Targets' Accounting Conservatism and the Gains from Acquisition*

We present evidence on the effects of target firms' accounting conservatism in a merger and acquisition transaction. Conservatism is distinct from other accounting or accrual quality constructs examined in prior work. Its unique features can lead to potential benefits for both the targets and the acquirers. The use of conservatism by targets reduces acquirers' risks of acquiring underperforming assets or overpaying for well-performing assets. In addition, targets' conservatism results in greater production of verifiable information that can help the acquirers better estimate and realize synergies of the combined firm. Consistent with these arguments, we find that firms with greater accounting conservatism are more likely to receive a bid. We also find that targets' conservatism increases the deal premium and the announcement returns of both the targets and the acquirers, respectively. Overall, these results indicate that conservatism provides benefits to both sellers and buyers of equity in an acquisition transaction.     

风险投资、管理层过度自信与企业并购溢价

现有研究多关注管理层过度自信所带来的一系列“后果”，对影响管理层过度自信的“前因”研究较为鲜见，这种“头重脚轻”式的不对称式研究对深入理解管理层过度自信造成了障碍。文章以2012-2017年我国创业板上市企业完成的并购事件为研究样本，从并购视角出发，研究了风险投资对管理层过度自信的影响及其带来的并购后果。结果发现，风险投资能够显著抑制并购活动中管理层的过度自信行为，而抑制管理层过度自信在风险投资降低并购溢价过程中发挥了重要的中介效应，上述作用在民营企业或风险投资派驻了董事的企业中更为显著。进一步分析显示，在考虑了风险投资与管理层过度自信之间的反向因果关系、风险投资这一“外部”监督角色和企业董事会治理这一“内部”监督角色的交互影响对结论可能产生的影响后，上述结论仍显著成立。     

Term premium dynamics in an emerging market: Risk,liquidity, and behavioral factors

This paper contributes to the fixed income research by identifying determinants of term premium in an emerging market’s treasury bond yields with particular attention on ambiguity. We use Nelson–Siegel yield curves generated from daily bond price quotes as input to construct a three-factor affine term structure model which decomposes observed yields into risk-neutral and term premium components. We also construct an ambiguity index using intraday FX return data following Brenner and Izhakian (2018). Our analyses suggest that a combination of factors representing market risk, credit risk, liquidity, ambiguity, and investor sentiments can explain majority of the variation in term premia. Explanatory power of credit risk measures are found to increase while those of volatility, ambiguity, and sentiment measures diminish with the maturity horizon. The results imply that ambiguity aversion of bond investors is a major determinant of the shape of the yield curve as it drives the premia for short end of the yield curve lower in line with the expectation of flight-to-safety behavior.     

Banks,maturity transformation,and monetary policy

Banks engage in maturity transformation and the term premium compensates them for bearing the associated interest rate risk. Consistent with this view, I show that banks’ net interest margins and term premia have comoved in the United States over the last decades. On monetary policy announcement days, bank equity falls more sharply than nonbank equity following an increase in expected future short-term rates, but also responds more positively if term premia increase. These effects are reflected in bank cash-flows and amplified for banks with a larger maturity mismatch. The results reveal that banks are not immune to interest rate risk.     

Economic uncertainty: Mispricing and ambiguity premium

We uncover two channels of effect in the financial market when investors face macroeconomic uncertainty. Conditional on a common mispricing index, we find that economic uncertainty exposure (EUE) induces disagreement, which amplifies mispricing. The highest EUE quintile produces an annualised mispricing alpha of 9.96%, more than double the unconditional mispricing effect. An ambiguity premium of 3.84% alpha is documented in the “non-mispricing” quintile. The EUE-induced mispricing effect is different from the existing limits of arbitrage explanations. The ambiguity premium is predictably observed during the unfolding of shocks of COVID-19 to the market.