Marie Dutordoir , Joshua Shemesh , Chris Veld , Qing Wang
{"title":"Can existing corporate finance theories explain security offerings during the COVID-19 pandemic?","authors":"Marie Dutordoir , Joshua Shemesh , Chris Veld , Qing Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101558","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101558","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We document substantial increases in corporate security offerings during the COVID pandemic. While the increase in seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) can be attributed to shifts in macroeconomic conditions, increases in convertible and straight bond offerings cannot be explained by standard security choice determinants. We furthermore find that COVID-period SEO announcements are often contaminated with Research and Development (R&D)-related news, with the SEO proceeds more likely to be hoarded as cash. Overall, COVID-period SEOs align with market timing behavior, but the increase in COVID-period convertibles and straight bonds cannot be reconciled with pre-pandemic corporate financing rationales or government interventions. We furthermore demonstrate that the COVID pandemic differs substantially from the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) in terms of security offering choices and announcement returns.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Empirical Finance","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101558"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-10-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142553629","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Short-term momentum and reversals, turnover, and a stock’s price-to-52-week-high ratio","authors":"Chen Chen , Chris Stivers , Licheng Sun","doi":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101556","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101556","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We show that short-term reversal behavior declines with a stock’s turnover and the prior month’s price-to-52-week-high ratio (PTH), shifting to momentum for stocks with both a relatively high turnover and PTH. This behavior of consecutive one-month individual stock returns is robust to subperiod analysis, risk adjustments, and alternative methodologies. Our findings suggest opposing channels. First, promoting short-term momentum, our evidence implies a PTH-anchoring underreaction to recent news, consistent with the short-term contrarian price-dampening channel of Atmaz et al. (2024) with higher turnover implying a stronger contrarian-induced underreaction. Second, promoting short-term reversals, our evidence reinforces the importance of the well-known liquidity-provision-compensation channel. Reversals are especially strong for low-PTH, low-turnover stocks, where the lower PTH implies a generally smaller-cap, less-liquid stock and the lower turnover implies a weaker contrarian-induced underreaction. We also find that the return behaviors vary with dispersion in analysts’ earnings forecasts and with market-wide sentiment, in a manner consistent with these channels.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Empirical Finance","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101556"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-10-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142532660","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Chien-Lin Lu , Chih-Yung Lin , Tse-Chun Lin , Bin Miao
{"title":"Financial statement disaggregation and bank loan pricing","authors":"Chien-Lin Lu , Chih-Yung Lin , Tse-Chun Lin , Bin Miao","doi":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101555","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101555","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>We analyze whether the disaggregation quality (DQ) of a borrower's financial statement is associated with its bank loan pricing. We find that firms with high DQ have low spreads on their bank loans. This result is more pronounced for firms with positive financial prospects, higher risk, and no prior banking relationship with the lenders. Moreover, a high DQ is associated with a low total cost of borrowing, high credit rating, and low spreads on bond issues. Overall, our results show that disaggregated financial statements facilitate bank loan pricing by enabling lenders to make better predictions of their borrowers’ future performance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Empirical Finance","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101555"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142424067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Local labor market and corporate investment","authors":"Yao Ge , Wei Huang , Zheng Qiao , Hao Zheng","doi":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101554","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101554","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>To capture local labor market pooling in agglomeration economics, we employ segment information and occupation statistics to construct firm-pair labor force similarities. Our findings indicate a positive relation between local labor market thickness and corporate investment, influenced by both employer-driven labor demand and employee-driven labor supply. The findings are more pronounced in firms with more skilled labor, less routine-task labor, and higher product and technology competitions. Firms in thicker local labor markets also display higher investment efficiency, higher operating efficiency, and higher valuation. To mitigate the endogeneity concern, we employ an instrumental variable approach to show robustness. Overall, we uncover a specific linkage between the local labor market and corporate investment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Empirical Finance","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101554"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142315743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How does bank opacity affect credit growth and return predictability?","authors":"Arpit Kumar Parija, Malvika Chhatwani","doi":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101553","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101553","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Prior research finds that bank credit growth predicts lower bank equity returns in subsequent one to three years. Stocks of banks with high credit growth are initially overvalued because of overoptimism or elevated sentiment of bank shareholders. Eventually, these stocks underperform, generating lower returns. We argue that shareholder sentiment should exhibit its strongest effects on the performance of bank stocks when banks are opaque, or there is uncertainty about the quality of bank loans. Accordingly, we show that an increase in bank’s financial reporting opacity amplifies the predictive ability of credit growth for equity returns by 3 to 4 times relative to when opacity is at its mean.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":15704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Empirical Finance","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101553"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142319876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stock price synchronicity and stock liquidity: International evidence","authors":"Paul Brockman , Tung Lam Dang , Thu Phuong Pham","doi":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101541","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101541","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We examine the relationship between stock price synchronicity and stock liquidity using a comprehensive data set across 40 countries. Our <em>local</em> (within-country) empirical results reveal a positive relationship between local synchronicity and stock liquidity. The strength of this positive relationship depends on the quality of country-level institutions; the weaker the institutional environment, the stronger the synchronicity-liquidity relationship. Importantly, our <em>global</em> (across-country) findings mirror those at the local level. Overall, our study provides a comprehensive analysis of the synchronicity-liquidity relationship at both the local and global levels. In addition, our cross-sectional analyses provide new evidence on the institutional determinants of this relationship.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":15704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Empirical Finance","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101541"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142228803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Gold, platinum, and mutual fund flows","authors":"Ali K. Malik , Gonul Colak , Anders Löflund","doi":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101552","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101552","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Huang and Kilic (2019) demonstrate that gold to platinum price ratio (GP), which proxies for tail risk in the economy, is a priced risk factor in the cross-section of stock returns. We document that GP negatively affects the mutual fund flows of the active equity funds. In cross-sectional regressions, we find that funds with high betas with respect to the change in GP (<span><math><msub><mi>β</mi><mrow><mstyle><mi>Δ</mi></mstyle><mi>G</mi><mi>P</mi></mrow></msub></math></span>) have larger future fund flows, as such funds provide a hedge against economic distress. Further, <span><math><msub><mi>β</mi><mrow><mstyle><mi>Δ</mi></mstyle><mi>G</mi><mi>P</mi></mrow></msub></math></span> helps predict the future performance of the fund in the next few quarters. <span><math><msub><mi>β</mi><mrow><mstyle><mi>Δ</mi></mstyle><mi>G</mi><mi>P</mi></mrow></msub></math></span> also relates negatively to the downside risk of the fund, implying that funds could potentially reduce their left-tail risk by tilting towards securities with above average <span><math><msub><mi>β</mi><mrow><mstyle><mi>Δ</mi></mstyle><mi>G</mi><mi>P</mi></mrow></msub></math></span>. We also examine the flows to active corporate bond funds and passive funds. While these effects of GP are largely observable for passive funds, they are not as strongly observable for corporate bond funds.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":15704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Empirical Finance","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101552"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927539824000860/pdfft?md5=1ee2e22a5f9b79ba44872664b642eac1&pid=1-s2.0-S0927539824000860-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142239692","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"A comparison of factor models in China","authors":"Jinzhe Wang, Yifeng Zhu","doi":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101548","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101548","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We evaluate the performance of eleven asset pricing models in the Chinese A-share market using a variety of test portfolios and statistical methodologies. To compile the test portfolios, we construct 105 anomalies and use the 23 significant anomalies as test assets for model comparison. The results indicate that, in time-series test and anomaly explanations, the Hou et al. (2019) five-factor <em>q</em> model demonstrates the best overall performance. The pairwise cross-sectional <span><math><msup><mrow><mi>R</mi></mrow><mn>2</mn></msup></math></span> tests and multiple model comparison tests further affirm that the Hou et al. (2019) five-factor <em>q</em> model, the Fama and French (2018) six-factor (FF6) model, and the Kelly et al. (2019) five-factor Instrumented Principal Component Analysis (IPCA5) model are the top performers. Notably, the performance of the five-factor <em>q</em> model remains robust across various experimental designs.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":15704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Empirical Finance","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101548"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142239691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Qian Song , Wenjie Ding , Iftekhar Hasan , Qingwei Wang
{"title":"Banker directors on board and corporate tax avoidance","authors":"Qian Song , Wenjie Ding , Iftekhar Hasan , Qingwei Wang","doi":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101551","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101551","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We investigate how shareholder-debtholder conflict of interest affects the corporate tax avoidance using a unique setting of the affiliated and unaffiliated commercial bankers’ board representation. Consistent with the notion that board representation grants lenders’ access to private information that helps monitor and influence firms’ tax practice, we find that appointments of affiliated banker directors significantly reduce firms’ tax avoidance behavior, while appointing unaffiliated banker directors shows no such effect. The impact of affiliated banker directors on alleviating tax avoidance is stronger among firms with severer conflict of interest between shareholders and debtholders, specifically among firms with weaker corporate governance, higher financial leverage and higher CEO stock ownership.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":15704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Empirical Finance","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101551"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142172418","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pooling and winsorizing machine learning forecasts to predict stock returns with high-dimensional data","authors":"Erik Mekelburg , Jack Strauss","doi":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101538","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jempfin.2024.101538","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We evaluate US market return predictability using a novel data set of several hundred ag- gregated firm-level characteristics. We apply LASSO, Elastic Net, Random Forest, Neural Net, Extreme Gradient Boosting, and Light Gradient Boosting Machine methods and find these models experience large prediction errors that lead to forecast failures. However, winsorizing and pooling machine learning model forecasts provides consistent out-of-sample predictability. To assess robustness, we apply machine learning methods to high-dimensional data for Canada, China, Germany and the UK as well as the Goyal–Welch data. All machine learning models we consider, except for the ensemble pooled methods, fail to significantly predict returns across our samples, highlighting the importance of pooling, evaluating additional economies, and the fragility of individual machine learning methods. Our results shed light on the sparsity versus density debate as the degree of sparsity and variable importance evolves over time.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":15704,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Empirical Finance","volume":"79 ","pages":"Article 101538"},"PeriodicalIF":2.1,"publicationDate":"2024-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927539824000732/pdfft?md5=a9db7e6e4ae641bec07f185220532c35&pid=1-s2.0-S0927539824000732-main.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142168694","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}