A Look Back at the Beginnings of EVA and Value‐Based Management

One of the pioneers of value‐based management discusses his life's work in converting principles of modern finance theory into performance evaluation and incentive compensation plans that have been adopted by many of the world's largest and most successful companies, including Coca‐Cola in the U.S., SABMiller in London, Siemens in Germany, and the Godrej Group in India. The issues covered include the significance of dividend payouts (are dividends really necessary to support a company's stock price and, if so, why?) as well as the question of optimal capital structure (whether and why debt might not be cheaper than equity). But the most important focus of the interview is corporate performance measurement and the use of executive pay to strengthen management incentives to increase efficiency and value. According to Stern, the widespread tendency of public companies to manage “for earnings”—or in accordance with what he refers to as “the accounting model of the firm”—often leads to value‐destroying decisions. As one example, the GAAP accounting principle that requires intangible investments like R&D and training to be written off in the year the expenses are incurred is likely to cause underinvestment in such intangibles. At the same time, the failure of conventional income statements to reflect the cost of equity almost certainly encourages corporate overinvestment. Stern's solution to this problem is an executive incentive compensation plan in which rewards are tied to increases in a measure of economic profit called economic value added, or EVA, which research has shown to have a significance relation to changes both in share value and the premium of market value over book value. Moreover, by combining such a plan with a “bonus bank” that pays out annual awards over a multi‐year period, boards can ensure that management will be rewarded not for good luck but rather for sustainable improvements in performance.     

Value‐Added Per Share (VAPS): A Value‐Relevant Corporate Performance Metric

The authors introduce Value Added Per Share (VAPS) as a value‐relevant metric that is intended to complement earnings per share (EPS) in helping corporate managers and analysts understand and overcome the limitations of GAAP‐based reporting. VAPS discounts a firm's past and projected cash flows at its “cost of capital,” allowing companies to avoid the subjective accounting accrual process and other practices that often make EPS misleading. A company's VAPS is calculated in three main steps: (1) estimate the change in the capitalized value of after‐tax operating cash flow by taking the net change (plus or minus) of the firm's operating cash flow after taxes and dividing that number by the firm's cost of capital; (2) subtract total investment expenditures; and (3) divide by the number of shares outstanding. By capitalizing the change in after‐tax operating cash flow, one finds the net change in a firm's current operations value. By subtracting investment expenditures from that change in current operations value, the analyst gets a clearer picture of the benefit to shareholders net of the funds used to create that benefit. Consistent with basic theory, VAPS is positive when a company earns a return at least equal to its cost of capital and negative otherwise. Because of their fundamental differences, EPS and VAPS are likely to send different signals, and VAPS is expected to provide greater insight into stock price changes. The authors provide the findings of statistical tests showing the superior explanatory power of VAPS and recommend that companies publish statements of VAPS along with standard GAAP results, especially since the former can be readily calculated using the available income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement data.     

Asset Pricing Models and Financial Market Anomalies

This article develops a framework that applies to single securitiesto test whether asset pricing models can explain the size, value,and momentum anomalies. Stock level beta is allowed to varywith firm-level size and book-to-market as well as with macroeconomicvariables. With constant beta, none of the models examined captureany of the market anomalies. When beta is allowed to vary, thesize and value effects are often explained, but the explanatorypower of past return remains robust. The past return effectis captured by model mispricing that varies with macroeconomicvariables.     

Profitability,Value, and Stock Returns in Production‐Based Asset Pricing without Frictions

In a production‐based asset pricing model without adjustment costs and with decreasing returns to scale following Brock (1982), stock returns at the firm level are determined by profitability, the book‐to‐market ratio, and the change in future profitability prospects. Although firms with low book‐to‐market ratios are normally more profitable and profitable firms are predicted to have higher returns, the stylized fact that book‐to‐market ratios positively forecast returns still holds theoretically, but with specific predicted exceptions. These implications are confirmed empirically.     

中广核财务管理定位国际化和市场化

中国广东核电集团有限公司作为大型国有企业,在财务管理上是按照国际标准和市场标准进行管理操作.     

Investment‐Based Corporate Bond Pricing

A standard assumption of structural models of default is that firms' assets evolve exogenously. In this paper, we examine the importance of accounting for investment options in models of credit risk. In the presence of financing and investment frictions, firm‐level variables that proxy for asset composition are significant determinants of credit spreads beyond leverage and asset volatility, because they capture the systematic risk of firms' assets. Cross‐sectional studies of credit spreads that fail to control for the interdependence of leverage and investment decisions are unlikely to be very informative. Such frictions also give rise to a realistic term structure of credit spreads in a production economy.     

Open‐Market Stock Repurchases by Insurance Companies and Signaling

The signaling hypothesis of share repurchases implies that management uses repurchases to signal either that their firm's future operating performance will improve or that shares of their stock are simply underpriced by the market. This study examines which of the two interpretations can better explain open‐market share repurchase programs announced by insurance companies. We find no evidence that future‐operating performance of insurers improves following the repurchase announcement. In addition, changes in future operating performance cannot explain the announcement‐period abnormal return. Instead, the stock undervaluation prior to the repurchase announcement can significantly explain the announcement‐period abnormal return, particularly for life insurers. Overall, our results suggest that the positive market reaction to insurers’ open‐market share repurchase announcements is due to the stock undervaluation by the market, but not due to positive information content about future operating performance conveyed in the repurchase announcement.     

美国的金融危机与中国的股市泡沫

美国金融危机的根源是什么？现行的国际货币制度被称为后布雷顿森林汇率制度或浮动汇率制度,布雷顿森林汇率制度是第二次世界大战行将结束的时候,美英等战胜国为主建立的新的国际货币制度。这个国际货币制度最典型的特征是所谓的双挂钩,即美元和黄金挂钩,其他国家的货币跟美元挂钩,形成相对固定的汇率制度。为什么美元跟黄金挂钩？因为当时美国的黄金储备特别多,大概已占全球的三分之二,所以美元实际上是作为黄金的等价物,或者说美元代替黄金行使黄金的货币职能。     

Time‐Varying Risk–Return Trade‐off in the Stock Market

We uncover a strong comovement of the stock market risk–return trade‐off with the consumption–wealth ratio (CAY). The finding reflects time‐varying investment opportunities rather than countercyclical aggregate relative risk aversion. Specifically, the partial risk–return trade‐off is positive and constant when we control for CAY as a proxy for investment opportunities. Moreover, conditional market variance scaled by CAY is negatively priced in the cross‐section of stock returns. Our results are consistent with a limited stock market participation model, in which shareholders require an illiquidity premium that increases with CAY, in addition to the risk premium that is proportional to conditional market variance.     

Stock Market Development and Financial Intermediaries: Stylized Facts

World stock markets are booming, and emerging stock marketsaccount for a disproportionate share of this growth. Yet economistslack a common concept or measure of stock market development.This article collects and compares a broad array of indicatorsof stock market and financial intermediary development, usingdata from forty-four developing and industrial countries duringthe period from 1986 to 1993. The empirical results exhibitwide cross-country differences for each indicator as well asintuitively appealing correlations between various indicators.The article constructs aggregate indexes and analyzes them todocument the relationship between the emergence of stock marketsand the growth of financial intermediaries. It produces a setof stylized facts that facilitates and stimulates research intothe links among stock markets, economic development, and corporatefinancing decisions.     

Mixed Messages: Open‐Market Repurchases Following Stock Acquisitions

Management decisions and market reactions to those decisions do not occur in isolation. Despite this fact, little or no research has examined two events when they occur in a sequence, even when theory suggests that those two events convey opposite signals. We examine firms that do a stock‐based acquisition then announce an open‐market repurchase program. These two actions, according to the signaling theory, signal conflicting valuation errors. This paper is the first to examine a sequence of events that convey seemingly conflicting signals. Among other results, we find that repurchasers who had previously made a stock‐based acquisition have a less positive market reaction than do otherwise comparable repurchasers with no previous acquisition. These results indicate that the market reactions to events are tempered by previous information‐releasing events.     

A State‐Price Volatility Index for China's Stock Market

This study derives a volatility index for China's stock market with similar properties to the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index (the ‘VIX’). A long‐term benchmark of historic volatility expectations is here presented for China from 1996 to 2011, called the ‘China‐ State‐Price Volatility (SPV)’. Construction of this index involves the use of SPV methodology, using implied volatility calculated from options on the Hang Seng China Enterprise Index (HSCEI). Historic open–high–low–close volatility on the Shanghai Composite Index (SHCI) is also used to extend the benchmark prior to the availability of HSCEI options data. The China‐SPV successfully forecasts realised volatility for the Shanghai Stock Exchange. It also serves as a ‘fear gauge’ in that it monitors daily movements of the SHCI in the same way that the VIX monitors the S&P 500 index (Whaley, 2009). The China‐SPV evidences an increasing relation with the US market in terms of the dynamic correlation of levels and changes with the VIX since 2004.     

Expectations‐Based Management

The authors begin by summarizing the results of their recently published study of the relation between stock returns and changes in several annual performance measures, including not only growth in earnings and EVA, but changes during the year in analysts' expectations about future earnings over three different periods: (1) the current year; (2) the following year; and (3) the three‐year period thereafter. The last of these measures—changes in analysts' expectations about three‐ to five‐year earnings—had by far the greatest explanatory “power” of any of the measures tested. Besides being consistent with the stock market's taking a long‐term, DCF approach to the valuation of companies, the authors' finding that investors seem to care most about earnings three to five years down the road has a number of important implications for financial management: First, a business unit doesn't necessarily create shareholder value if its return on capital exceeds the weighted average cost of capital—nor does an operation that fails to earn its WACC necessarily reduce value. To create value, the business's return must exceed what investors are expecting. Second, without forecasting returns on capital, management should attempt to give investors a clear sense of the firm's internal benchmarks, both for existing businesses and new investment. Third, management incentive plans should be based on stock ownership rather than stock options. Precisely because stock prices reflect expectations, the potential for prices to get ahead of realities gives options‐laden managers a strong temptation to manipulate earnings and manage for the short term.     

Analysts' Roundtable on Integrating ESG into Investment Decision‐Making

In this third of the three discussions that took place at the SASB 2016 Symposium, practitioners of a broad range of investment approaches—active as well as passive in both equities and fixed‐income—explain how and why they use ESG information when evaluating companies and making their investment decisions. There was general agreement that successful ESG investing depends on integrating ESG factors with the methods and data of traditional “fundamental” financial statement analysis. And in support of this claim, a number of the panelists noted that some of the world's best “business value investors,” including Warren Buffett, have long incorporated environmental, social, and governance considerations into their investment decision‐making. In the analysis of such active fundamental investors, ESG concerns tend to show up as risk factors that can translate into higher costs of capital and lower values. And companies' effectiveness in managing such factors, as ref lected in high ESG scores and rankings, is viewed by many fundamental investors as an indicator of management “quality,” a reliable demonstration of the corporate commitment to investing in the company's future. Moreover, some fixed‐income investors are equally if not more concerned than equity investors about ESG exposures. ESG factors can have pronounced effects on performance by generating “tail risks” that can materialize in both going‐concern and default scenarios. And the rating agencies have long attempted to reflect some of these risks in their analysis, though with mixed success. What is relatively new, however, is the frequency with which fixed income investors are engaging companies on ESG topics. And even large institutional investors with heavily indexed portfolios have become more aggressive in engaging their portfolio companies on ESG issues. Although the traditional ESG filters used by such investors were designed mainly just to screen out tobacco, firearms, and other “sin” shares from equity portfolios, investors' interest in “tilting” their portfolios toward positive sustainability factors, in the form of lowcarbon and gender‐balanced ETFs and other kinds of “smart beta” portfolios, has gained considerable momentum.     

The Impact of Market Structure on Ex‐Dividend Day Stock Price Behavior

We explore the impact of market structure on the ex‐day price anomaly. Measuring the price‐drop ratio (PDR) as the ratio of the price change on the ex‐day to the dividend amount, we find that the average NASDAQ PDR is significantly less than one and significantly less than the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) PDR. We then investigate a subset of firms that voluntary switch from NASDAQ to the NYSE and find that the PDR significantly increases after the switch, suggesting that market structure affects PDRs. We also create a matched sample and find that the NASDAQ PDR converges toward its matched NYSE counterpart, particularly after the introduction of SuperMontage. Our evidence is consistent with significant NASDAQ market structure changes reducing execution cost differences between the two exchanges and, in turn, reducing the PDR difference. Overall, our results highlight the important role market structure can play in understanding anomalies.     

市值管理:股市新生态内核

中国证监会2014年12月19日披露信息表示,依托大数据系统,强化针对市场操纵线索筛查和调查工作,已对18支股票的涉案机构和个人立案调查。自此,“市值管理”争议再起。中国宏观经济趋势的变化,令A股市场生态结构也在随之变化。共生共赢是股市新生态最显著的特点,其核心正是上市公司市值的增长。市值不增长,市场就失去了活力。因此,在股市新生态下,加强市值管理,追求市值成长,成为上市公司、投资者、证券机构、政府等市场各主体追求共生共赢的核心。然而,各利益主体对市值管理内涵的理解五花八门,市场上出现了各种类型的市值管理模式。从合规性和科学性来看,大致可以归纳为3