Pro-cyclical effect of sovereign rating changes on stock returns: a fact or factoid?

This article examines the effect of changes in sovereign credit ratings and their outlook on the stock market returns of European countries at different phases of business cycle. Using standard four-factor model, it records a significant average marginal effect of credit rating announcements on stock market returns. Both magnitude and significance of the effect vary with business cycle and across announcement types. However, we do not find evidence of pro-cyclical effect of sovereign rating and outlook changes on stock returns. Our results show that stock markets react more negatively to rating downgrades in recovery phases and more positively to rating upgrades in contractionary period. Both results are statistically significant and robust to various sensitivity tests.     

关于全民炒股和股市泡沫的经济分析

近来媒体关于全民炒股特别是上班族炒股升温的报道,敲响了股市泡沫崩溃的警钟,而推动股市泡沫走向崩溃的,则是全民炒股热和上班族炒股风.中国股票市场的两大缺陷是中国股市动辄形成严重泡沫的重要原因,要彻底消除股市泡沫,必须改变股票供给严重不足和股票需求异常增大的局面,并严肃八小时工作纪律,杜绝全民炒股特别是上班炒股风.在股市钱空的程度日趋严重的形势下,对股市泡沫崩溃及其严重影响必须有清醒的认识,做好充分的准备.     

股市新文化理论初探

长期以来,我国资本市场理论的研究落后于资本市场发展的实践。当前我国股市面临的一个突出问题是股市基础理论探讨严重匮乏。解决这一问题,需要从两个环节入手:第一是在社会主义市场经济条件下,对股市的基本功能进行探讨;第二是建立股市新文化和股权文化。     

农村全面小康社会建设进程监测指标与方法完善探讨

本文在正确理解农村全面小康社会内涵和借鉴吸收前人研究成果的基础上，重新构建了一套农村全面小康社会建设监测指标体系和监测方法,     

我国股票期权的实施及会计处理

本通过对美国股票期权的发展、特点、作用及会计处理方法的逐一解读，分析了我国企业实行股票期权激励的必要性，并就我国实施股票期权激励机制的环境要求及会计处理方法进行了粗浅探讨。随着各方面配套工作的展开与完善，股票期权制度在我国公司的规范化运作和企业长远发展中，必将散发出巨大的能量和迷人魅力。     

股票价格对物价水平的影响

股票价格作为最重要的金融资产价格，会通过“财富效应”、“替代效应”、“预期效应”、“新产品效应”和“工资效应”等途径影响投资和消费等宏观经济变量，进而影响包括商品劳务价格在内的一般物价水平。在发达国家和发展中国家，股票价格影响物价水平的方向和程度有着重大区别。     

资本全球化与环境保护

文章分几个部分探讨资本全球化与环境保护的相互关系 :资本全球化的内容 ;资本全球化与环境保护的互动关系 ;国外直接投资对环境保护影响的正反面经济评估 ;国际银行资本流动对环境保护影响的正反面经济评估 ;证券资本对环境保护影响的正反面经济评估 ;保险资本流动对环境保护影响的正反面经济评估。     

On the forecastability of share prices on the Viennese stock exchange

In this paper the Viennese stock exchange data are analysed by using ARMA and GARCH technology. After using AIC and BIC for estimating the linear structure of the time series, to the resulting innovations a GARCH(1,1) model is fit. The resulting residuals are then tested for serial independence and constancy of its distribution to check whether the models are reasonable. Main result is that the residuals of this ARMA-GARCH(1,1)-model are reasonably iid (which is checked by BDS and classical independence tests) for index data and significantly less well-behaved for stock data. Second, there is considerable autocorrelation in the data (especially in the Viennese indices WBK and ATX) which can be exploited even with 1.25% transaction costs (which is checked by a posteriori analysis of a strategy which exploits an underlying time-varying AR(1) model), however, much higher profit can be made with 0.5% transaction costs. Furthermore, the same techniques are applied to US Standard & Poor 500 index and the results for both data sets are compared giving the result that the US-market looks much more mature than the Viennese one.Financial Support by the Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna, and the Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung, Vienna, Grant P 9176 is gratefully acknowledged. This paper is a slightly abbreviated version of the Research Report No. 135 by the same authors (see References), which contains many detailed plots of the results.     

Intraday Empirical Analysis and Modeling of Diversified World Stock Indices

This paper proposes an approach to the intraday analysis of diversified world stock accumulation indices. The growth optimal portfolio (GOP) is used as reference unit or benchmark in a continuous financial market model. Diversified portfolios, covering the world stock market, are constructed and shown to approximate the GOP, providing the basis for a range of financial applications. The normalized GOP is modeled as a time transformed square root process of dimension four. Its dynamics are empirically verified for several world stock indices. Furthermore, the evolution of the transformed time is modeled as the integral over a rapidly evolving mean-reverting market activity process with deterministic volatility. The empirical findings suggest a rather simple and robust model for a world stock index that reflects the historical evolution, by using only a few readily observable parameters. Mathematics Subject Classification: (1991) primary 90A12, secondary 60G30,62P20 JEL Classification: G10, G13     

Risk-taking incentives of executive stock options and the asset substitution problem

Various theoretical models show that managerial compensation schemes can reduce the distortionary effects of financial leverage. There is mixed evidence as to whether highly levered firms offer less stock‐based compensation, a common prediction of such models. Both the theoretical and empirical research, however, have overlooked the leverage provided by executive stock options. In principle, adjusting the exercise prices of executive stock options can mitigate the risk incentive effects of financial leverage. We show that the near‐universal practice of setting option exercise prices near the prevailing stock price at the date of grant effectively undoes most of the effects of financial leverage. In a large cross‐sectional sample of Canadian option‐granting firms, we find evidence that executives' incentives to take equity risk are negatively rather than positively related to the leverage of their employers.