Managerial actions and nominal stock price levels

We examine nominal and real stock prices and the sequential price pattern of stock dividends and stock splits. We find that the average stock price has been fairly stable over time except for two decades in the beginning and end of the twentieth century. Inclusion of these periods yield a decline over time which is generally consistent with the drop in price levels found by Chittenden et al. [2010. “A Note on Affordability and the Optimal Share Price.” Financial Review 45: 205–216]. In a multivariate setting, the frequency of stock dividends and stock splits is positively related to the frequency for these events the prior year and recent market return. In further tests of the price change we find a positive relationship to the median price change for stock dividends/splits and negatively to labour income growth for stock splits. These findings indicate that stock price reduction via stock dividends and splits attracts individual investors as income grows. One key conclusion is that the primary reason for any stock action, dividend or split, is to fit the ‘norm’ stock price level of the market.     

Non‐operating earnings and firm risk*

We find that non‐operating earnings reduce total earnings volatility, stock price volatility, idiosyncratic risk, and crash risk. The risk‐reducing effects of non‐operating earnings are higher than those of operating earnings for risk measures based on stock market data. Non‐operating earnings serve to mitigate risks among firms with operating losses, high financial leverage, high growth uncertainty, and low‐ability managers.     

Momentum and Foreign Investors: Evidence from the Korean Stock Market

Abstract:

We examine whether the price impact of foreign investors on the Korean stock market from December 2000 to February 2007 generated a momentum phenomenon. In our empirical results, foreigners seem to have exerted a significantly positive impact on prices in “up” markets (periods of positive stock returns), but have had little impact on prices in “down” markets (periods of negative returns). We document that the impact of foreigners’ trades is concentrated in large companies. Most importantly, when the market is in the up state, the returns of stocks of large companies that were positively affected by foreign investors in the previous six-month period continue to increase in the subsequent six-month period. As a result, the subsequent six-month return on a past “winner” stock portfolio is significantly higher than that on a past “loser” stock portfolio. This brings to mind a momentum phenomenon that has been reported not to exist in the Korean stock market.     

Credit ratings and convertible bond prices: a simulation-based valuation

This study presents a simulation-based model of convertible bond prices under the assumption of stochastic interest rates. The model is developed such that the convertible bond price explicitly depends on the credit rating at the time of issuance. Key ideas explored in this study include terminating the simulated sample path immediately when the issuer defaults on the bond at time t, which is the same as the investor and the issuer optimally exercising their options and discounting the resulting cash flows at a risk-free rate. In turn, the defaulted group of sample paths belongs to the bottom xth percentile of the realized stock prices at each time, which is exogenously given by the cumulative or marginal default probability of a firm that has the same rating as the issuer. Upon calibrating the model, we can see that the moneyness of convertible bonds is strongly responsible for influencing the convertible bond price when the rating changes. Furthermore, the effects of stochastic interest rates are shown to be possibly significant when the interest rate risk’s market price is not zero.     

The Impact of Oil Price Shocks on the Returns in China’s Stock Market

The main goal of this paper is to study the relationship between oil price shocks and mainland China’s stock market. From empirical study, we have found that the impact of oil price shocks on stock prices in China has been mixed. In contrast to the conventional wisdom that higher oil prices may cause lower stock prices, positive shocks to oil-market-specific demand resulted in both higher real oil prices and higher stock prices, which helps explain the boom of the Chinese stock market as oil prices were increasing in 2007. However, global oil demand and supply shocks had no significant effects.     

Regime-Dependent Effect of Crude Oil Price on BRICS Stock Markets

In this study, the dynamic relation between global crude oil prices and stock prices is investigated in terms of crude oil-exporting and -importing countries. The relationship between crude oil prices and stock prices is examined for BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) for the periods of January 1995 to December 2016 by means of the Markov Switching Vector Autoregression (MS-VAR) model. The impulse-response analysis results suggest that the responses of the stock market to an oil price shock vary over the regimes for all countries. Specifically, we find that the responses of the stock market to an unexpected oil price shock are positive and statistically significant in the high-volatility regime in all countries except for China, and these results suggest that the increase in oil prices may be evaluated by demand-side shock in these countries.     

Timing of Sale,Pricing, and Cost Information: Evidence from the Airline Industry*

This study examines the association between when an airline sells its passenger seats and the pricing method (marginal cost or full cost) it employs. Prior literature suggests that when firms are able to change prices during the selling period, the optimality of full cost pricing or marginal cost pricing depends on when demand information is revealed during the period between capacity commitment decisions and time of sale. Full cost‐based pricing is appropriate in determining capacity commitment and prices simultaneously, while marginal cost provides more relevant information for pricing when capacity has been committed. Using the price and cost data from a sample of four U.S. domestic airlines, we find that full cost explains price variations of first‐day sales robustly. The adjusted R² of the marginal cost pricing model is larger in the sample of sales two days prior to departure than in the sample of first‐day sales. In the analysis of the sample of sales two days prior to departure, we find that, based on the adjusted R² of the full cost pricing and marginal cost pricing models, the explanatory power of marginal cost pricing is relatively weaker than full cost pricing. Our results document the use of different cost information along the dynamic change of price and provide implications in understanding the role of cost information in setting prices.     

Evaluating analysts' value: evidence from recommendation revisions around stock price jumps

Recent studies document that analyst recommendation revisions tend to coincide with important corporate events, but offer mixed evidence on whether these revisions still contain significant information content. In this paper, we use large discontinuous changes, known as jumps, in stock prices as proxy for significant events and examine the information content of analyst revisions. We find that although recommendation revisions are more likely to be clustered around stock price jumps, they still contain significant information, especially those issued prior to jumps.     

The potential harms of goodwill impairment avoidance: Evidence based on future performance and stock prices

The rapidly increasing volume of goodwill assets in the capital market generates potential risks due to the possibility of an untimely recognition of goodwill impairment. In this paper, we investigate the financial consequences of goodwill impairment avoidance based on firms’ future performance and stock prices. Using Chinese A-share listed firms with goodwill balances, we find that avoiding goodwill impairments negatively affects a firm’s performance growth and increases its risk of a future stock price crash. These adverse effects continue for the three years following the goodwill impairment avoidance. Our results indicate that goodwill impairment avoidance has detrimental impacts on a firm’s future performance and stock price and that these impacts are persistent. Our conclusions are helpful for regulators on how to prevent the risks hidden in goodwill impairment recognition and maintain the stable development of the financial market.     

Managerial gaming of stock and option grants

In this paper, we examine managerial gaming of different types of equity grants, both at the initial award of the equity grants (front‐end gaming) and the unwinding of the equity holdings in the future (back‐end gaming). We find that the potential gains from stock price manipulation vary substantially across different types of equity grants. While traditional stock option grants are less vulnerable to front‐end gaming, they are more vulnerable to back‐end gaming than other types of equity grants (e.g., restricted stock grants). To prevent or discourage managerial gaming, firms should preset all terms of the equity grant in advance and link its future payoff to average stock prices (e.g., by granting Asian stock options).     

Does a national industrial policy promote financial market stability? A study based on stock price crash risk

Whether the implementation of a national industrial policy can maintain stability in the financial market is a question of theoretical and practical significance. Using data from China’s non-financial listed firms from 2007 to 2020, we find that a national industrial policy lowers stock price crash risk. We find that the effect of an industrial policy on lowering stock price crash risk is more pronounced in regions with low levels of regional marketization and if firms have high external uncertainty, low total asset turnover, greater earnings management and receive small increments of long-term loans and fewer government subsidies, suggesting that industrial policies lower stock price crash risk by improving firm fundamentals and reducing external uncertainty, agency costs and information asymmetry.     

Aggressive reporting,investor protection and stock price informativeness: Evidence from Chinese firms

This paper investigates the impact of aggressive reporting on the ability of stock prices to inform in Chinese firms. Using both stock price synchronicity and the probability of informed trading as proxies for stock price informativeness, we find that aggressive reporting damages the ability of stock prices to inform in Chinese firms. Our findings are robust to potential endogeneity and the use of alternative aggressive-reporting measures. Finally, we find that the impact of aggressive reporting in reducing stock price informativeness is stronger in firms located in regions of weaker institutional development and in private sectors firms.     

Social media information dissemination and corporate bad news hoarding

This paper investigates the role of social media in mitigating corporate bad news hoarding from a stock price crash risk perspective. Using a sample of public listed firms from 2008–2019, we find that social media (Guba) posts could significantly reduce firms’ stock price crash risks in the Chinese stock market. Furthermore, we find that the information intermediation function and complementary corporate governance function enable Guba to achieve such an effect. In addition, investor attention mediates the relationship between Guba posts and management withholding bad news. Our result still holds after a series of robustness checks, including an RDD approach.     

Oil Price and Stock Market Synchronization in Gulf Cooperation Council Countries

Knowing that the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies are dichotomous in nature, and growth in the non-oil sector is tributary to the oil sector, we document the extent of synchronization between crude oil prices and stock markets for each of the GCC markets and for the GCC as an economic bloc. We use both the bivariate and multivariate nonparametric synchronicity measures proposed by Mink et al. (2007) to assess that linkage. We find a low to mild (mild to strong) degree of synchronization between oil price and stock market returns (volatilities). In a very few instances, we find very strong (above 80 percent) associations between these variables. These results hold irrespective of whether we assume that stock market participants form adaptive or rational expectations about the price of oil. Dynamic factor results confirm that shocks to volatility are more important than shocks to oil price returns for the GCC stock markets.     

股吧评论、分析师跟踪与股价崩溃风险——关于模糊信息的信息含量分析

东方财富股吧等股票论坛日渐活跃,反映了投资者对获得上市公司真实、完整、及时信息的强烈需求。尽管股吧有助于促进信息传播,但仍是非正式的信息发布平台,股吧评论本质上是一种模糊信息。为探明股吧评论的信息含量,本文以2012—2017年A股上市公司为研究样本,研究股吧评论对股价崩溃风险的影响,以及同样属于模糊信息的分析师跟踪在这一过程中可能产生的作用。实证结果表明,股吧评论分歧越小,股价崩溃风险越大,并且分析师跟踪人数和研报数量在上述影响过程中发挥中介作用。研究结果有助于厘清股吧评论影响股价崩溃风险的路径和机理,既丰富了股价崩溃风险成因的研究,也揭示了股吧评论、分析师跟踪等模糊信息的信息含量。     

Why Do Price Limits Exist in Stock Markets? A Manipulation‐Based Explanation

Numerous stock market regulators around the world impose daily price limits on individual stock price movements. We derive a simple model that shows that price limits may deter stock market manipulators. Based on our model's implications, we predict that regulators impose price limit rules for markets where the likelihood of manipulation is high. We present empirical evidence consistent with this hypothesis. Our study is the first to formally propose a manipulation‐based rationale for the existence of price limits in stock markets.     

基于制度环境视角的非效率投资与股价崩盘风险研究

研究宏观层面的治理因子对企业非效率投资的调节作用,进而研究价格崩盘的成因。发现：较高的市场化进程、较低的政府干预程度和完善的法治环境都有助于抑制由非效率投资行为引发的股价崩盘风险。进一步的研究表明,企业非效率投资主要由代理成本而非信息不对称问题产生,进而影响价格崩盘;国有企业非效率投资对股价崩盘风险的影响大于非国有企业,但是制度环境的抑制作用对国有企业样本不明显。本文的研究结果为从宏观层面降低股价崩盘风险提供了经验证据,为维护我国股市稳定发展,推进国家治理体系建设提供了政策启示。     

What firm risk factors drive bank loan pricing and other terms? Evidence from China

This study investigates how firm risk factors affect bank loan pricing. Although firm-specific stock price crash risk affects bank loan costs directly, it also prompts other risks, including financial restatement and litigation, which in turn trigger higher bank loan costs. Strong internal and external governance mechanisms help reduce agency problems and improve information transparency, alleviating the adverse effect of stock price crash risk on loan costs. Our results confirm that bankers take good corporate governance into account in their bank loan decisions. We also show that bond investors price the adverse effect of stock price crash risk, prompting higher corporate bond costs. Futher evidence suggests that banks impose stricter non-price terms, such as smaller loan size, shorter loan maturity, and a higher likelihood of collateral requirement, on firms with higher crash risk.