An Examination of Stock Market Return Volatility During Overnight and Intraday Periods, 1964–1989

This paper examines the variance of hourly market returns during 1964–1989. Results indicate that return volatility falls from the opening hour until early afternoon and rises thereafter and is significantly greater for intraday versus overnight periods. Market variance is also shown to change significantly over time, rising after NASDAQ began in 1971, rising after trading in stock options began in 1973, falling after fixed commissions were eliminated in 1975, rising after trading in stock index futures was introduced in 1982, and falling after margin requirements for stock index futures became larger in 1988.     

The Explanatory Power of Canadian Accounting Measures of Earnings Dilution*

This paper examines the properties of the accounting measures of dilution under pre‐2001 Canadian GAAP. Fully diluted earnings per share (EPS) presents investors with a per‐share figure that attempts to capture the maximum potential dilution that would occur if all dilutive convertible securities were converted and all dilutive stock options and rights exercised. We examine how the difference between basic and fully diluted EPS, which we refer to as the dilutive adjustment, affects the ability of EPS to predict one‐period‐ahead EPS. Moreover, we address the issue of the explanatory power of changes in the dilutive adjustment for unexpected stock returns over the year and at the earnings announcement date. Surprisingly, in contrast with the traditional accounting view that increases in the dilutive adjustment present the investor with bad news due to potential dilution of the future earnings stream, the dilutive adjustment is positively related to next period's earnings and increases in the dilutive adjustment are positively correlated with contemporaneous long‐window stock returns. These results can be attributed to the relation between the dilutive adjustment and the earnings process combined with a partial resolution of the uncertainty attached to growth firms. We find no evidence that investors use information from the disclosure of fully diluted EPS at the earnings announcement date. These results are consistent with increases in the dilutive adjustment capturing the partial realization of a firm's growth potential that more than outweighs the potential dilution attached to the convertible securities; however, this information appears to be already embedded in price prior to the disclosure of fully diluted EPS.     

Direct Evidence on the Informational Properties of Earnings in Loan Contracts

Using a sample of firms that disclose the realizations of earnings used for determining covenant compliance in loan contracts, we provide direct evidence on the informational properties of earnings used in the performance covenants included in debt contracts. We find that the earnings measure used in performance covenants does not exhibit asymmetric loss timeliness and has significantly greater cash flow predictive ability than GAAP measures of earnings. We suggest that these results reflect the idea that contracting parties design accounting rules for performance covenants to enhance their efficacy as “tripwires.”     

Industrial Relations Climate and Union Commitment: An Evaluation of Workplace‐Level Effects

This paper examines the relationship between industrial relations (IR) climate and union commitment. Using a multi‐workplace sample from North East England, aggregation analysis provided support for treating IR climate as a workplace‐level variable, and workplace IR climate was negatively associated with union commitment. However, IR climate moderated none of the relationships between individual‐level antecedents and union commitment.     

JOB CENTERS: ARE FINDERS KEEPERS? A NOTE FROM JAPAN

Do job centers help unemployed people to find and keep jobs? Using the results of a unique survey by the Japanese government, this note examines the employment success of job center clients. Success in finding and keeping jobs varies systematically across distinct subgroups. Moreover, job center clients were not particularly successful in finding work that fit their qualifications. (JEL J60, J68, J40)     

Using Financial Accounting Data to Examine the Effect of Foreign Operations Located in Tax Havens and Other Countries on U.S. Multinational Firms' Tax Rates

This paper investigates the effect tax havens and other foreign jurisdictions have on the income tax rates of multinational firms based in the United States. We develop a new regression methodology using financial accounting data to estimate the average worldwide, federal, and foreign tax rates on worldwide, federal, and foreign pretax book income for a large sample of U.S. firms with and without tax haven operations. We find that on average U.S. firms that disclosed material operations in at least one tax haven country have a worldwide tax burden on worldwide income that is approximately 1.5 percentage points lower than firms without operations in at least one tax haven country. Our results also show that U.S. firms face a 4.4% current federal tax rate on foreign income whether or not they have tax haven operations. Finally, we find that U.S. firms with operations in some tax haven countries have higher federal tax rates on foreign income than other firms. This result suggests that in some cases, tax haven operations may increase U.S. tax collections at the expense of foreign country tax collections.     

Credit Crunches from Occasionally Binding Bank Borrowing Constraints

We present a model in which banks and other financial intermediaries face both occasionally binding borrowing constraints, and costs of equity issuance. Near the steady state, these intermediaries can raise equity finance at no cost through retained earnings. However, even moderately large shocks cause their borrowing constraints to bind, leading to contractions in credit offered to firms, and requiring the intermediaries to raise further funds by paying the cost to issue equity. This leads to the occasional sharp increases in interest spreads and the countercyclical, positively skewed equity issuance that are characteristics of the credit crunches observed in the data.     

Federal Home Loan Bank Advances and Commercial Bank Portfolio Composition

Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB) advances are a source of government‐sponsored liquidity intended to encourage housing finance, although “community financial institutions” may use such funds more generally. Because money is fungible, it is an empirical question as to how advances are actually employed. Using panel‐vector autoregression techniques, we estimate dynamic responses of U.S. commercial bank portfolios to: FHLB advance shocks, bank lending shocks, and macroeconomic shocks. We find that FHLB advances: (i) are used as a general source of liquidity by U.S. commercial banks of all sizes and (ii) dampen the sensitivity of mortgage lending to macroeconomic shocks at small banks.