad corporate domain. Thus, measures of environmental performance have proliferated in the absence of clear, generally accepted guidelines as to what constitutes good and bad environmental performance. As a result, the public is becoming increasingly confused and cynical about interpretation of such data. In this paper, we use theoretical and empirical approaches to define corporate environmental performance and consider how well existing measures operationalize the construct. Interestingly, some popular environmental rating schemes seem to rely more heavily on public reaction to environmental events than on more precise and measurable outcome or process dimensions. Our findings suggest a need for explicit environmental performance metrics in order to provide stakeholders with more reliable, consistent, and accurate information for comparing companies and making key strategic decisions. We argue that the accounting profession is an obvious candidate for establishing such metrics since the domain of accounting typically includes measuring, communicating, and regulating information about company performance. Expanding accountants' domain to include environmental performance can greatly contribute to the usefulness of environmental performance metrics.     

Measuring climate policy stringency: a shadow price approach

To assess the effect of environmental policy on production structures, trade structures, or foreign direct investment, a measure for the stringency of policy is necessary. Measures typically used in empirical studies share several disadvantages: they are not available on a sectoral basis to reflect concerns of industry competitiveness; they are not available for a wide range of countries to allow for international comparisons; or they are not broad enough to reflect the multidimensionality of environmental policy. This paper develops a thorough, internationally comparable, sector-specific measure of multidimensional climate policy stringency where a shadow price approach serves as a basis. The approach is applied to climate policy by determining sector-specific emission-relevant energy costs on the basis of the sectors’ usage of emission-relevant energy carriers and the carriers’ respective prices. The resulting shadow price estimates are heterogeneous and can be applied in future research to test for carbon leakage and pollution havens.     

Nonparametric prediction for the time-dependent volatility of the security price

In this paper we consider a continuous time model for the security price with the time-dependent volatility. It is shown that the non-normality and non-linear dependency of the short-term return, the major characteristics observed on many financial assets, can be incorporated into our model. In order to evaluate the option price formula on the model we propose a nonparametric predictor for the volatility function without reference to a specific functional form. We examine the so-called continuous record asymptotics and show that the proposed predictor is asymptotically minimax for a wide class of the volatility functions. One of the most important results is that the application of the Black-Scholes method can be justified by plugging the proposed predictor in the standard Black-Scholes formula even if the volatility changes over time.     

Stock price volatility in a multiple security overlapping generations model

A number of empirical studies have reached the conclusion thatstock price volatility cannot be fully explained within thestandard dividend discount model. This article proposes a resolutionbased upon a model that contains both a random supply of riskyassets and finitely lived agents who trade in a multiple securityenvironment. As the analysis shows there exist 2^K equilibriawhen K securities trade. The low volatility equilibria haveproperties analogous to those found in the infinitely livedagent models of Campbell and Kyle (1991) and Wang (1993, 1994).In contrast, the high-volatility equilibria have very differentcharacteristics. Within the high-volatility equilibria verylarge price variances can be generated with very small supplyshocks. Adding securities to the economy further reduces therequired supply shocks. Using previously established empiricalresults the model can reconcile the data with supply shocksthat are less than 10% as large as observed return shocks. Theseresults are shown to hold even when the dividend process ismean reverting.     

Online and official price indexes: Measuring Argentina's inflation

Prices collected from online retailers can be used to construct daily price indexes that complement official statistics. This paper studies their ability to match official inflation estimates in five Latin American countries, with a focus on Argentina, where official statistics have been heavily criticized in recent years. The data were collected between October 2007 and March 2011 from the largest supermarket in each country. In Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Venezuela, online price indexes approximate both the level and main dynamics of official inflation. By contrast, Argentina's online inflation rate is nearly three times higher than the official estimate.     

Share price performance following actual share repurchases

Using unique actual daily share repurchase data from Hong Kong, this paper investigates share price performance surrounding and following actual share repurchases. It is found that repurchasing firms buy back shares following price drops, suggesting that they behave opportunistically when implementing actual share repurchases. On average, the initial 3-day market response to actual repurchases is about 0.43%. Repurchasing firms do not seem to exhibit superior abnormal performance over long horizons when they make actual share repurchases. However, the price performance of repurchasing firms varies across firm size and market–book value ratios, and shows a clear and consistent pattern. The market responds the most favorably to repurchases that are made by small and value (high book-to-market value) firms. Over a long horizon, there is some evidence that repurchases made by value firms show superior performance. The three-year buy-and-hold abnormal return, which is measured against a portfolio of control firms that are matched by size and book-to-market value ratios, is over 20%. At least, repurchases made by high book-to-market value firms, for which undervaluation is more likely to occur, can benefit long-term shareholders.     

Filter rules based on price and volume in individual security overreaction

I present evidence of predictability in a sample constructedto minimize concerns about time-varying risk premia and market-microstructureeffects. I use filter rules on lagged return and lagged volumeinformation to uncover weekly over-reaction profits on large-capitalizationNYSE and AMEX securities. I find that decreasing-volume stocksexperience greater reversals. Increasing-volume stocks exhibitweaker reversals and positive autocorrelation. A real-time simulationof the filter strategies suggests that an investor who pursuesthe filter strategy with relatively low transaction costs willstrongly outperform an investor who follows a buy-and-hold strategy.     

Measuring the impact of sales on earnings and equity price

In this paper we examine how sales affect earnings and in turn the stock price using a model in which sales contribute to earnings by a fixed sales margin rate and the stock price responds more sensitively to sales-induced earnings than to non-sales-induced earnings. We report that the regression coefficient of the sales margin (2.54) is about three times the earnings response coefficient (0.85) for the full sample and can be as high as 19 times the earnings response coefficient for an industry (i.e., 11.95 vs. 0.62 for restaurants). We contribute to the literature by identifying and documenting factors that make separating out the sources of earnings more important in equity pricing.

Measuring performance of Chinese joint ventures

A parent firm has many choices when it comes to selecting the indicators for measuring performance of its international joint ventures (IJVs). This paper identifies the indicators, discusses the reasons and factors that influence these choices. Semi-structured interviews with five US parent firms that have Chinese IJVs reveal that the parents use a range of internal and external indicators but these indicators differ from those they use for the parents themselves. This is due to different cultural and political emphases between the US and Chinese. However, there is no consistency on the weighting on the choices of the indicators, but the respondents reveal a need for a transparent and consistent evaluation process. These findings have implications to the managers of both the parent firms and IJVs, and stakeholders.     

Measuring performance of international closed-end funds

This paper provides an empirical analysis of the performance of 45 international closed-end funds and compares alternate measures of performance using the sample of funds and 35 national market indices. The empirical evidence indicates that the risk-adjusted performance of the shares or the net asset values of the funds match the performance of their respective local market indices, as well as the world market index and do not exhibit superior timing ability. These findings are robust to conditioning on information.     

Measuring price discovery: The variance ratio, the R, and the weighted price contribution

We analyze the statistical properties of three price discovery measures: The variance ratio, the weighted price contribution (WPC), and the R² of unbiasedness regressions. We find that, if the price process is a driftless martingale, only the WPC is an unbiased estimator for the return variance explained during a time interval. For autocorrelated processes with a drift, only the R² of the unbiasedness regression is consistent, but it is biased for small samples.     

A new paradigm for forecasting security returns in a market regulated by price limits

Numerous futures markets in the US and many stock markets around the world set a “limit” price before each trading session, based on the settlement price at the end of the previous trading day. Price limits are boundaries set by market regulators to restrict large daily fluctuations in the price of securities. Once the return limit is triggered, traders cannot observe the equilibrium return that would have prevailed in the absence of such regulation. We develop an innovative approach for forecasting security returns (and prices) in a market regulated by price limits. Our forecasting model allows for multiple limit-hits. The model is robust, straightforward and easy for practitioners to use. A few numerical predictions are provided for hypothetical securities, and for seven traded futures contracts.     

论使用净价进行业绩考核之不合理性

净价虽然能够反映出债券市场收益率的变动和行情的变化,但是却不是一个精确的指标,在实践运用中往往会出现误差。特别是在收益率变动幅度较小的情况下,还会产生严重的方向性错误。因此,建立一个合理有效的债券投资考核体系,除了要继续研究如何推出更有指标意义的债券指数之外,深化金融机构的体制改革,建立内部全面的考核体系,也是必不可少的一环。     

Measuring bond mutual fund performance with portfolio characteristics

This paper studies the performance of U.S. bond mutual funds using measures constructed from a novel data set of portfolio weights. Active fund managers exhibit outperformance before costs and fees generating, on average, gross returns of 1% per annum over the benchmark portfolio constructed using past holdings (approximately the same magnitude as expenses and transaction costs combined). This suggests that fund managers are able to earn back their fees and costs. There is evidence of neutral ability to time different portfolio allocations (sector, credit quality, and portfolio maturity allocations) and only a subgroup of bond funds exhibit successful timing ability. One performance measure based on portfolio holdings predicts future fund performance and provides information not contained in the standard measures. These results provide the first evidence of the value of active management in bond mutual funds.