Testing the Links between Institutional Integration and Trade Deepening: Clues from Europe

This paper investigates the interaction between institutional integration and trade deepening in the EU over the last 50 years. It uses Granger causality tests, a VECM and variance decompositions to further the understanding of this interaction. The evidence indicates two-way endogeneity. But the link from institution building to trade dominates. Yet, this link has weakened over time, possibly due to globalisation sidestepping institutions. Moreover, the sensitivity of institutional integration to trade deepening has risen, which suggests that economic forces have gained more strength in determining institutional steps.

Optimal portfolio and spending rules for endowment funds

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Prior studies show that investor learning about earnings-based return predictors from academic research erodes return predictability. However, the...     

What Corporate Social Responsibility Activities are Valued by the Market?

Corporate management is torn between either focusing solely on the interests of stockholders (the neo-classical view) or taking into account the interests of a wide spectrum of stakeholders (the stakeholder theory view). Of course, there need be no conflict where taking the wider view is also consistent with maximising stockholder wealth. In this paper, we examine the extent to which a conflict actually exists by examining the relationship between a company’s positive (strengths) and negative (concerns) corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and equity performance. In general, we find little evidence to suggest that managers taking a wider stakeholder perspective will jeopardise the interest of its stockholders. However, our findings do suggest that the market is not only influenced by the independent CSR activities, but also the totality of these activities and that the facets that they value do vary over time. It seems that␣most recently, the market has valued most firms that satisfied minimum requirements in the areas of diversity and environmental protection but were most proactive in the area of employee-relations. Ron Bird is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Finance and Economics at the University of Technology, Sydney. His research interests focus on market implications of corporate social responsibility and also dysfunctionality within capital markets. He received his Master's degree in economics at Monash University in 1971. Anthony D. Hall is currently the Head of the School of Finance and Economics and Director of the Quantitative FinanceResearch Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney. His research interests cover all aspects of financial econometrics. He was awarded a PhD in econometrics from the London School of Economics in `976.Francesco Momente is Professor of Corporate Finance at the Bocconi University, Milan (Italy). His research intersts focus on the market valuation of corporate social responsibility and the value relevance of accounting information.He received his PhD in General Management at Ca' Foscari University, Venice (Italy) in 1998. Francesco Reggiani is Professor of Corporate Finance at the Bocconi University, Milan (Italy). His research interests focuson the market valuation of corporate social responsibility and corporate governance. He received his PhD in GeneralManagement at Bocconi University in 2001.     

REPUTATIONAL BIDDING

We consider auctions where bidders care about the reputational effects of their bidding and argue that the amount of information disclosed at the end of the auction will influence bidding. We focus on bid disclosure rules that capture all of the realistic cases. We show that bidders distort their bidding in a way that conforms to stylized facts about takeovers/licence auctions. We rank the disclosure rules in terms of their expected revenues and find that, under certain conditions, full disclosure will not be optimal. First‐price and second‐price auctions with price disclosure are not revenue equivalent and we rank them.     

Rule‐of‐Thumb Consumers,Productivity, and Hours*

In this paper, we study the transmission mechanism of productivity shocks in a model with rule‐of‐thumb consumers. In the literature, this financial friction has been studied only with reference to fiscal shocks. We show that the presence of rule‐of‐thumb consumers is also very helpful when accounting for recent empirical evidence on productivity shocks. Rule‐of‐thumb agents, together with nominal and real rigidities, play an important role in reproducing the negative response of hours and the delayed response of output after a productivity shock.     

Accounting for Employee Stock Options: What Can We Learn from the Market's Perceptions?

The scope of this is paper is to provide new empirical evidence on the value relevance of employee stock options (ESOs) in Europe. We show, empirically, that the market participants when pricing a firm's equity place approximately the same valuation weights on the ESO‐deferred compensation expense (the so called “ESO asset”) and the compensation option liability (the so called “ESO liability”). Our empirical findings support the theoretical work of Ohlson and Penman who suggest that the deferred compensation expense be treated as a contra‐liability. The second contribution of our work rests on the nature of the ESO expense. We show that the distinction between persistent and non‐persistent ESO expenses is of critical importance for the market participants. Accordingly, an improved accounting disclosure should assist the investors in assessing the long‐term goals of the ESO plans at the firm level.     

Using Relational and Transactional MCSs to Manage the Delivery of Outsourced Public Services: Evidence from Twelve Cases in the USA

The successful management of the purchaser–provider relationship is essential for the effective delivery of public services, and entails the use of both transactional and relational approaches. We herein analyse the degree and complementarity of transactional and relational management control systems in the management of purchaser–provider relationships for the successful delivery of public services using evidence from 12 US case studies. We demonstrate that transactional and relational management control systems are controlled differently in order to improve contracting efficiency. We also show how a combination of these management control systems offers a framework for structured public accountability and service flexibility.     

Returns to buying earnings and book value: accounting for growth and risk

Historical cost accounting deals with uncertainty by deferring the recognition of earnings until the uncertainty has largely been resolved. Such accounting affects both earnings and book value and produces expected earnings growth deemed to be at risk. This paper shows that the earnings-to-price and book-to-price ratios that are the product of this accounting forecast both earnings growth and the risk to that growth. The paper also shows that the market pricing of earnings and book values in these ratios aligns with the risk imbedded in the accounting: the returns to buying stocks on the basis of their earnings yield and book-to-price are explained as a rational pricing of the risk of expected earnings growth not being realized. Accordingly, the paper provides a rationalization of the well-documented book-to-price effect in stock returns: book-to-price indicates the risk in buying earnings growth. However, growth identified by a high book-to-price as yielding a higher return in this paper is quite different from “growth” typically attributed to a low book-to-price as yielding a lower return. Accordingly, the notion of “growth” versus “value” requires modification.     

Anomalous waiting times in high-frequency financial data

In high-frequency financial data not only returns, but also waiting times between consecutive trades are random variables. Therefore, it is possible to apply continuous-time random walks (CTRWs) as phenomenological models of the high-frequency price dynamics. An empirical analysis performed on the 30 DJIA stocks shows that the waiting-time survival probability for high-frequency data is non-exponential. This fact imposes constraints on agent-based models of financial markets.