{"title":"A hidden hand in corporate lobbying","authors":"Anqi Jiao","doi":"10.1111/fima.12371","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fima.12371","url":null,"abstract":"<p>I investigate the role of institutional investors in firms’ lobbying activities. Firms with greater lobbying institutional ownership lobby more. Using a novel dataset with lobbying information on congressional bills, I show that institutional investors support portfolio firms by lobbying together on same bills. Bills lobbied by institutional investors are more likely to become laws and the passage of such bills leads to greater abnormal returns. Additional evidence suggests that institutional investors protect firms’ private political information by voting against shareholder proposals requesting additional lobbying disclosure. The findings have an important economic implication: financial institutions provide a helping hand in firms’ external governance related to law and politics.</p>","PeriodicalId":48123,"journal":{"name":"Financial Management","volume":"51 2","pages":"357-397"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fima.12371","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91809321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Trademark and IPO underpricing","authors":"Bin Yang, Tao Yuan","doi":"10.1111/fima.12369","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fima.12369","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Although trademarks are mentioned in many firms’ initial public offering (IPO) prospectuses, their influences on the IPO valuation process are underexplored. This paper studies the relationship between a firm's pre-IPO trademarks and its IPO underpricing. Using 4457 US IPOs during the period 1980–2018, we find that firms with a larger number of trademarks prior to the IPO date experience significantly less IPO underpricing. We employ a quasi-natural experiment brought about by the 1996 Federal Trademark Dilution Act and an instrumental variable approach to establish causality. Our findings suggest that trademarks help reduce information asymmetry among various IPO participants, leading to less underpriced IPOs.</p>","PeriodicalId":48123,"journal":{"name":"Financial Management","volume":"51 1","pages":"271-296"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fima.12369","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91871807","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Narayanan Jayaraman, Vikram Nanda, Harley E. Ryan Jr.
{"title":"The influence of learning and bargaining on CEO–chair duality: Evidence from firms that pass the baton","authors":"Narayanan Jayaraman, Vikram Nanda, Harley E. Ryan Jr.","doi":"10.1111/fima.12370","DOIUrl":"10.1111/fima.12370","url":null,"abstract":"Correspondence VikramNandaUniversity ofTexas atDallas, Richardson, Texas,USA. Email: vikraam.nanda@utdallas.edu Abstract Some firms combine CEO and board chair positions after observing CEO performance. We propose that this approach, known as “passing the baton” (PTB), enables the board to learn about the ability and suitability of the CEO before awarding additional title of board chair. Consistent with learning, idiosyncratic stock-return volatility declines following the CEO–chair combination. The market responds positively (Cumulative Abnormal Return (CAR) = 1.31%) to early promotions, suggesting that early promotions reveal directors’ private information about CEO quality. Compared to a matched benchmark, we observe no decline in firm’s accounting performance in subsequent years. Although match-adjusted stock returns begin to decline 2 years after combination in homogeneous industries, there is no stockreturn decline in heterogeneous industries where learning is more important. The evidence reveals the potential for entrenchment over time, but we find no evidence to suggest that CEO–chair combinations in PTB firms result from agency problems. Our results underscore the importance of balancing both learning and agency problems in corporate governance.","PeriodicalId":48123,"journal":{"name":"Financial Management","volume":"51 1","pages":"297-350"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fima.12370","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44550430","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ultimate ownership and bank competition","authors":"José Azar, Sahil Raina, Martin Schmalz","doi":"10.1111/fima.12368","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fima.12368","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We document substantial time-series and cross-sectional variation in branch-level deposit account interest rates, maintenance fees, and fee thresholds, and examine whether variation in bank concentration helps explain variation in these prices. Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) alone is not correlated with any of the outcome variables. A “generalized HHI” (GHHI) capturing both common ownership (the degree to which banks are commonly owned by the same investors) and cross-ownership (the extent to which banks own shares in each other), is strongly correlated with all prices, even when we limit cross-sectional variation in bank ownership to only that predicted by the growth of index funds.</p>","PeriodicalId":48123,"journal":{"name":"Financial Management","volume":"51 1","pages":"227-269"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fima.12368","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91838194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Nemmara K. Chidambaran, Yun Liu, Nagpurnanand Prabhala
{"title":"Director diversity and inclusion: At the table but in the game?","authors":"Nemmara K. Chidambaran, Yun Liu, Nagpurnanand Prabhala","doi":"10.1111/fima.12366","DOIUrl":"10.1111/fima.12366","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The issue of the <i>presence</i> of diverse directors on boards has attracted considerable attention among policymakers, practitioners, and academics. There is relatively less attention to the <i>inclusion</i> of diverse directors, or their onward trajectory after appointment. We study two outcomes related to inclusion—the retention of directors and their promotion to board leadership positions. Although gender is a key focus of many diversity discussions, we find significant inclusion results on skill diversity and nongender diversity dimensions. Retention and promotion are “less” likely for age- and ethnicity-diverse directors but both outcomes are more likely for skill-diverse directors.</p>","PeriodicalId":48123,"journal":{"name":"Financial Management","volume":"51 1","pages":"193-225"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-06-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fima.12366","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41411446","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Powerful independent directors","authors":"Kathy Fogel, Liping Ma, Randall Morck","doi":"10.1111/fima.12365","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fima.12365","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Shareholder valuations are economically and statistically positively correlated with independent director power, gauged by a composite of social network power centrality measures. Powerful independent directors’ sudden deaths reduce shareholder value significantly; other independent directors’ deaths do not, consistent with powerful independent directors increasing firm valuations. Further tests associate more powerful independent directors with less value-destroying mergers and acquisitions, less free cash flow retention, more CEO accountability, and less earnings management. We interpret these findings as more powerful independent directors better detecting and countering CEO missteps because of better access to information, greater credibility in challenging errant top managers, or both.</p>","PeriodicalId":48123,"journal":{"name":"Financial Management","volume":"50 4","pages":"935-983"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-05-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fima.12365","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"109175800","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Economic forecasts, anchoring bias, and stock returns","authors":"Gene Birz, Sandip Dutta, Han Yu","doi":"10.1111/fima.12355","DOIUrl":"10.1111/fima.12355","url":null,"abstract":"<p>By utilizing survey forecasts of macroeconomic statistics, we find that market participants’ expectations are not rational as they exhibit an anchoring bias. The forecasts systematically underpredict macroeconomic statistics and the forecast errors are predicted by past macroeconomic announcements. Most importantly, we find that the stock market does not see through this bias, that is, we find statistically significant stock price effects of “anticipated” components of macroeconomic announcements. Investors overweight the importance of historical information and do not make sufficient adjustments after the arrival of new information.</p>","PeriodicalId":48123,"journal":{"name":"Financial Management","volume":"51 1","pages":"169-191"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fima.12355","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48481220","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Does the Federal Open Market Committee cycle affect credit risk?","authors":"Difang Huang, Yubin Li, Xinjie Wang, Zhaodong (Ken) Zhong","doi":"10.1111/fima.12364","DOIUrl":"10.1111/fima.12364","url":null,"abstract":"<p>This paper studies the returns of credit default swap (CDS) indices over the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) cycle. We document that the CDS return is significantly higher in even weeks than in odd weeks of the FOMC cycle. The biweekly pattern in the CDS market is not a mere reflection of that in the stock market. A simple trading strategy based on the biweekly pattern yields an annual excess return of 8.8%. This pattern is linked to the resolution of macroeconomic uncertainty by the biweekly schedules of the Fed Reserve internal Board of Governors meetings. We provide further evidence that the Fed affects the CDS market via unexpected information signals and monetary policies that lead to reductions in the risk premium.</p>","PeriodicalId":48123,"journal":{"name":"Financial Management","volume":"51 1","pages":"143-167"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fima.12364","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48077943","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Geographic proximity and price efficiency: Evidence from high-speed railway connections between firms and financial centers","authors":"Hao Gao, Yuanyu Qu, Tao Shen","doi":"10.1111/fima.12354","DOIUrl":"10.1111/fima.12354","url":null,"abstract":"We study how geographic proximity to financial centers affects price efficiency. Using high-speed railway connections between firm cities and their nearest financial centers in China as exogenous shocks, we find stocks of connected firms are more efficiently priced than those of firms that are not connected. Consistent with our hypothesis, ease of travel has a stronger effect on firms that are closer to financial centers, smaller, have less institutional ownership and financial analyst coverage, and are not on the short sales list. Our paper highlights the importance of the geographic proximity of firms to financial centers on financial market efficiency.","PeriodicalId":48123,"journal":{"name":"Financial Management","volume":"51 1","pages":"117-141"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-05-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fima.12354","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47365413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The impact of credit rating information on disclosure quality","authors":"Yung-Ling Chi, Sean Flynn","doi":"10.1111/fima.12352","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/fima.12352","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Do credit ratings affect the information content of corporate disclosure? Using novel data on rating analysts to obtain exogenous variation in rating information, we find that greater uncertainty in credit ratings increases the quality of information disclosed by the firm. This is consistent with the firm attempting to reduce overall uncertainty about value by improving the quality of its own disclosure. We further show that improved disclosure is beneficial to firms. Our results are consistent with theories in which improvements in one type of information can crowd out other types, and they suggest that policies aimed at improving rating accuracy may, in fact, reduce the quality of corporate disclosure.</p>","PeriodicalId":48123,"journal":{"name":"Financial Management","volume":"51 1","pages":"73-115"},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2021-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/fima.12352","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91841087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}