ETF Premiums and Liquidity Segmentation

Exchange traded funds (ETFs) provide a means for investors to access assets indirectly that may be accessible at a high cost otherwise. I show that liquidity segmentation can explain the tendency for ETFs to trade at a premium to net asset value (NAV) as well as the life‐cycle pattern in premiums. ETFs with larger NAV tracking error standard deviations (TESDs) tend to trade at higher premiums and the liquidity benefits offered by foreign ETFs and fixed income ETFs are revealed to be the most valuable to investors. Further tests validate that TESD has the desirable properties of a liquidity segmentation measure.     

Annual report readability and corporate agency costs

Annual reports are the main sources of information for outside investors’ investment decisions and enable shareholders to supervise the management. Difficulties with the readability of these reports may therefore have serious consequences. Using 19,221 firm-year observations of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2001 to 2015, we investigate the association between annual report readability and corporate agency costs, where readability is proxied by report file length and/or file size. We find that firms with better annual report readability experience lower agency costs, and the negative association between readability and agency costs is more pronounced in firms with higher external audit quality, internal control quality or analyst coverage. These results hold after several robustness checks. The positive effect of annual report readability is stronger in private firms than in state-owned enterprises, and becomes stronger after the implementation of new accounting standards in 2007. Readable annual reports can help in monitoring corporate insiders’ opportunistic behavior and thus reduce agency costs.     

Political patronage and analysts’ forecast precision

We test whether the channel by which the government plays the role of political patron to selected firms influences analysts’ forecast precision in Malaysia. Correcting for analysts’ self-selection bias, we find a negative relation between analysts’ forecast errors and the social dimension of political patronage, as proxied by government-controlled institutional ownership. The reverse is found for the economic dimension of political patronage, as proxied by the percentage shareholding of government-linked corporations. We find no evidence that the personal dimension of political patronage influences analysts’ forecast precision.     

Corporate social responsibility and Eurozone corporate bonds: The moderating role of country sustainability

In this paper, we empirically examine whether superior performance in corporate social responsibility (CSR) results in lower credit risk, measured by credit ratings and zero-volatility spreads (z-spreads). We are especially interested in how the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) related performance of the corresponding countries moderates this relationship. We find only weak evidence that superior corporate social performance (CSP) results in systematically reduced credit risk. However, we do find strong support for our hypothesis that a country’s ESG performance moderates the CSP–credit risk relationship. Superior CSP is regarded as risk-reducing and rewarded with better ratings and lower z-spreads only if it is recognized by the environment. In addition, we find a reduction of corporate bonds’ z-spreads by approx. 9.64 basis points if the CSP of a company mirrors the ESG performance of the country it is located in.     

Measurement of Quality of Life and Well‐Being in France: The Drivers of Subjective Well‐Being

Ever since the publication of the Stiglitz Report, France has been heavily involved in the measurement of well‐being. The French Statistical Institute (INSEE) has expanded the scope of its existing surveys. It has also launched an innovative experimental survey which, drawing upon a single statistical source, aims for the first time to explore the different dimensions of both objective and subjective quality of life, as highlighted in the Stiglitz Report. It allows us to study, at the individual level, correlations between these dimensions and the accumulation of deprivations. It has enabled us to better understand the links between determinants generally referred to as objective dimensions of quality of life (such as health or education) and subjective well‐being. This information is of paramount importance for policy makers who cannot act directly on the level of people's satisfaction but can only act upon the levers of objective dimensions. This paper presents the main findings of the experimental survey.     

Multi-scale tests for serial correlation

This paper introduces a new family of portmanteau tests for serial correlation. Using the wavelet transform, we decompose the variance of the underlying process into the variance of its low frequency and of its high frequency components and we design a variance ratio test of no serial correlation in the presence of dependence. Such decomposition can be carried out iteratively, each wavelet filter leading to a rich family of tests whose joint limiting null distribution is a multivariate normal. We illustrate the size and power properties of the proposed tests through Monte Carlo simulations.     

Bailout uncertainty in a microfounded general equilibrium model of the financial system

This paper develops a micro-founded general equilibrium model of the financial system composed of ultimate borrowers, ultimate lenders and financial intermediaries. The model is used to investigate the impact of uncertainty about the likelihood of governmental bailouts on leverage, interest rates, the volume of defaults and the real economy. The distinction between risk and uncertainty is implemented by applying the multiple priors framework to beliefs about the probability of bailout.Results of the analysis include: (i) An unanticipated increase in bailout uncertainty raises interest rates, the volume of defaults in both the real and financial sectors and may lead to a total drying up of credit markets. (ii) Lower exante bailout uncertainty is conducive to higher leverage, which in turn raises moral hazard and makes the economy more vulnerable to expost increases in bailout uncertainty. (iii) Bailout uncertainty affects the likelihood of bubbles, the amplitude of booms and busts as well as the banking and the credit spreads. (iv) Higher bailout uncertainty is associated with higher returns’ variability in diversified portfolios and higher systemic risks, (v) Pre-crisis expansionary monetary policy reinforces those effects by inducing higher aggregate leverage levels. (vi) The larger the change in bailout uncertainty and the change in aversion to this uncertainty, the stronger the pre-crisis buildup and the deeper the ensuing crisis.A central policy implication of the analysis is that the vaguest is bailout policy prior to a crisis, the lower is the magnitude of investments destroyed or missed due to errors in evaluating bailout and other intervention policies. On the other hand, the clearer is bailout policy upon the eruption of a crisis, the smaller the contraction of credit and the destruction of investment activity.     

Measuring the liquidity part of volume

Based on the concept that the presence of liquidity frictions can increase the daily traded volume, we develop an extended version of the mixture of distribution hypothesis model (MDH) along the lines of Tauchen and Pitts (1983) to measure the liquidity portion of volume. Our approach relies on a structural definition of liquidity frictions arising from the theoretical framework of Grossman and Miller (1988), which explains how liquidity shocks affect the way in which information is incorporated into daily trading characteristics. In addition, we propose an econometric setup exploiting the volatility–volume relationship to filter the liquidity portion of volume and infer the presence of liquidity frictions using daily data. Finally, based on FTSE 100 stocks, we show that the extended MDH model proposed here outperforms that of Andersen (1996) and that the liquidity frictions are priced in the cross-section of stock returns.     

Managerial entrenchment, equity payout and capital structure

I develop a contingent claims model to examine the impacts of managerial entrenchment on capital structure and security valuation. The analysis shows that managers’ self-interested leverage choices deviate significantly from the optimal leverages that maximize firm values, partially explaining the suboptimal leverage ratios observed empirically (Graham, 2000). Both the extent and sensitivity of the deviations are affected by firm characteristics, debt features and default solutions. The shareholder-manager conflicts over risk level and cash payout vary dynamically with a firm’s financial health. Managerial entrenchment does not mitigate the agency problems of debt since managers’ discretionary decisions on milking properties or asset substitution could be driven by incentives to increase their own utility.     

Learning from peers' stock prices and corporate investment

Peers' valuation matters for firms' investment: a one standard deviation increase in peers' valuation is associated with a 5.9% increase in corporate investment. This association is stronger when a firm's stock price informativeness is lower or when its managers appear less informed. Also, the sensitivity of a firm's investment to its stock price is lower when its peers' stock price informativeness is higher or when demands for its products and its peers' products are more correlated. Furthermore, the sensitivity of firms' investment to their peers' valuation drops significantly after going public. These findings are uniquely predicted by a model in which managers learn information from their peers' valuation.