Business Commons^™

Limited Attention To Detail In Financial Markets: Evidence From Reduced-Form And Structural Estimation, Henrik Cronqvist, Tomislav Ladika, Elisa Pazaj, Zacharias Sautner

Business Faculty Articles and Research

We show that firm valuations fell after a key expense became more visible in financial statements. FAS 123-R required firms to deduct option compensation costs from earnings, instead of disclosing them in footnotes. Firms that granted high option pay experienced earnings reductions, while fundamentals remained unchanged. These firms were more likely to miss earnings forecasts, and they experienced recommendation downgrades and valuation declines. Our findings suggest that market participants exhibited limited attention to option costs before FAS 123-R. As we reuse the FAS 123-R natural experiment, we show how one can address confounding channels by integrating reduced-form and structural estimation.

Ceo Extraversion And The Cost Of Equity Capital, Biljana Adebambo, Robert M. Bowen, Shavin Malhotra, Pengcheng Zhu

Accounting Faculty Articles and Research

We examine whether CEO extraversion, an important personality trait associated with leadership, is associated with firms' expected cost of equity capital. We measure CEO extraversion using CEOs' speech patterns during the unscripted portion of conference calls. After controlling for multiple CEO and firm-specific variables, we find a strong positive incremental association between CEO extraversion and firms' expected cost of capital. Moreover, cost of equity increases when a more extraverted CEO replaces a less extraverted CEO. In addition, we find that firms with relatively extraverted CEOs take more risk and exhibit lower credit ratings, which is associated with higher cost of …

Blockholder Mutual Fund Participation In Private In-House Meetings, Robert Bowen, Shantanu Dutta, Songlian Tang, Pengcheng Zhu

Accounting Faculty Articles and Research

The Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE) in China is unique worldwide in requiring disclosure of the timing, participants, and selected content of private in-house meetings between firm managers and outsider investors. We investigate whether these private meetings benefit hosting firms and their major outside institutional investors—blockholder mutual funds (i.e., funds with ownership ≥5%). Using a large data set of SZSE firms, we find that blockholder mutual funds have more access to private in-house meetings, and top management is more likely to be present, especially when a meeting is associated with negative news. Furthermore, when blockholder mutual funds attend negative-news meetings with …

Does Finance Make Us Less Social?, Henrik Cronqvist, Mitch Warachka, Frank Yu

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Informal risk sharing within social networks and formal financial contracts both enable households to manage risk. We find that financial contracting reduces participation in social networks. Specifically, increased crop insurance usage decreased local religious adherence and congregation membership in agricultural communities. Our identification utilizes the Federal Crop Insurance Reform Act of 1994 that doubled crop insurance usage nationally within a year, although changes in usage varied across counties. Difference-in-difference and Spatial First Difference tests confirm that households substituted insurance for religiosity. This substitution was associated with reductions in crop diversification and crop yields, indicating an increase in moral hazard.

The Night And Day Of Amihud’S (2002) Liquidity Measure, Yashar H. Barardehi, Dan Bernhardt, Thomas G. Ruchti, Marc Weidenmier

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Amihud’s stock (il)liquidity measure averages daily ratios of the absolute close-to-close return to dollar volume, including overnight returns. Our modified measure uses open-to-close returns matching return and trading volume measurement windows. It is more strongly correlated with trading-cost measures (by 8%–37%) and better explains cross-sections of returns, doubling estimated liquidity premiums. Using nonsynchronous trading near close, we show overnight returns are primarily information driven: including them in Amihud’s proxy for price impacts of trading magnifies measurement error, understating liquidity premiums. Our modification helps wherever Amihud’s measure is required. Our measures are publicly available for 1964–2019 and can be updated. ( …

Predicting Market Trends: Effects Of Gdp And Pmi On Changes In Stock Closing Prices, Charley Renna

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

In an effort to learn more about the impact of certain economic variables on the stock market, I chose to analyze the impact that the Purchasing Managers’ Index and U.S. Gross Domestic Product have on three major stock indices: S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average, and Nasdaq 100. The PMI is an index of the direction of economic trends in the manufacturing and services sector. Released on the first business day of every month, it consists of a diffusion index that summarizes whether market conditions are expanding, staying the same, or contracting. An index level greater than 50 percent suggests …

How Social Media Communications Can Mitigate Negative Impacts Of Corporate Social Irresponsibility On Corporate Financial Performance?, Saad A. Alhoqail, Hyun Young Cho, Kristopher Floyd

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Previous research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) has focused on corporate reputation (CR) and corporate financial performance (CFP), showing a high correlation between both. While most researchers primarily focus on CSR, our research examines the other side of the coin; corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) and provides findings that counter previous thought. We contribute to the existing literature by showing that CSI has a non-significant impact on corporate financial performance, as measured by market value, while concurrently being negatively correlated to corporate reputation. Further, we show social media, as measured by the Social Media Sustainability Index (SMSI), a measure studied infrequently …

Investment In A Smaller World: The Implications Of Air Travel For Investors And Firms, Zhi Da, Umit G. Gurun, Bin Li, Mitch Warachka

Business Faculty Articles and Research

A large literature reports that proximity influences investment. We extend the measurement of proximity beyond distance and report that air travel reduces local investment bias. This result is confirmed using the initiation of connecting flights through recently opened air hubs because investment at destinations served by these connecting flights increases after, not before, their initiation. Air travel also broadens the investor base of firms and lowers their cost of equity by approximately 1%. Overall, air travel improves the diversification of investor portfolios and lowers the cost of equity for firms.

Review Of The Promise And Peril Of Credit: What A Forgotten Legend About Jews And Finance Tells Us About The Making Of European Commercial Society, Jared Rubin

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

A review of The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society, by Francesca Trivellato, published by Princeton University Press.

A Dynamical Systems Approach To Cryptocurrency Stability, Carey Caginalp

ESI Publications

Recently, the notion of cryptocurrencies has come to the fore of public interest. These assets that exist only in electronic form, with no underlying value, offer the owners some protection from tracking or seizure by government or creditors. We model these assets from the perspective of asset flow equations developed by Caginalp and Balenovich, and investigate their stability under various parameters, as classical finance methodology is inapplicable. By utilizing the concept of liquidity price and analyzing stability of the resulting system of ordinary differential equations, we obtain conditions under which the system is linearly stable. We find that trend-based motivations …

Establishing Cryptocurrency Equilibria Through Game Theory, Carey Caginalp, Gunduz Caginalp

ESI Publications

We utilize optimization methods to determine equilibria of cryptocurrencies. A core group, the wealthy, fears the loss of assets that can be seized by a government. Volatility may be influenced by speculators. The wealthy must divide their assets between the home currency and the cryptocurrency, while the government decides the probability of seizing a fraction the assets of this group. We establish conditions for existence and uniqueness of Nash equilibria. Also examined is the separate timescale problem in which the government policy cannot be reversed, while the wealthy can adjust their allocation in reaction to the government’s designation of probability.

Fiscal Policy, Consumption Risk, And Stock Returns: Evidence From Us States, Zhi Da, Mitch Warachka, Hayong Yun

Business Faculty Articles and Research

We find that consumption risk is lower in states that implement countercyclical fiscal policies. Moreover, firms with an investor base that is concentrated in countercyclical states have lower stock returns, along with firms that relocate their headquarters to a countercyclical state. Therefore, countercyclical fiscal policies lower the consumption risk of investors and, consequently, their required equity return premium. This conclusion is confirmed by smaller declines in market participation during recessions in countercyclical states. Overall, the location of a firm’s investor base enables state-level fiscal policy to influence stock returns.

Financial Synergies And Systemic Risk In The Organization Of Bank Afþliates, Elisa Luciano, Clas Wihlborg

Business Faculty Articles and Research

We analyze theoretically banks’ choice of organizational structures in branches, subsidiaries or stand-alone banks, in the presence of public bailouts and default costs. These structures are characterized by different arrangements for internal rescue of affiliates against default. The cost of debt and leverage are endogenous. For moderate bailout probabilities, subsidiary structures, wherein the two entities provide mutual internal rescue under limited liability, have the highest group value, but also the highest risk taking as measured by leverage and expected loss. We explore the effect of constraints on leverage and policy implications. The conflict of interests between regulators, who minimize systemic …

From Hard Money To Branch Banking California Banking In The Gold Rush Economy, Larry Schweikart, Lynne Pierson Doti

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

In Gold Rush–era California, banking and the financial sector evolved in often distinctive ways because of the Gold Rush economy. More importantly, the abundance of gold on the West Coast provided an interesting test case for some of the critical economic arguments of the day, especially for those deriving from the descending—but still powerful—positions of the “hard money” Jacksonians.

Lottery Tax Windfalls, State-Level Fiscal Policy, And Consumption, Zhi Da, Mitch Warachka, Hayong Yun

Business Faculty Articles and Research

We find that lottery tax windfalls finance higher state-government expenditures on supplemental security income that increase consumption, but only during bust periods. Wealth transfers from lottery winners to low income households enable fiscal policy to stabilize consumption during bust periods.

Frog In The Pan: Continuous Information And Momentum, Zhi Da, Umit G. Gurun, Mitch Warachka

Business Faculty Articles and Research

We test a frog-in-the-pan (FIP) hypothesis that predicts investors are inattentive to information arriving continuously in small amounts. Intuitively, we hypothesize that a series of frequent gradual changes attracts less attention than infrequent dramatic changes. Consistent with the FIP hypothesis, we find that continuous information induces strong persistent return continuation that does not reverse in the long run. Momentum decreases monotonically from 5.94% for stocks with continuous information during their formation period to –2.07% for stocks with discrete information but similar cumulative formation-period returns. Higher media coverage coincides with discrete information and mitigates the stronger momentum following continuous information.

Further Evidence On The Ability Of Fifo And Lifo Earnings To Predict Operating Cash Flows: An Industry Specific Analysis, Brock Murdoch, Bruce Dehning, Paul Krause

Accounting Faculty Articles and Research

The continuing convergence of U.S. GAAP with International Accounting Standards has brought into question the future use of the LIFO inventory method in the U.S. Since the Financial Accounting Standards Board (2010) has stipulated that earnings should aid investors and creditors in their quest to forecast future cash flows to the enterprise, this research examines whether FIFO earnings or LIFO earnings is preferable, for this purpose, as an aid to ex ante operating cash flow itself,over a three-year forecast horizon. We conclude that ex ante operating cash flows are quite useful in forecasting operating cash flows across industries for up …

Streaks In Earnings Surprises And The Cross-Section Of Stock Returns, Roger K. Loh, Mitch Warachka

Business Faculty Articles and Research

The gambler's fallacy [Rabin, M. 2002. Inference by believers in the law of small numbers. Quart. J. Econom.117(3) 775–816] predicts that trends bias investor expectations. Consistent with this prediction, we find that investors underreact to streaks of consecutive earnings surprises with the same sign. When the most recent earnings surprise extends a streak, post-earnings-announcement drift is strong and significant. In contrast, the drift is negligible following the termination of a streak. Indeed, streaks explain about half of the post-earnings-announcement drift in our sample. Our results are robust to more general definitions of trends than streaks and a battery …

An Improved Test For Statistical Arbitrage, Robert Jarrow, Melvyn Teo, Yiu Kuen Tse, Mitch Warachka

Business Faculty Articles and Research

We improve upon the power of the statistical arbitrage test in Hogan, Jarrow, Teo, and Warachka (2004). Our methodology also allows for the evaluation of return anomalies under weaker assumptions. We then compare strategies based on their convergence rates to arbitrage and identify strategies whose probability of a loss declines to zero most rapidly. These strategies are preferred by investors with finite horizons or limited capital. After controlling for market frictions and examining convergence rates to arbitrage, we find that momentum and value strategies offer the most desirable trading opportunities.

International Comparisons Of Bank Regulation, Liberalization, And Banking Crises, Puspa Amri, Apanard P. Angkinand, Clas Wihlborg

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Purpose: The recurrence of banking crises throughout the 1980s and 1990s, and in the more recent 2008-09 global financial crisis, has led to an expanding empirical literature on crisis explanation and prediction. This paper provides an analytical review of proxies for and important determinants of banking crises − credit growth, financial liberalization, bank regulation and supervision.

Design/Methodology/Approach: The study surveys the banking crisis literature by comparing proxies for and measures of banking crises and policy-related variables in the literature. Advantages and disadvantages of different proxies are discussed.

Findings: Disagreements about determinants of banking crises are in part …

The Disparity Between Long-Term And Short-Term Forecasted Earnings Growth, Zhi Da, Mitch Warachka

Business Faculty Articles and Research

We find the disparity between long-term and short-term analyst forecasted earnings growth is a robust predictor of future returns and long-term analyst forecast errors. After adjusting for industry characteristics, stocks whose long-term earnings growth forecasts are far above or far below their implied short-term forecasts for earnings growth have negative and positive subsequent risk-adjusted returns along with downward and upward revisions in long-term forecasted earnings growth, respectively. Additional results indicate that investor inattention toward firm-level changes in long-term earnings growth is responsible for these risk-adjusted returns.

The Impact Of Transaction Duration, Volume And Direction On Price Dynamics And Volatility, Anthony S. Tay, Christopher Ting, Yiu Kuen Tse, Mitch Warachka

Business Faculty Articles and Research

We explore the role of trade volume, trade direction, and the duration between trades in explaining price dynamics and volatility using an Asymmetric Autoregressive Conditional Duration model applied to intraday transactions data. Our results suggest that volume, direction and duration are important determinants of price dynamics, while duration is also an important determinant of volatility. However, the impact of volume and direction on volatility is marginal after controlling for duration, and the impact of volume on volatility appears to be confined to periods of infrequent trading.

Financial Liberalization And Banking Crises: A Cross-Country Analysis, Apanard P. Angkinand, Wanvimol Sawangngoenyuang, Clas Wihlborg

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Several studies indicate that financial liberalization contributes to the likelihood of a financial crisis. We focus on banking crises and argue that they are most likely to occur after an intermediate degree of liberalization. Using a recently updated dataset for financial reforms in 48 countries between 1973 and 2005, we find an inverted U-shaped relationship between liberalization and the likelihood of crisis. We ask whether the relationship remains when institutional characteristics of countries and dynamic effects of liberalization are considered. The empirical results indicate that the relationship between liberalization and banking crises depends strongly on the strength of capital regulation …

An Experimental Analysis Of The Demand For Payday Loans, Bart J. Wilson, David W. Findlay, James W. Meehan Jr., Charissa P. Wellford, Karl Schurter

Economics Faculty Articles and Research

The payday loan industry is one of the fastest growing segments of the consumer financial services market in the United States. We design an environment similar to the one that payday loan customers face and then conduct a laboratory experiment to examine what effect, if any, the existence of payday loans has on individuals' abilities to manage and to survive financial setbacks. Our primary objective is to examine whether access to payday loans improves or worsens the likelihood of financial survival in our experiment. We also test the degree to which people's use of payday loans affects their ability to …

Deposit Insurance Coverage, Ownership, And Banks' Risk-Taking In Emerging Markets, Apanard P. Angkinand, Clas Wihlborg

Business Faculty Articles and Research

We ask how deposit insurance systems and ownership of banks affect the degree of market discipline on banks' risk-taking. Market discipline is determined by the extent of explicit deposit insurance, as well as by the credibility of non-insurance of groups of depositors and other creditors. Furthermore, market discipline depends on the ownership structure of banks and the responsiveness of bank managers to market incentives. An expected U-shaped relationship between explicit deposit insurance coverage and banks' risk-taking is influenced by country specific institutional factors, including bank ownership. We analyze specifically how government ownership, foreign ownership and shareholder rights affect the disciplinary …

Impact Of Mad Money Stock Recommendations: Merging Financial And Marketing Perspectives, Ekaterina Karniouchina, William L. Moore, Kevin J. Cooney

Business Faculty Articles and Research

This article relies on advertising and persuasive communications theories to uncover persistent variations in investor response to television stock recommendations targeting naive investors. The authors use an event study methodology to determine the size of the next-day abnormal market reaction to recommendations on Mad Money with Jim Cramer. Although viewers are actively looking for recommendations, the results show that any individual recommendation is still subject to many of the same communication challenges as traditional advertisements. A regression analysis finds that traditional advertising variables, such as message length, recency-primacy effects, information clutter, and source credibility, influence the size of the market …

Origins And Resolution Of Financial Crises: Lessons From The Current And Northern European Crises, Finn Ostrup, Lars Oxelheim, Clas Wihlborg

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Since July 2007, the world economy has experienced a severe financial crisis that originated in the U.S. housing market. Subsequently, the crisis has spread to financial sectors in European and Asian economies and led to a severe worldwide recession. The existing literature on financial crises rarely distinguishes between factors that create the original strain on the financial sector and factors that explain why these strains lead to system-wide contagion and a possible credit crunch. Most of the literature on financial crises refers to factors that cause an original disruption in the financial system. We argue that a financial crisis with …

Origins And Resolution Of Financial Crises: Lessons From The Current And Northern European Crises, Finn Østrup, Lars Oxelheim, Clas Wihlborg

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Since July 2007, the world economy has experienced a severe financial crisis that originated in the U.S. housing market. Subsequently, the crisis has spread to financial sectors in European and Asian economies and led to a severe worldwide recession. The existing literature on financial crises rarely distinguishes between factors that create the original strain on the financial sector and factors that explain why these strains lead to system-wide contagion and a possible credit crunch. Most of the literature on financial crises refers to factors that cause an original disruption in the financial system. We argue that a financial crisis with …

Implied Measures Of Relative Fund Performance, Steve Hogan, Mitch Warachka

Business Faculty Articles and Research

We evaluate the relative performance of funds by conditioning their returns on the cross-section of portfolio characteristics across fund managers. Our implied procedure circumvents the need to specify benchmark returns or peer funds. Instead, fund-specific benchmarks for measuring selection and market timing ability are constructed. This technique is robust to herding as well as window dressing and mitigates survivorship bias. Empirically, the conditional information contained in portfolio weights defined by industry sectors, assets, and geographical regions is important to the assessment of fund management. For each set of portfolio characteristics, we identify funds with success at either selecting securities or …

Oxytocin Increases Generosity In Humans, Paul J. Zak, Angela Stanton, Sheila Ahmadi

Business Faculty Articles and Research

Human beings routinely help strangers at costs to themselves. Sometimes the help offered is generous-offering more than the other expects. The proximate mechanisms supporting generosity are not well-understood, but several lines of research suggest a role for empathy. In this study, participants were infused with 40 IU oxytocin (OT) or placebo and engaged in a blinded, one-shot decision on how to split a sum of money with a stranger that could be rejected. Those on OT were 80% more generous than those given a placebo. OT had no effect on a unilateral monetary transfer task dissociating generosity from altruism. OT …