The Impact of Power Distance and Uncertainty Avoidance on Real Options Exercise: Potential for Suboptimal Time Delays and Value Destruction

Real options (RO) valuation has been promoted as a way to evaluate investment opportunities and make investment decisions that takes into account the value of managerial flexibility in the face of uncertainty. Although RO enjoys a substantial body of literature considering its application and suitability in different situations, the impact of national culture on the application of RO has received little attention. Values embedded in national culture affect the behavior of managers. In particular, these values play a role in how managers frame information, communicate, and make decisions, directly and indirectly affecting behavior through cultural layers such as organizational culture. National culture, therefore, can systematically affect the application of RO, potentially leading to suboptimal outcomes. In this article, we hypothesize how 2 particularly relevant dimensions of culture, power distance and uncertainty avoidance, affect RO exercise, and estimate the magnitude suboptimality of these effects using a model we develop for the case of a put option. Our estimates suggest RO may not always be a superior valuation approach to net present value for national cultures with certain characteristics.     

Board directors with foreign experience and stock price crash risk: Evidence from China

This study examines the impact of board directors with foreign experience (BDFEs) on stock price crash risk. We find that BDFEs help reduce crash risk. This association is robust to a series of robustness checks, including a firm fixed effects model, controlling for possibly omitted variables, and instrumental variable estimations. Moreover, we find that the negative association between BDFEs and crash risk is more pronounced for firms with more agency problems, weaker corporate governance, and less overall transparency. Our findings suggest that the characteristics of board directors matter in determining stock price crash risk.     

Hedging and pricing early-exercise options with complex fourier series expansion

We introduce a new numerical method called the complex Fourier series (CFS) method proposed by Chan (2017) to price options with an early-exercise feature—American, Bermudan and discretely monitored barrier options—under exponential Lévy asset dynamics. This new method allows us to quickly and accurately compute the values of early-exercise options and their Greeks. We also provide an error analysis to demonstrate that, in many cases, we can achieve an exponential convergence rate in the pricing method as long as we choose the correct truncated computational interval. Our numerical analysis indicates that the CFS method is computationally more comparable or favourable than the methods currently available. Finally, the superiority of the CFS method is illustrated with real financial data by considering Standard & Poor’s depositary receipts (SPDR) exchange-traded fund (ETF) on the S&P 500® index options, which are American options traded from November 2017 to February 2018 and from 30 January 2019 to 21 June 2019.     

Impact of state-dependent oil price on US stock returns using local projections

In this paper, we investigate the impact of oil prices on both aggregate and industry US real stock returns over the period 1973–2017. The empirical analysis contributes to the related literature introducing a state-dependent oil price (high and low) and the local projections approach. Our main finding is that, depending on the nature of the shock and industry, the negative effects of oil price shocks become exacerbated -and the positive effects get moderated- if oil prices are already high.     

Financial development,economic growth and convergence clubs

To study the role of financial development in economic growth, we apply an array of convergence tests designed to capture nonlinear transitional dynamics to real outputs per capita. Strong evidence of multiple convergence clubs is observed, implying that the clubs are formed based on the initial level of real output per capita and average growth rate. Our empirical results show that the stage of economic growth of each country plays an important role for the composition of the convergence clubs. Furthermore, financial development emerges to be a significant determinant, albeit plays differently in the economic growth of each convergence club.     

The choice and timing of foreign direct investment under uncertainty

This paper sheds new light on why timing and entry mode should be considered simultaneously in the international investment literature. We derive the profit levels at which it is optimal to switch from exporting to setting up a wholly owned subsidiary, creating a joint venture, or licensing production to a local firm. The preferred entry mode depends on uncertainty about future profits, tax differentials between the home and the foreign country, the cost advantages of local firms, institutional requirements, and the degree of cooperation between partners in a joint venture.     

Political Measures for Strategic Environmental Policy with External Effects

This paper investigates an environmental policy designed to reduce the emission of pollutants under uncertainty, with the agent problem as an optimal stopping problem. We first analyze the two cases in which there are one agent and two competing agents by following Ohyama and Tsujimura (2005). When we consider a model of strategic agents, we need to analyze the external economic effect that is peculiar to an agent’s environmental policy implementation. Then, to improve and resolve these external effects, we examine three alternative political measures, comprising an environmental subsidy, an environmental tax and an emission trading system. The results of the analysis indicate that the environmental subsidy and environmental tax promote environmental policy. However, they do not create an incentive to be the leader. On the other hand, an emissions trading system not only promotes environmental policy but also creates an incentive for leadership.This paper was previously circulated under the title “Political Measures for Strategic Environmental Policy with Induced Effects”. The authors would like to thank Masaaki Kijima for helpful comments. The authors would also like to thank Alistair Munro and two anonymous referees providing detailed comments and suggestions. This research was partially supported by Daiwa Securities Group Inc. The second-named author was partially supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (2), 16310118.     

Should there exist secondary markets for executive stock options?

This paper investigates the potential disadvantages of the secondary markets for executive stock options (ESOs). The benefits of such markets are evident, but they might also have negative effects for shareholders. Executives might, for example, use inside information to time their ESO selling. We investigate two personal motives of managers that can be assumed to affect their optimal selling decision, that is, managers' personal portfolio management issues and the use of inside information. We explore these motives by analyzing unique data from Finland, where there are secondary markets for ESOs. The results of the study support the traditional portfolio diversification hypothesis according to which managers tend to sell their ESOs when holding an ESO is equivalent to holding the underlying stock; that is, in such a case a manager's wealth is closely tied to the stock price of the firm. With respect to the use of inside information the results indicate that ESO selling activity is not related to future stock price behaviour, suggesting that managers do not use inside information to determine the selling time of their ESOs. These results imply that the existence of secondary markets for ESOs does not weaken the usefulness of ESOs as the management compensation, although the benefits of such markets are evident.     

Accounting for Option–based Compensation: The Economic Cost Approach

The intrinsic value approach amortizes over the life of the option, the difference between the stock price on the date of the grant and the exercise price of the option. The fair market value approach amortizes over the life of the option, the market value of stock options on the date of the grant. These approaches do not reflect the changes in the option–based compensation cost after the grant date. This paper proposes an economic cost approach that not only adjusts for the changes in the value of the options during its life but also records the issuance of the stock at fair market value on the exercise date.