Market conditions,risk, and real estate portfolio returns: Some empirical evidence

This research examined the return behavior of a portfolio of American and New York Stock Exchange real estate firms. A dummy variable procedure was used to test for excess return and/or change in risk behavior across market conditions. The findings were as follows. First, no excess return was found for any model specification. Second, no changes in beta were found using the benchmark approach. The beta shifted when an up market was defined as a nonrecessionary period; the beta behaved procyclically. However, the subperiod tests indicated that effect was transitory and period specific.     

Information asymmetry,mutual funds and earnings management: Evidence from China

This paper investigates how information asymmetry and mutual fund ownership affect listed companies’ earnings management. We show that (1) reducing information asymmetry improves firms’ earnings management behavior; (2) relative to short-term mutual funds, long-term mutual funds promote earnings quality by adopting a monitoring role; and (3) by dividing firms into high/low information asymmetry groups, we find that the information environment significantly increases the effect of long-term mutual funds on firms’ earnings management. In this paper, we provide new evidence for the role that institutional investors play in a typical emerging capital market. Our results have clear policy implications: to increase earnings quality, it is essential to improve information transparency and develop long-term institutional investors.     

Accounting quality,information risk and the term structure of implied volatility around earnings announcements

We examine the association between accounting quality, which is used as a proxy for firm information risk, and the behavior of the term structure of implied option volatility around earnings announcements. By employing a large sample of US firms having options traded on their equity during 1996–2010, we find that lower (higher) accounting quality is significantly associated with stronger (weaker) changes in the steepness of the term structure of implied volatility curve around quarterly earnings announcements. This finding (which is robust to controls for business-stemming uncertainty regarding future firm performance) is consistent with a stronger differential of short vs. long-term uncertainty for higher information risk firms, indicating greater uncertainty on the future economic performance of poorer vs. stronger accounting quality firms. We also establish the trading implications of these findings by demonstrating a (profitable in-sample) self-financed option trading strategy that is based on the quality of the accounting information released on earnings announcement days.     

External financing and earnings management: Evidence from international data

Corporate financing conditions in the external capital market are significantly affected by information asymmetry, while internal financing is not. Given that earnings information influences market perceptions regarding firms’ quality, firms relying on external financing should have incentives to manage earnings to improve their financing conditions. This study investigates the effect of corporate external financing behavior on earnings management. Using a sample comprising 75,790 observations of 12,874 firms in 43 countries, we find that accrual-based and real earnings management are positively associated with firms’ reliance on external financing. This positive relationship holds especially true for firms that rely on equity rather than debt financing. We argue that reliance on external financing (especially equity financing), which is subject to problems arising from information asymmetry, generates a motive for earnings management.     

Information effects of dividends: Evidence from the Hong Kong market

The literature has suggested that earnings and earnings forecasts provide stronger signals than dividends about future performance of a firm. We test the information effects of simultaneous announcement of earnings and dividends in the Hong Kong market, distinguished by three interesting features (concentrated family-shareholdings, low corporate transparency, and no tax on dividends). Our results show significant share price reactions to unexpected earnings and dividend changes, but dividends appear to play a dominant role over earnings in pricing, a result contrary to findings in the literature. The signaling hypothesis works primarily for firms with earning increases, while the maturity hypothesis works mainly for firms with earnings declines.

REITs,real estate,and inflation: Lessons from the gold market

This studyindirectly tests whether equity Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) proxy for real estate when examining real estate's inflation hedging ability. The hedging properties of gold, an underlying asset, are compared against those of gold stocks, a securitized form of the asset, and gold is shown to perform well as an inflation hedge, while gold stocks do not. This divergence between an asset and its securitized form suggests caution in drawing conclusions about real estate's ability to hedge inflation from equity REIT studies.     

Product market competition and earnings management: Evidence from discretionary accruals and real activity manipulation

We examine the association between product market competition and earnings management activities. We use the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), a widely used measure for market concentration, as a proxy for product market competition. We examine two forms of earnings management: accrual-based and real activity-based. Our results are mixed, but generally suggest that both income-increasing accrual manipulation and real activity-based manipulation are more prevalent among firms in low competition industries than those in high competition industries. Our findings are robust to various measures of earnings management, alternative measures of product market competitions, and different subsamples. We further explore the reasons why firms in low competition industries are more inclined to manage earnings and find that the market consequences of missing important earnings targets are more severe among firms in low competition industries than those in high competition industries.     

Policy uncertainty and peer effects: Evidence from corporate investment in China

This study investigates whether economic policy uncertainty (EPU) magnifies peer effects in corporate investment in China and the economic mechanisms through which EPU may act upon this property. We examine this relationship by analysing a large sample of publicly listed companies in China for the period of 2009–2019, adopting the peer-firm-average idiosyncratic stock return to capture exogenous variations in peer firms’ investment activities. We demonstrate that peer effects are stronger when EPU is increasing in intensity. We also find that high EPU magnifies peer effects by decreasing the accuracy of firms’ signals regarding their investment opportunities, asymmetrically impacting their capacity to acquire information and exacerbating managers’ career concerns. We further show that increased EPU magnifies peer effects only for underinvesting firms, causing underinvestment to persist and retarding recovery from an economic downturn. Our investigation provides original evidence of how EPU influences corporate investment decisions through peer effects, contributing to the continuing debate on the role of EPU and corporate investment efficiency by establishing that the adoption of consistent and transparent economic policies optimize returns on a company’s investments, especially during an economic downturn.     

Foreign macroeconomic and industry-related information transfers around earnings announcements: Evidence from U.S.-listed non-U.S. firms

This study examines information transfer regarding how investors react to new foreign macroeconomic and industry-related information embedded in foreign firms' earnings releases. Using non-U.S. firms listed in the U.S. as our main setting, we find that U.S. investors react significantly to foreign macroeconomic information and to information generated by the interaction between macroeconomic and industry-related information. We also find that the benefits (costs) of processing earnings reports increase (decrease) both types of information transfers. In addition, we find macroeconomic information transfers in an international cross-listing setting and both types of information transfers in an international non-cross-listing setting.     

Macroeconomic control, political costs and earnings management: Evidence from Chinese listed real estate companies

Firms in China have faced high political costs during China’s economic transition, because they are affected by macroeconomic policies. However, research to date has offered no consistent conclusions on the relationship between political costs and earnings management in China. This study tests whether real estate firms attempt to decrease earnings during periods of macroeconomic control, using variables related to the national real estate market as proxies for political costs. We find that political costs are negatively related to earnings management in listed real estate firms. In addition, we find that non-state-owned enterprises utilized more income-decreasing accruals during this period. Our results are consistent with the political costs hypothesis.     

Information, Credit Risk, Lender Specialization and Loan Pricing: Evidence from the DIP Financing Market

We provide an empirical support for theories of lender specialization using the recently developed market for Debtor-in-Possession (DIP) financing. The legal environment in which DIP financing operates represents a natural laboratory for testing determinants of lending specialization (e.g. lender choice). We find that the choice of lender is not driven by credit risk, but by information considerations and that this lending specialization has loan pricing effects. In short, banks (non-bank lenders) lend to more (less) transparent firms and at lower (higher) loan spreads. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that banks provide important and useful services.