Informational Efficiency: Which Institutions Matter?

I study the role of institutional investors to play in the relative informational efficiency of transaction prices, measured by departures from a random walk, using a sample of the constituent stocks of the Shanghai 180 composite index from 2004 to 2005. I find that greater informational efficiency is associated with larger institutional holdings. Meanwhile, this result is not driven by the variations in liquidity measures. In addition, the evidence also indicates that all institutions have a strong preference for mispriced stocks, firms with good corporate governance, and large-cap and profitable firms. If the potential endogeneity and outliers are considered, the findings of three-stage least squares and median regressions suggest that larger shareholdings by independent institutions, particularly by mutual funds and social security fund, lead to a more efficient market because of their fewer potential business connections with invested companies.     

Real Earnings Management,Institutional Environment,and Future Operating Performance: An International Study

This paper investigates the association between firms' engagement in real activities manipulation (hereafter REM) on future firm performance in an international setting, and whether the association is conditional upon country-level institutional factor. Our inquiry is motivated by a paucity of research on the consequences of REM in an international setting. Using a large sample over the period of 2001 to 2015, we find that current-period REM is positively associated with future performance: a finding that is consistent with Gunny (2010) in the US. Importantly, we find that the positive performance effect is driven by firms operating in countries with strong institutional environments. Finally, we find that future operating performance improves when REM is undertaken by firms in strong institutional environments only during a non-economic crisis period, but not during an economic crisis period. The paper adds to the existing REM literature by showing a non-monotonic effect of REM on future performance that is conditional on the strength of a country's institution. We also contribute to the accounting information and crisis literature by documenting a time-variant effect of REM on future performance.     

Changes in CEO compensation structure and the impact on firm performance following CEO turnover

We document changes in compensation structure following CEO turnover and relate them to future performance. Compared to outgoing CEOs, incoming CEOs derive a significantly greater percentage of their compensation from option grants and new stock grants. The voluntary turnover sample shows similar changes in compensation structure while the forced turnover sample results suggest that new stock grants drive the significant increase in incentive compensation following turnover. Post-turnover performance is positively associated with new stock grants as a percentage of total compensation in the full sample and when analyzing forced and voluntary turnovers separately. We find limited evidence that future operating income is positively associated with option grants following forced turnover. Post-turnover improvement in operating income is positively associated with an increase in new stock grants for the incoming relative to the outgoing CEO.

机构投资者与个人投资者过度自信行为比较研究

本文首先基于我国A股市场机构股票持有数据,构建了不同的投资组合来区分机构投资者与个人投资者的投资行为。然后运用Granger因果检验与SUR估计,探讨了我国证券市场机构投资者与个人投资者是否具有过度自信行为,结果表明无论是机构投资者还是个人投资者在不同市场状态下都存在交易过多的过度自信认知偏差。并且我国证券市场上个人投资者与机构投资者的过度自信程度在不同的市场状态下并无明显差异。最后提出了相关政策建议。     

Easy cleanups or forbearing improvements: The effect of CEO tenure on successor’s performance

Long CEO tenure can harm firm performance even after the CEO is replaced. We analyze this issue by conditioning post-turnover firm performance on the length of the preceding CEO’s tenure. Identification comes from instrumenting sudden CEO deaths as an exogenous shock to tenure length. We find that when a successor takes over after a long-tenured CEO, operating performance and stock returns are significantly lower, restructuring costs are higher, “big baths” are larger, and firm recovery is slower. Weaker corporate governance and a long-tenured CEO with lower skills amplify these post-turnover effects.     

Fool's mate: What does CHESS tell us about individual investor trading performance?

We investigate the short‐term relation between individual investor trading and stock returns on the Australian Securities Exchange. Stocks heavily bought by individual investors underperform stocks heavily sold over the subsequent three days, with respective returns on to a long–short portfolio of ?93, ?67 and ?12 basis points on days one, two and three. Individuals underperform in small and mid‐size stocks when they trade passively using limit orders waiting for the market price to move in their favour. Individuals underperform in large stocks when they trade aggressively using marketable orders. Foreign institutions gain from taking the opposite side of individual trades. We present an information asymmetry‐based explanation for the findings.     

The effect of corporate culture on firm performance: Evidence from China

This study examines whether corporate culture promotion affects firm performance in China in terms of firm market value, firm financial performance and innovation output. We find consistent evidence that corporate culture promotion is negatively related to firm market value, positively related to innovation output and not significantly related to firm financial performance. In addition, the negative effect of corporate culture promotion on firm market value is driven by small firms and firms located in less developed provinces. Furthermore, we find that some specific corporate culture promotions, such as innovation culture promotion and integrity culture promotion, are not related to firm value or financial performance. However, innovation culture promotion is positively associated with innovation output.     

Institutional preferences,demand shocks and the distress anomaly

Our paper examines the distress anomaly on the Chinese stock markets. We show that the anomaly disappears after controlling for institutional ownership. We propose two hypotheses. The growing scale of institutional investors and changes in institutional preferences can generate greater demand shocks for stocks with low distress risk than those with high distress risk, causing the former to outperform the latter. Consistent with our hypotheses, the growth of institutions explains the anomaly when the institutional market share increases rapidly. We also show that institutional preferences for stocks with low distress risk have significantly increased over time and changes in preferences also explain the anomaly. Finally, momentum trading and gradual incorporation of distress information cannot account for the anomaly.     

透明度变化对股票市场投资者委托单提交行为和交易成本影响研究

基于2003年12月8日沪深交易所交易前市场透明度改革背景,本文利用一家营业部的投资者报价和交易数据,研究同一个机构投资者和散户投资者在透明度改革前后委托单提交激进程度的变化,以及这种变化对其完成交易的成本的影响。我们发现,透明度改革前后,机构投资者的委托单提交激进程度都显著大于散户投资者的委托单提交激进程度。透明度增加以后,机构投资者的委托单激进程度显著减少,而散户投资者的委托单提交激进程度增加。同时发现,透明度增加以后,机构投资者通过分拆委托单,增加交易次数,导致完成交易的时间增加,但价格影响力基本没有变化,散户投资者的成交时间和价格影响力有显著改善。     

Which came first,CEO compensation or firm performance? The causality dilemma in European companies

This study uses both a functionalist paradigm of social theory and agency theory assumptions to examine whether CEO remuneration is performance sensitive and, vice versa, whether companies that pay their CEOs more perform better. Our analysis is based on the sample of 330 large European firms for the period from 2009 to 2013. The findings of panel data analysis confirm that CEO compensation is positively associated with corporate performance, and vice versa. The simultaneous estimation, in which we treat both compensation and firm performance as endogenous using a two-stage least squares method, shows that companies tie bonuses to accounting-based measures and this incentive pay enhances corporate internal performance. However, compensation linked to market-based measures does not improve firm performance.     

Who moves the stock market in an emerging country – Institutional or retail investors?

By analyzing the dynamic behavior of institutional and retail investors in the Indonesia Stock Exchange using their completed transactions (comprising over 250 million observations), this study highlights that their trading strategies and behavior, in which institutions play a more important role than individuals in the market, are indeed different. Specifically, past trading activities by individual (institutional) investors have significantly affected the current trading behaviors and strategies of individual investors (both investor types). Furthermore, retail (institutional) investors are most likely to perform contrarian (momentum) strategies and trade frequently (infrequently) with small (large) amounts of money and short (long) holding periods.     

CEO turnover in China: the role of market-based and accounting performance measures

We investigate the relationship between chief executive officer (CEO) turnover and firm performance in China's publicly traded firms. We provide evidence on the use of accounting and market-based performance measures in CEO turnover decision. We also investigate the moderating roles of noise in performance measures, firm growth opportunities, state-owned enterprises, and corporate governance reform on the weights attached to these performance measures. We observe that Chinese listed firms rely more on accounting performance than on stock market performance when determining CEO turnover. Firms with noisier performance measures and larger growth opportunities rely less on both accounting performance and stock market performance in CEO replacement decision. State-controlled firms are more likely to use accounting performance to determine CEO turnover. Finally, we observe that the weight attached to the accounting performance measure is significantly reduced and the weight attached to the stock market performance measure is significantly increased after the governance reform. We also observe that the reform has different impact on state-owned firms and private firms in terms of the sensitivity of CEO turnover to firm performance.