Casino Revenues and Retail Property Values: The Detroit Case

We analyze the effects of commercial casinos on retail property values in the Detroit urban area. Accounting for property characteristics and proximity to the casinos, casinos are found to have a significantly positive influence on retail property values. The effect is stronger within a 5-mile radius of the casinos, suggesting that casinos have a complementary, rather than substitution, effect on other businesses. This provides some of the first micro-level empirical evidence to support the “drawing power” of casinos and the impact of consumer spending on surrounding businesses. The model developed and tested in this study can be applied to other casino jurisdictions to gain further evidence on the impact of commercial casinos.     

Valuation Effects for Asset Sales

This study provides evidence that the outcome for shareholders resulting from asset sales is determined at the time of transaction by the value for the asset sold. Assets sold above market value are followed by positive and significant abnormal returns over the following three months; these returns are magnified in firms where the balance of power in corporate governance favors shareholders. Abnormal returns following undervalued asset sales are insignificant from zero, indicating value-preservation. Value-preservation when the assets are sold below market value becomes less likely as firms approach financial constraints. The reverse is true when assets are sold above market value. This evidence is documented for apartment REITs, which have a large number of comparable transactions available for estimating expected market values.     

Do acquirers disclose good news or withhold bad news when they finance their acquisitions using equity?

Companies that use their own stock to finance acquisitions have incentives to increase their market values prior to the acquisition. This study examines whether such companies mislead investors by issuing overly optimistic forecasts of future earnings (“deception by commission”) or by withholding bad news about future earnings (“deception by omission”). We compare the management forecasts of acquiring firms in a pre-acquisition period (days −90 to −30 before the acquisition announcement) and a post-acquisition period (days +30 to +90 after the acquisition is completed). We show that, when acquisitions are financed using stock, companies are not more likely to issue overly optimistic earnings forecasts during the pre-acquisition period compared with the post-acquisition period. However, these same acquirers are more likely to withhold impending bad news about future earnings. Consistent with litigation having an asymmetric effect on disclosure incentives, our findings suggest that deception by omission occurs more often than deception by commission.     

Measuring the effect of watch-preceded and direct rating changes: a note on credit markets

This paper analyzes the importance of distinguishing between watch-preceded and direct rating changes for the credit default swap (CDS) market by examining a total of 2991 rating change announcements, 1526 watchlist placement announcements, and 430 rating affirmations following watchlist placements. The results show that watch-preceded downgrades do not lead to significant CDS market reactions, while direct downgrades are associated with a significant increase in CDS spread levels. Likewise, we document that watchlist placements for downgrade lead to increases in firms’ CDS spreads. CDS markets do not react to rating upgrades but watchlist placements for upgrade result in an immediate decrease in CDS spreads. Rating affirmations following watchlist placements for downgrade lead to slight reductions in CDS spreads, while affirmations following watchlist placements for upgrade have no effect on CDS spreads. These findings demonstrate the importance for empirical research on the interaction between credit markets and rating announcements to differentiate between watch-preceded and direct rating changes, particularly for rating downgrades.     

(Unusual) weather and stock returns—I am not in the mood for mood: further evidence from international markets

This paper investigates the explanatory power of weather variables deviations in two leading international financial trading centres (New York and London) on 58 global stock indices over the period September 2000 to December 2013. The empirical results find that unusual deviations of weather variables from their monthly averages have a statistically significant effect on stock returns across global returns. The paper also attempts to explain these effects through the sales and energy prices mechanisms. The results provide strong support to both mechanisms.     

Dividend taxes and stock volatility

How do dividend taxes affect stock volatility? If a risk-averse executive faces price risk through his incentive contract, changes in stock volatility due to dividend taxes may increase agency costs and therefore decrease overall welfare. In this paper, I use a decrease in dividend taxes as a natural experiment to identify their effect on the firm’s idiosyncratic stock return volatility. Stock volatility decreased after the tax cut for firms at which executives have larger sensitivity to stock price in their incentive compensation package relative to firms at which executives have a smaller sensitivity. Therefore, with risk-averse executives and risk-neutral shareholders, dividend taxes may exacerbate agency costs. The increase in agency costs will decrease shareholder welfare, which can be partially offset by the use of options in the employment contract.     

Managing wealth: A new approach

This paper investigates how well ‘mid-worth’ individuals are served by the financial services industry in the UK. It defines and analyses the new phenomenon of ‘mid-worth’ individuals: the rapid growth in the number of people with significant liquid assets available for investment. It then considers how well these individuals are served by the most common investment products and concludes that most individuals are so poorly served that the result is seriously damaging to their long-term financial health. The paper investigates the main reasons for this: a lack of understanding of the relationship between risk and return, and what can only be described as a conspiracy of ‘mystification’, resulting in customers standing even less chance of understanding the risk-return relationship. The consequence of this is that investors end up paying far too much for ‘heavily packaged’ investment products with the result that they may find they have much less money available to them when they need it most—in old age. The research for this paper was sponsored by Close Wealth Management.     

E-banking comes to town: Exploring how traditional UK high street banks are meeting the challenge of technology and virtual relationships

UK high street banks are continuing to extend the choice of channel through which customers can manage their moneycolon; an obvious example is e-banking. They have been keen to exploit technological advances and changing customer attitudes to alternative channels. Additionally, competition from leaner new market entrants has provided an added incentive to adopt new approaches. In the light of such developments, it is worth reflecting on the changing nature of the bank–customer relationship. This paper suggests that banks are finding it difficult to manage relationships effectively due, in large measure, to the sheer volume of customer data generated by new interactive, technology-based channels. Paradoxically, it seems that the more data banks have about customers the less likely they are to know them on a personal level. It is further suggested that channels such as e-banking potentially reduce the level of personal contact between bank and customer to the extent that a ‘virtual’ relationship develops. This paper concludes that, given the tendency towards ‘virtualisation’, it is inconceivable that bank–customer relationships will become any more intimate in the future. Indeed, a greater degree of personalisation in customer communication may be the very best that banks are able to offer.     

The optimal asset allocation of the main types of pension funds: a unified framework

The existing literature deals with the optimal investment strategy of defined benefit (DB) or defined contribution (DC) pension plans. This article’s objective is to compare the optimal policies of different types of pension plans. This is done by first defining an original framework, which is based on the distinction between the nature of the guarantee—which can be internal or external—offered by or to a pension fund. This framework allows to establish links between optimization programs of DC, DB and targeted money purchase schemes. The case of an internal guarantee appears as a standard portfolio insurer’s problem. The second kind of guarantee, not analyzed in the literature yet with regard to the resulting optimal policy, is characterized by the existence of an option in the final wealth definition. Four funds are present in the internal guarantee optimal allocation: the speculative component, the preference independent guarantee- and contribution-hedge terms and the preference dependent state variable-hedge fund. The external guarantee program, solved with an original method using the principles of standard options theory, yields an optimal policy incorporating the delta of the option embodied in the final wealth definition. The conclusion is that the resulting optimal portfolio policy becomes riskier.