Global style momentum

We first document the empirical regularity of significant style-level momentum returns in international data. Then we test some Barberis and Shleifer (2003) propositions regarding style momentum. One proposition holds that Sharpe ratios from style-level momentum strategies should be at least as large as stock-level momentum Sharpe ratios. We test for style-level momentum profitability in our sample of global markets and find some evidence of larger style momentum Sharpe ratios, especially within the value-growth style. However, most of the evidence favors stock momentum. The Barberis and Shleifer (2003) model also suggests that style momentum could be time-varying. Variables that effectively condition stock momentum are much less effective with style momentum.     

Do actions speak louder than words? An empirical investigation of corporate environmental reputation

In this study, we investigate the extent to which firms’ environmental performance is reflected in perceptions of their environmental reputation and whether environmental disclosure serves to mediate the negative aspects of poorer environmental performance associated with those assessments. We also examine whether differences in environmental performance and environmental disclosure appear to be associated with membership selection to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI), a factor we also believe may be associated with perceptions of environmental reputation. Based on a cross-sectional sample of 92 US firms from environmentally sensitive industries, we find that environmental performance measured using Trucost environmental performance scores is negatively related to both reputation scores and membership in the DJSI. We argue this is due to the more extensive disclosure levels of firms that are worse performers and the finding of a significant positive relation between environmental disclosure and both the environmental reputation measures and DJSI membership. Finally, we show that the DJSI designation positively influences perceptions of corporate reputation. Overall, our results suggest that voluntary environmental disclosure appears to mediate the effect of poor environmental performance on environmental reputation. Perhaps more troubling, our results also suggest that membership in the DJSI appears to be driven more by what firms say than what they do. Thus, like voluntary disclosure, the DJSI may actually be hindering improved future corporate environmental performance.     

Audit opinion improvement and the timing of disclosure

Companies have been found to report positive information more quickly than they report negative information (i.e., good news early, bad news late). This paper investigates the potential impact of audit opinion change on the timeliness of financial disclosures, with improvements in audit opinion considered to be “good news.” We take both the direction and the magnitude of audit opinion change into consideration, with magnitude measuring how far the opinion is from an unqualified opinion (i.e., an unqualified opinion with explanatory paragraph is closer to an unqualified opinion than a qualified opinion is). We find that firms experiencing an improvement in their audit opinions disclose their financial results earlier, while those with audit opinion deteriorations report their financial results later, and that these effects were related to the magnitude of the opinion change. What's more, there is an asymmetric response to good audit opinion news vs. bad audit opinion news, with bad audit opinion news having a larger effect on earnings timeliness than the effect on earnings timeliness of good audit opinion news. Overall, our results support the “good news early, bad news late” notion. Finally, we also find that overall earnings timeliness has improved in China since the enactment of new reporting regulations in 2006.     

A Proposal to Improve U.S. Housing Market Incentives: A Response to the Federal Reserve White Paper of January 2012

The U.S. housing finance market has not yet recovered from the housing price bubble that peaked in late 2006. Even though prices have fallen significantly, there are still problems in clearing the market. For the last few years, a group of financial economists and practitioners who are part of the Financial Management Association's Practitioner Demand Driven Academic Research Initiative (PDDARI) have been studying the collapse of the housing market and have concluded that many market participants still have insufficient (and in some cases the wrong) incentives to take actions that would help restore the market's health. In January 2012, Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, released a white paper that reviewed current housing market conditions and created a framework for policy analysis designed to help reestablish the health of the U.S. housing market as part of the broader effort to foster economic recovery. Using this framework as its starting point, the PDDARI group has come up with a set of proposals whose centerpiece is an “incentive‐compatible” mortgage that encourages homeowners to rebuild their home equity as an essential step to a housing recovery. By incorporating “price appreciation rights” that would provide stronger inducements for lenders or mortgage owners to make loan modifications (particularly, forgiveness of principal), the PDDARI mortgage structure could allow more homeowners to remain in their homes and avoid foreclosures and the large associated deadweight costs (as much as 40% of a home's assessed value). Additionally, the government‐sponsored enterprises, including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are also in need of radical reform, and a transition toward greater private market participation would promote the long‐term health of the mortgage market.     

PRICING AND HEDGING SHORT STERLING OPTIONS USING NEURAL NETWORKS

This paper compares the performance of artificial neural networks (ANNs) with that of the modified Black model in both pricing and hedging short sterling options. Using high‐frequency data, standard and hybrid ANNs are trained to generate option prices. The hybrid ANN is significantly superior to both the modified Black model and the standard ANN in pricing call and put options. Hedge ratios for hedging short sterling options positions using short sterling futures are produced using the standard and hybrid ANN pricing models, the modified Black model, and also standard and hybrid ANNs trained directly on the hedge ratios. The performance of hedge ratios from ANNs directly trained on actual hedge ratios is significantly superior to those based on a pricing model, and to the modified Black model. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intertemporal variation in the information content of aggregate earnings and its effect on the aggregate earnings-return relation

Review of Accounting Studies - We develop and test explanations for sources of intertemporal variation in the information content of aggregate earnings and how that variation explains variation in...     

Scenarios and counterfactuals as modal narratives

Scenarios and counterfactuals are two types of modal narrative. Modal narratives concern themselves with contingency and determinism: with questions of possibility and necessity. While scenarios are future-oriented, focused on what might yet be, counterfactuals are narratives of what might have been. Despite this fundamental temporal difference, consideration of the theoretical and philosophical underpinnings of modal narratives as a genre enables us to elucidate some critical issues concerning scenarios as a foresight methodology. In particular, the scenario literature has tended to avoid extended discussion of its implicit assumptions concerning causation, necessity, possibility and contingency. By confronting the modal nature of foresight methodologies more explicitly, the futures community may begin to lay more secure philosophical foundations for their deployment.     

Boardroom centrality and firm performance

Firms with central boards of directors earn superior risk-adjusted stock returns. A long (short) position in the most (least) central firms earns average annual returns of 4.68%. Firms with central boards also experience higher future return-on-assets growth and more positive analyst forecast errors. Return prediction, return-on-assets growth, and analyst errors are concentrated among high growth opportunity firms or firms confronting adverse circumstances, consistent with boardroom connections mattering most for firms standing to benefit most from information and resources exchanged through boardroom networks. Overall, our results suggest that director networks provide economic benefits that are not immediately reflected in stock prices.     

The Current State of Genetic Testing

Recent advances in genetic technology and progress in the multinational Human Genome Project are providing scientists with the ability to look into and manipulate the very makeup of life: the DNA molecule. We can already examine many dozens of plant and animal genes for disease producing abnormalities. In the near future, we will have the ability to alter specific genes in living tissue. This genetic technology holds great promise in our quest for preventing, diagnosing, treating, and predicting disease, not just in humans, but in all forms of life.

But there are some problems. Philosophically many are not ready for the implications of this technology. There are social and ethical issues that have not been well addressed, and which have, in part, resulted in an unprecedented amount of legislative activity over the past four years aimed at restricting access to and use of genetic information. The ability of the U.S. insurance industry to risk-select may be severely hampered if these restrictions are widely applied.