Political and Regulatory Risk in Water Utilities: Beta Sensitivity in the United Kingdom

UK utilities are generally regulated by the periodic setting of a price cap (the RPI-X mechanism). To establish these caps, regulators must determine what returns are appropriate on the capital employed by utilities. This paper addresses the issue of the level of risk inherent in investment in the equity of regulated water utilities in the UK. It uses the techniques of the Kalman Filter to estimate daily betas for the major utilities in the period from privatisation to mid-1999. The paper demonstrates that water utilities' risk is time-variant. It demonstrates, also, that there have been significant political and regulatory influences in the systematic risk faced by water utility shareholders. It finds beta to display little evidence of cyclical variation across the regulatory review cycle. The paper also confirms that significant excess returns have been generated over the history of the privatised water sector and suggests that over-estimation of systematic risk faced by investors in the sector may imply further excess returns in the next regulatory review period.     

Fama's Ratio and the Effect of Operating Leverage on the Cost of Capital Under CAPM

The firm's operating leverage is its ratio of fixed to variable costs. It is widely understood that production settings with higher fixed costs and lower variable costs are high risk. Well-rehearsed CAPM arguments show how the firm's beta and cost of capital is higher when its proportion of fixed costs is higher. Importantly, that generalization holds under CAPM if expected total costs are constant and merely re-apportioned between fixed and variable, but does not hold if expected total costs change. In actual business contexts, higher fixed costs are intended to bring lower unit variable costs and often lower expected total costs. Allowing for such efficiency gains, the firm's risk-adjusted cost of capital might typically fall despite the higher operating leverage. Formal proof follows directly from the payoffs or ‘certainty equivalent’ expression of CAPM. The CAPM insights and new CAPM equations brought to light in this proof are surprising and useful.     

Estimating ‘gamma’ for tail-hedge discount rates when project returns are cointegrated with GDP

Martin Weitzman has suggested a method for calculating social discount rates for long-term investments when project returns are covariant with consumption or other macroeconomic variables, so-called ‘tail-hedge discounting’. This method relies on a parameter called ‘real project gamma’ that measures the proportion of project returns that is covariant with the macroeconomic variable. We compare two approaches for estimation of this gamma when the project returns and the macroeconomic variable are cointegrated. First, we use Weitzman’s own approach, and second a simple data transformation that keeps gamma within the zero to one interval. In a Monte-Carlo study, we show that the method of using a standardized series is better and robust under different data-generating processes. Both approaches are examined in a Monte-Carlo experiment and applied to Swedish time-series data from 1950–2011 for annual time-series data for rail freight (a measure of returns from rail investments) and GDP.     

Stock Market Returns and Economic Fundamentals in an Emerging Market: The Case of Korea

This paper investigates the feedback relationship between stock market returnsand economic fundamentals in an emerging market. Starting from an intertemporalconsumption-based CAPM (CCAPM), we obtain a restricted VAR model for stockreturns and macroeconomic variables. We then apply this model to Korea and findstatistically significant departures from the restrictions implied by CCAPM.Consequently, an unrestricted VAR model is used to analyze the variations of expectedand unexpected returns in the Korean stock market. It is shown that the expectedmarket returns vary with a set of macroeconomic variables, and that thepredictable component is substantial. Reflecting richer dynamics in the data,relative to the usual single equation modeling in the literature, the estimatedVAR model shows considerable predictive ability for both real economic activityand real returns. Using the model for a variance decomposition of unexpectedreturns, we find that, although we cannot directly observe the market's revisionof expected future dividend growth, we can estimate a large part of therevision with the news in the expected industry output growth from our VAR model.Finally, we also find that economic fundamentals can explain only a smallportion of the variation in unexpected returns in the Korean stock market.     

将资本资产定价模型用于我国金融市场

资本资产定价模型(Capital Asset Pricing Model简称CAPM)是由学者马柯维茨(1959)、夏普(1964)、林特讷(1965)、法玛(1973)等人在资产组合理论基础上发展起来的,是现代金融价格理论的支柱。本文在概述了资本资产定价模型的基本原理后,运用我国证券市场的数据对该模型进行了BJM检验和林特讷检验,并得出了相关结论。     

我国股市收益率极端值与CAPM模型的应用

沪深两市收益率具有尖峰、偏斜的特征,月度收益率比日收益率、周收益率更接近正态分布。剔除异常值之后,偏度下降,收益率更接近正态分布。在回归估计贝塔系数时,如果样本过小,应剔除异常的收益率值,以保证回归的有效性。     

中国上市公司A股和H股价差的实证研究

本文从实证角度,详细描述了截止2007年12月31日51家AH股上市公司自上市以来的价差变化趋势,并从公司、市场、利率、投资者、重大政策多个角度深入分析了AH股价差的影响因素。实证结果表明:同一上市公司的A股对H股普遍存在溢价现象,并且AH股价差在考察区间呈先上升后下降的趋势;流动性假说和信息不对称假说对AH股价差具有较强的解释力;两地的市场波动及利率变化对AH股价差具有显著的影响,而投资者结构和公司治理结构对AH股价差的作用不显著;在控制了市场波动等因素的影响之后,股权分置改革、QDII和港股直通车政策本身对AH股价差并没有显著影响。本文的研究成果进一步证明,两地股票市场分割以及内地资本流动的限制是造成AH股价差的根源。     

我国封闭式基金与CAPM——基于单指数模型的实证检验

选取2007年12月-2011年5月上证封闭式基盒的月度数据为样本,采用单指数模型、BJS两步法和横截面检验实证分析我国基金市场对CAPM的适用性,可得结论：CAPM并不适用于我国基金市场,原因在于基金市场的不成熟以及投资主体投资理念的非理性;同时CAPM条件过于苛刻,在对资本市场进行检验时应谨慎对待。     

资本资产定价模型对会计的启示

资本资产定价模型(CAPM)将有效市场的证券价格、风险和预期收益有机的联系在一起,提供了对投资项目收益的量化计算方法,但其严格的前提假设给该模型的实际应用带来了一定的困难。本文分析了CAPM的前提假设和模型推导,揭示了该模型对会计信息披露和资本市场监管方面的启示。     

基于CAPM模型的工程建设融资租赁风险分析

从融资租赁中出租人的角度出发,重点分析了出租人所面临的各种风险。在分析CAPM模型特点的基础上,运用改进的CAPM模型计算出租人的资产收益率,更好地反映出租人的风险与收益的关系,为出租人是否把资产出租给承租人提供决策依据。