Are investors moonstruck? Further international evidence on lunar phases and stock returns

This study uses an alternative model specification to re-examine the influences of the new moon and the full moon on the daily returns of 62 international stock indices for the period 1988 to 2008. The fixed effects panel model incorporates the prior day effect and two calendar anomalies, i.e., the Monday effect and the turn-of-the-month effect, to assess variations in the lunar influences. A covariate, based on per capita gross domestic product (GDP), examines how the results vary between countries. The prior day effect is greater for less developed countries. The overall enhanced new moon effect is independent of GDP. An overall full moon effect is absent. These lunar effects are weakly influenced by the calendar anomalies.     

Disclosure quality vis-à-vis disclosure quantity: Does audit committee matter in Omani financial institutions?

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - We examine the impact of audit committee (AC) characteristics (e.g. AC foreign members, AC female members, AC members with multiple directorships, AC...     

Regulatory Policy and the Efficiency of the Banking Sector in Australia

This paper examines the technical efficiency of Australian banks during the post‐Wallis period (1997–2005). The results based on data envelopment analysis reveal that the extent of technical efficiency varies across the banks and over the years. The National Australia Bank, Commonwealth Bank and Macquarie Bank are found to be technically efficient, whereas Adelaide Bank, the Bank of Queensland and Westpac Bank are found to be prominently inefficient. Technical efficiency is the lowest among small banks and has declined over time largely due to deterioration in scale efficiency. Medium‐sized banks have outperformed both the small and large banks in terms of efficiency improvements. Some insights into the debate over the removal of the ‘four‐pillar’ policy are provided.     

Carbon disclosure and financial performance: UK environmental policy

The outcome of carbon disclosure, the importance of which has grown remarkably in recent years to become a strategic decision‐making issue for organisations in today's competitive environment, is a subject of lively debate but remains under‐researched in the environmental accounting literature. This study is motivated by this research gap and the growing interest in assessing the financial consequences of corporate involvement in climate change beyond regulatory compliance, as evidenced by firms' voluntary participation in the Carbon Disclosure Project. Using the resource‐based view of the firm as a theoretical framework and linking it to carbon disclosure through Carbon Disclosure Project, we conceptualise and empirically investigate the impact of adopting proactive carbon management policies and communicating them to stakeholders, focusing on the financial performance of the top FTSE350 companies between 2007 and 2015. By developing a comprehensive financial performance index and controlling for several firm characteristics, we find strong evidence that voluntary carbon disclosure is positively associated with firm financial performance. The findings in this paper provide new insights and policy implications for managers, financial stakeholders, and regulators.     

Determinants and value relevance of UK CEO pay slice

This paper studies the CEO pay slice (CPS) of UK listed firms during the period 2003 to 2009. We investigate the determinants of CPS. We study the links between CPS and measures of firm performance. We find that firms with higher levels of corporate governance ratings and those with more independent boards tend to have higher CPS. In addition, we find that CEOs are more likely to receive lower compensation when they chair the board and when they work in firms with large board size. We also find that higher CPS is positively associated with firm performance after controlling for the firm-specific characteristics and corporate governance variables. We get compatible results when we examine the association between equity-based CPS and firm performance. Our results remain robust to alternative accounting measures of firm performance. Our results suggest that high UK CPS levels do indeed reflect top managerial talent rather than managerial power.     

The Endogeneity of Money: Evidence from the G7

For many years economists have argued that the money supply is endogenously determined. However, it has often been suggested that monetary regimes differ in important institutional respects and it may be that endogeneity may be true for some regimes and not for others. The aim of this paper is to test for endogeneity of money supply in the G7 countries and also to detect the existence of any interaction between the demand for bank lending and the demand for money by using recently developed techniques of causality tests. Our findings suggest that broad money is endogenous. However, the ability of the demand for loans to cause deposits is not, it seems, unconstrained by the demand for those deposits. Agents do not simply absorb whatever flow of new deposits loans might create.     

ASEAN Plus Three Stock Markets Integration

This paper examines the role played by local and international factors in the international integration process to stock markets worldwide. Using a sample of ASEAN + 3 (Association of South East Asian Nations + China, Korea and Japan) during the period between 2000 and 2014, we identify the main factors that might influence regional integration of stock markets. We propose an advantageous econometric approach based on a conditional version of the Dynamic International Capital Asset Pricing Model (ICAPM) to explore major sources of time-varying risks. We specifically apply the multivariate BEKK-GARCH process of Cappiello et al. (Journal of Financial Econometrics 25:537–572, 2006) to simultaneously estimate the ICAPM for each country. The study puts in evidence that regional trade openness, regional and world industrial production, dividend yields and commodity prices are among the key determinants of regional integration in the ASEAN + 3 context whatever is the measure of exchange rate risk.

     

Spillover analysis across FinTech,ESG, and renewable energy indices before and during the Russia–Ukraine war: International evidence

This study is epicentral to analyze the impact of the Russia–Ukraine war on the financial markets, specifically focusing on the connectedness and spillover dynamics of FinTech, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), renewable energy, gold, and Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) indices in developed and emerging countries. Data are collected from Thomson Reuters, ranging from May 8, 2020, to May 11, 2022, and a time-varying parameter vector autoregression (TVP-VAR) and the dynamic conditional correlation (DCC) generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity (GARCH) t-Copula (DCC-GARCH t-Copula) are used to analyze the data. The results show that FinTech, ESG, and MSCI are net transmitters in developed countries, whereas gold and renewable energy are net receivers pre- and during war periods. ESG and MSCI are net transmitters in emerging countries, while FinTech, renewable energy, and gold become net receivers in both periods. The hedging ratio sheds light on the costs and weights of efficient pair investments that might change in the context of each region and under the combined scenario. The study has important implications for merchant bankers, policymakers, investors, hedgers, and risk managers.     

Factors influencing the propensity to export: A study of UK and Portuguese textile firms

The purpose of this paper is to determine which particular organisational and managerial factors contribute to the propensity to export in a declining sector. For this purpose the textile and clothing sector in Portugal and the United Kingdom is chosen for investigation. This study analyses firms’ resources and capabilities, as well as decision-makers’ objective and subjective characteristics in a sample of 167 Portuguese and 165 UK firms in the textile and clothing industry. The fundamental research questions are: which characteristics of the firm are associated with stronger export propensity, and is it possible to identify a profile of decision-makers associated with export propensity? For Portugal, the size of firm and the educational level of managers are the key determinants of export propensity. As to the UK, age and perception of costs are the key factors. In addition, we also investigated managers’ commitment to exporting, for which the important determinants of export propensity in the textile and clothing sector were found to be planning, advertising and promotion. When combining the two country data-sets, particular firm characteristics, namely, firm size, competitive advantage, and technology, and a specific objective characteristic, namely, the number of languages spoken, are the key factors associated with the propensity to export in this declining sector.