Motivations of Australian Listed Companies Effecting Share Buy-Backs

The bulk of prior research on share buy-backs has been undertaken in the U.S. As the legislative environment and capital market perception of buy-backs in Australia are different to the U.S., it is both desirable and necessary to examine the motivations of Australian share buy-backs. Contemporary Australian financial press reports, the U.S. financial management literature and anecdotal evidence provide numerous feasible motivations for a company to undertake a buy-back. In an Australian context, this article considers the following: (a) the development of the legislative framework relating to share buy-backs and why some forms of buy-back are preferred over others; (b) a set of potential motivations (reasons) for Australian companies undertaking a buy-back; and (c) the actual motivations as provided in ASX announcements by forty-four listed companies effecting sixty-seven share buy-backs over the period 1990 to 1995. Results reveal that motivations differ depending on the type of buy-back and are reasonably consistent across time. The two prime motivations for on-market buy-backs are: (a) signalling of future expectations (underpricing), and (b) an attempt to increase financial performance (EPS) and/or position (NAB/share). For selective buy-backs, the main purpose is to remove specific shareholders from the share register. Employee buy-backs are generally seen as an off-market means of providing a market for the company's shares. Finally, the overriding motivation for equal access buy-backs is as an alternative to dividends.     

Private Equity: Accomplishments and Challenges

The authors provide an overview of the main accomplishments of private equity since the emergence of leveraged buyouts in the 1980s, and of the challenges now facing the industry—challenges that have been encountered before during three major growth waves and two full boom‐and‐bust cycles. In so doing, the authors review a large and growing body of academic studies responding to questions like these:

• (1) How have PE buyout companies performed relative to their public counterparts? And to the extent there have been improvements in operating performance and productivity gains, how have such gains been achieved? What role have PE firms played in this process?
• (2) Especially in light of the large fees and profit shares paid to the PE firms, or GPs, and the significant “control” premiums over market paid to the selling companies, how have the returns to the LPs that provide the bulk of the funding for PE funds compared to the returns earned by the shareholders of comparable public companies?
• (3) Apart from the high fees earned by its GPs, why is PE so controversial? Beyond their effects on productivity and benefits for investors, what are the employment and other social effects of buyouts and PE?
• (4) What are the prospects for future PE returns to their LPs, especially in light of the volume of capital commitments and high purchase multiples that were being paid, at least until the onset of the COVID pandemic? And what role, if any, should PE activity be expected to play in the recovery from the pandemic?

     

Reconciling microeconomic and macroeconomic estimates of price stickiness

This paper attempts to reconcile the high estimates of price stickiness from macroeconomic estimates of a New-Keynesian Phillips curve (NKPC) with the lower values obtained from surveys of firms’ pricing behaviour. This microeconomic evidence also suggests that the frequency with which firms adjust their prices varies across sectors. Building on the insights of Carvalho (2006), we present Monte Carlo evidence that suggests that in the presence of this heterogeneity estimates of the NKPC obtained using conventional methods, such as GMM, are likely to considerably overstate the degree of aggregate price stickiness. Furthermore, if roundabout production is a characteristic of the economy the NKPC will falsely suggest that a sizeable fraction of prices are indexed to past inflation. These problems arise because of a type of misspecification and a lack of suitable instruments.     

A Nonparametric Test for I(0)

There is frequently interest in testing that a scalar or vector time series is I(0), possibly after first-differencing or other detrending, while the I(0) assumption is also taken for granted in autocorrelation-consistent variance estimation. We propose a test for I(0) against fractional alternatives. The test is nonparametric, and indeed makes no assumptions on spectral behaviour away from zero frequency. It seems likely to have good efficiency against fractional alternatives, relative to other nonparametric tests. The test is given large sample justification, subjected to a Monte Carlo analysis of finite sample behaviour, and applied to various empirical data series.     

Regulatory Uncertainty and the Volatility of Regional Electricity Company Share Prices: The Economic Consequences of Professor Littlechild

This paper attempts to measure the effects of regulatory intervention by measuring the conditional variance of stock price changes in the 12 UK regional electricity companies before and after an unexpected intervention by the electricity regulator in March 1995. The analysis uses an ARCH model in which the conditional variance follows an autoregressive formation. The results indicate a significant increase in the volatility of the conditional variance for eight of the 12 companies.     

The Political Economy of the Kuznets Curve

The paper provides a political economy theory of the Kuznets curve. When development leads to increasing inequality, this can induce political instability and force democratization on political elites. Democratization leads to institutional changes which encourage redistribution and reduce inequality. Nevertheless, development does not necessarily induce a Kuznets curve, and it is shown that development may be associated with two types of nondemocratic paths: an "autocratic disaster," with high inequality and low output, and an "East Asian Miracle," with low inequality and high output. These arise either because inequality does not increase with development, or because the degree of political mobilization is low.     

The Time Allocation and Earnings of Artists

This article presents the results of an investigation into the time allocation and earnings of artists. Artists are unique because theyspend substantial amounts of time both at art work and at nonart work while earning the majority of their income from the latter. In order to empirically examine this allocation of time between art and nonart work, we estimate a four-equation system. We find that artists respond to price signals in the directions predicted by economic theory.     

Employee Participation and Equal Opportunities Practices: Productivity Effect and Potential Complementarities

The relationships between employee participation, equal opportunities practices and productivity are explored. Data from the British Workplace Employee Relations Survey of 1998 provide strong evidence that equal opportunities practices improve productivity overall, and increasingly so as the share of female and ethnic minority employees increases. However, short‐term effects may be negative in segregated workplaces. Non‐financial participation schemes are negatively associated with productivity, but in most cases the joint presence of these participatory schemes and equal opportunities practices significantly increases productivity. Interactions between participatory and equal opportunities schemes are also affected by work‐force composition and by the level of equal opportunities policies implemented.     

Some Issues in Corporate Hedging Policy

The increased volatility of financial markets in recent years has led to a corresponding increase in the volatility of corporate earnings. This has, in turn, led to a surge of interest in hedging. At first sight, it may seem that, to the extent it can reduce volatility, hedging is a worthwhile activity. However, we argue that the issue is less clear-cut than meets the eye. In the process of developing our arguments, we shall look at some of the financial instruments available for hedging and shall show how they can be used for various hedging and non-hedging purposes.