Business Commons^™

What Do Short Sellers Know?, Ekkehart Boehmer, Charles M. Jones, Juan (Julie) Wu, Xiaoyan Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using NYSE short-sale order data, we investigate whether short sellers' informational advantage is related to firm earnings and analyst-related events. With a novel decomposition method, we find that while these fundamental event days constitute only 12% of sample days, they account for over 24% of the overall underperformance of heavily shorted stocks. Importantly, short sellers use both public news and private information to anticipate news regarding earnings and analysts. Shorting's predictive ability remains significant after controlling for information in analyst actions and displays no reversal patterns, indicating that short sellers know more than analysts, and the nature of their information …

Can Retail Investors Learn From Insiders?, Ekkehart Boehmer, Bo Sang, Zhe Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the trading patterns of retail investors following insider trading and the corresponding price impact. Retail investors follow the opportunistic purchases by insiders, but not their routine purchases. Neither investor attention nor common information such as earnings announcements or analysts forecast re- visions explains the results. They keep following insider purchases in subsequent four quarters. Moreover, for stocks with opportunistic insider purchases, those that retail investors bought yield higher cumulative abnormal returns than those that retail investors sold. The effect is mostly driven by the information compo- nent of the retail trades, rather than liquidity provision or temporary …

Bank Partnership And Liquidity Crisis, Seungho Choi, Yong Kyu Gam, Junho Park, Hojong Shin

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study empirically investigates the relationship between banking integration and liquidity management. To measure banks’ connectivity, we use the number of partnerships proxied via the syndicated loan arrangements in which they serve as lead arrangers. If banks establish more business partnerships through syndicated loan arrangements, those under market stress are more likely to face increased funding costs, create reduced liquidity, and originate declined small business loans and mortgages. Those banks with more partners are shown to have a lower liquidity coverage ratio, suggesting that business partnerships create a disincentive toward liquidity risk management.

Frm Financial Risk Meter, Andrija Mihoci, Michael Althof, Cathy Yi-Hsuan Chen, Wolfgang Karl Hardle

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

A systemic risk measure is proposed accounting for links and mutual dependencies between financial institutions utilizing tail event information. Financial Risk Meter (FRM) is based on least absolute shrinkage and selection operator quantile regression designed to capture tail event co-movements. The FRM focus lies on understanding active set data characteristics and the presentation of interdependencies in a network topology. Two FRM indices are presented, namely, FRM@Americas and FRM@Europe. The FRM indices detect systemic risk at selected areas and identify risk factors. In practice, FRM is applied to the return time series of selected financial institutions …

Teres: Tail Event Risk Expectile Shortfall, Andrija Mihoci, Wolfgang Karl Hardle, Cathy Yi-Hsuan Chen

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

We propose a generalized risk measure for expectile-based expected shortfall estimation. The generalization is designed with a mixture of Gaussian and Laplace densities. Our plug-in estimator is derived from an analytic relationship between expectiles and expected shortfall. We investigate the sensitivity and robustness of the expected shortfall to the underlying mixture parameter specification and the risk level. Empirical results from the US, German and UK stock markets and for selected NASDAQ blue chip companies indicate that expected shortfall can be successfully estimated using the proposed method on a monthly, weekly, daily and intra-day basis using a 1-year or 1-day time …

Corporate Social Responsibility And Ceo Risk-Taking Incentives, Zhichuan Li

Business Publications

We examine how firms adjust CEO risk-taking incentives in response to risk environments associated with their corporate social responsibility (CSR) standing. We find strong evidence that as a firm's CSR status improves (declines), increasing (decreasing) its risk-taking capacity, the firm responds by adjusting compensation contracts to increase (decrease) CEO risk-taking incentives (Vega). One channel of the adjustment is through stock option grants. Further analyses indicate that the positive CSR-Vega association is stronger in firms with better corporate governance and in industries where riskiness is more important. Our evidence indicates that firms are not passive in response to changes in CSR …

Derivative Initiative: Does The Use Of Financial Derivatives Influence Firm Value In The Philippine Context?, Julia Alfonso D. Arrastia, Christina Angela N. Balagot, Joseph Anthony C. Go, Dominique Ann Philomena V. Lacuna

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

Firms use financial derivatives as a way to hedge risky transactions to avoid financial risks. Studies have focused on firms’ use of financial derivatives in developed countries. However, there is limited research done on emerging markets like the Philippines because these economies have only recently adapted advanced reporting standards that obligate the disclosure of the nature and extent of risks resulting from the use of financial instruments. We used Tobin’s Q ratio to proxy for firm value and determine the presence of a hedging premium. Because derivatives are used by firms to hedge against currency risks, interest rate risks, and …

Human Flourishing And The Subjective Dimension Of Work, Geoffrey Friesen

Department of Finance: Faculty Publications

This essay considers the Christian understanding of the subjective dimension of human work and the implications for economics, finance, and the modern firm. The biblical account of people profoundly captures the fullness of human nature and the role of work and economy in developing the full person. People’s reality is both individual and collective, encompassing their subjective interior and objective exterior dimensions of reality. This issue is important because economic models affect economic decisions, and these decisions help shape social reality. Current economic and financial models are problematic because they are self-limiting: They close off certain outcomes by assuming they …

2020 University Of Maine System Annual Financial Report, University Of Maine System

General University of Maine Publications

The Management’s Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) provides a broad overview of the University of Maine System’s (“the System” or UMS) financial condition as of June 30, 2020 and 2019, the results of its operations for the years then ended, significant changes from the previous years, and outlook for the future where appropriate and relevant. Management has prepared the financial statements and related note disclosures along with this MD&A. The MD&A should be read in conjunction with the accompanying basic financial statements and related notes.

The Color Of Shareholders' Money: Institutional Shareholders' Political Values And Corporate Environmental Disclosure, Incheol Kim, Ji Woo Ryou, Rong Yang

Finance Faculty Publications and Presentations

Highlights

• Institutional shareholders’ political values significantly influences corporate environmental disclosure and performance.

• Firms with Republican-oriented institutional shareholders are less likely to issue environmental reports.

• Institutional shareholders’ Republican-oriented political values are negatively associated with environmental performance.

• Institutional shareholders’ Republican-oriented political values are negatively associated with green innovations.

Abstract

In this study, we investigate whether and to what extent institutional shareholders' political values influence their investees' environmental disclosure and performance. Using employees' political donation data, we construct institutional investors' political ideology score, which higher (lower) value represents a more Republican- (Democratic)-leaning culture. We find that firms led by institutional shareholders with a …

The Ursinus College Investment Management Company Newsletter, Fall 2020, Scott Deacle, George Psaradakis

Investment Management Company Newsletter

Inside this issue:

Letter from Jacob Kang '21

Letter from Maureen Cumpstone '79

Letter from Johnny Myers '19

At a Glance

Investment Strategies

Endowment at Work

New at UCIMCO

Women's Fund

Investment Performance

Endowment Outlook

Stock Selection Picks

Women's Fund Picks

Our Team

Supporters

How to Contribute

European Floating Strike Lookback Options: Alpha Prediction And Generation Using Unsupervised Learning, Tristan Lim, Aldy Gunawan, Chin Sin Ong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This research utilized the intrinsic quality of European floating strike lookback call options, alongside selected return and volatility parameters, in a K-means clustering environment, to recommend an alpha generative trading strategy. The result is an elegant easy-to-use alpha strategy based on the option mechanisms which identifies investment assets with high degree of significance. In an upward trending market, the research had identified European floating strike lookback call option as an evaluative criterion and investable asset, which would both allow investors to predict and profit from alpha opportunities. The findings will be useful for (i) buy-side investors seeking alpha generation and/or …

The Future Of Work Now: Ai-Driven Transaction Surveillance At Dbs Bank, Thomas H. Davenport, Steven M. Miller

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

One of the most frequently-used phrases at business events these days is “the future of work.” It’s increasingly clear that artificial intelligence and other new technologies will bring substantial changes in work tasks and business processes. But while these changes are predicted for the future, they’re already present in many organizations for many different jobs. The job and incumbents described below are an example of this phenomenon. Steve Miller of Singapore Management University and I co-authored the story.

Algorithmic Trading And Market Quality: International Evidence, Ekkehart Boehmer, Kingsley Fong, Juan Julie Wu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study the effect of algorithmic trading (AT) on market quality between 2001 and 2011 in 42 equity markets around the world. We use an exchange colocation service that increases AT as an exogenous instrument to draw causal inferences about AT on market quality. On average, AT improves liquidity and informational efficiency but increases short-term volatility. Importantly, AT also lowers execution shortfalls for buy-side institutional investors. Our results are surprisingly consistent across markets and thus across a wide range of AT environments. We further document that the beneficial effect of AT is stronger in large stocks than in small stocks.

Hedging Season: The Effect Of Hedging Using Financial Derivatives On Firm Value Of Publicly-Listed Non-Financial Firms In The Philippines, Julio Alfonso D. Arrastia, Christina Angela N. Balagot, Joseph Anthony Go, Dominique Ann Philomena V. Lacuna

Angelo King Institute for Economic and Business Studies (AKI)

Firms use financial derivatives as a way to hedge risky transactions to avoid financial risks. Studies have focused on firms’ use of financial derivatives in developed countries. However, there is limited research done on emerging markets like the Philippines because these economies have only recently adapted advanced reporting standards that obligate the disclosure of the nature and extent of risks resulting from the use of financial instruments. We used Tobin’s Q ratio to proxy for firm value and to determine the presence of a hedging premium. Because derivatives are used by firms to hedge against currency risks, interest rate risks, …

Will Ceos With Banking Experience Lower Default Risks? Evidence From P2p Lending Platforms In China, Qiang Gong, Chong Liu, Qianni Peng, Luying Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using a novel dataset of 121 Chinese P2P lending platforms, we investigate the impact of CEOs' banking experience on default risk. The empirical results indicate that CEOs with prior banking experience manage default risk better. Moreover, CEOs' banking experience has a stronger influence on small platforms and in situations where the platforms' depository banks are city commercial banks. Our results indicate that although fintech provides technology to reduce risks, we cannot ignore the constructive role of professional experience in risk management. Thus, investors and regulators in emerging markets should pay attention to managers' financial qualifications, and especially to CEOs' banking …

Drivers Of Research Impact: Evidence From The Top Three Finance Journals, Zhichuan Li, Chongyu Dang

Business Publications

We study the characteristics of all published papers in the top three finance journals (JF, JFE, and RFS) and how these paper characteristics affect the number of citations in Google Scholar and the Web of Science database. First, we find the characteristics in the universalist perspective remain constant while the characteristics in the constructivist and presentation perspectives increase over time. Second, some characteristics are significantly different between the high impact and the low impact papers. Third, paper quality, research method, journal placement, and paper age are the most important drivers. Last, different drivers play different roles in different journals.

Fight Or Flee: Outside Director Departures Prior To Contested Management Buyout Offers, Matteo Arena, Michaël Dewally, Sarah Peck

Finance Faculty Research and Publications

Research Question/Issue: We investigate outside director departures prior to management buyout offers (MBOs). In these transactions, managers have both an information advantage and incentives to make a lowball offer to shareholders. Outside directors can safeguard against managerial self‐dealing by negotiating for the best terms for public shareholders from either management or another bidder. Research Findings/Insights: It is typical that outside directors stay on the board through an MBO offer as MBOs are less likely to have changes in directors—either joining or leaving—relative to a control sample. After controlling for endogeneity as well as firm and director characteristics, we find that …

Do Short Sellers Use Textual Information? Evidence From Annual Reports, Hung Wan Kot, Frank Weikai Li, Ming Liu, K.C. John Wei

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine short-sellers’ use of textual information in annual reports for shorting activities. We find that more uncertainty and negative words in annual reports are associated with greater abnormal shorting volume. Short selling motivated by textual information negatively predicts stock price reaction around the filing date of 10-K reports. We further provide some evidence that textual information used by short-sellers are related to revisions of analysts’ earnings forecasts, changes in firm fundamentals, and increasing crash risk subsequently. Our results suggest that textual information in annual reports forms an important part of short-sellers’ information advantage.

Corporate Social Responsibility And Sustainable Finance: A Review Of The Literature, Hao Liang, Luc Renneboog

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to the incorporation of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) considerations into corporate management, financial decision making, and investors’ portfolio decisions. Socially responsible firms are expected to internalize the externalities (e.g. pollution) they create, and are willing to be accountable to shareholders as well as a broader group of stakeholders (employees, customers, suppliers, local communities,…). Over the past two decades, various rating agencies developed firm-level measures of ESG performance, which are widely used in the literature. A problem for past and a challenge for future research is that these ratings show inconsistencies, which depend on the …

Ua3/10/3 Convocation, Timothy Caboni

WKU Archives Records

Convocation speech given by WKU president Timothy Caboni regarding COVID-19, diversity, student recruitment, enrollment, retention and graduation; budget, and economic growth.

Skbi Big 5 Survey 2020 August, Singapore Management University

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

The COVID-19 pandemic led to whopping downward revisions to 2020 real GDP growth among the Big5 economies, on average greater than 7%-points (ranging from roughly 3.5%-points for China to more than 10%-points for India). The forecast revisions to headline inflation were less sizable and more uneven, perhaps because of the confluence of supply and demand influences. The 2021 median GDP forecast is expected to turn positive overall, with a balanced risk assessment for most of the Big5 (but a coin toss in IN and US), but the growth reversal is likely to be highly uneven. While China regains its prior …

The Effects Of Mifid Ii On Sell-Side Analysts, Buy-Side Analysts, And Firms, Bingxu Fang, Ole-Kristian Hope, Zhongwei Huang, Rucsandra Moldovan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This paper provides early but broad empirical evidence on MiFID II, which requires investment firms to unbundle investment research from other costs they charge to clients. Employing difference-in-differences matched-sample research designs with firm fixed effects, we find a decrease in the number of sell-side analysts covering European firms after MiFID II implementation, particularly for firms that are less important to the sell-side. However, research quality improves; specifically, individual analyst forecasts are more accurate and stock recommendations garner greater market reactions. In addition, sell-side analysts seem to cater more to the buy-side after MiFID II by providing industry recommendations along with …

Crisis Regulations: The Unexpected Consequences Of Floating Nav For Money Market Funds, Kyle D. Allen, Drew B. Winters

Finance Faculty Publications and Presentations

From the inception of money market funds (MMFs), all MMFs reported a fixed $1 NAV (Net Asset Value). In July 2014, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued new regulations for MMFs that require Prime institutional MMFs to report floating NAVs. The SEC did not expect a significant impact on the MMF industry from requiring floating NAVs for Prime institutional funds. We find that over 70% of the assets under management in Prime MMFs left Prime funds with over half the Prime funds closing. We find that more than half of the Prime retail MMFs (which are not required to …

Capturing Hedge Fund Risk Factor Exposures: Hedge Fund Return Replication With Etfs, Jun Duanmu, Yongjia Li, Alexey Malakhov

Finance Faculty Publications and Presentations

We develop a new factor selection methodology of spanning the space of hedge fund risk factors with all available exchange traded funds (ETFs). We demonstrate the efficacy of the methodology with out-of-sample individual hedge fund return replication by ETF clone portfolios. This is consistent with our interpretation of ETF returns as proxies to risk factors driving hedge fund returns. We further consider portfolios of “cloneable” and “noncloneable” hedge funds, defined as top and bottom in-sample R² matches, and demonstrate that our ETF clone portfolios slightly outperform cloneable hedge funds out of sample.

Financial Technology And Inclusion In Asean, David Fernandez, Marc Rakotomalala

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Financial technology (FinTech) has the potential to be a positive, game-changing force for boosting financial inclusion in ASEAN, as mobile money and greater access to basic financial services have the capacity to improve the economic well-being of households. Indeed, technology has been shown to drive broader increases in economic growth, which itself interacts positively with financial inclusion. In a more direct way, new, specific fintech developments globally and in ASEAN itself can be beneficial for financial inclusion. In this paper, we look at financial inclusion and technology, and how cooperative efforts between ASEAN policymakers, the private sector, and their broader …

What Drives The Declining Wealth Effect Of Subsequent Share Repurchase Announcements?, David K. Ding, Hardjo Koerniadi, Chandrasekhar Krishnamurti

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Recent academic studies document that open market share repurchase announcements in the United States generate significantly lower returns than those reported in earlier studies. We find that the lower announcement return is associated with an increasing number of subsequent announcements in the more recent periods. Although the announcement period return from the initial announcement is positive, subsequent announcement returns are significantly decreasing. Further, we find that the decreasing returns of subsequent announcements are attributed to firms with negative past repurchase announcement returns. Our multivariate regression test results are consistent with the notion that the decreasing subsequent repurchase announcement returns are …

Do Women Receive Worse Financial Advice?, Utpal Bhattacharya, Amit Kumar, Sujata Visaria, Jing Zhao

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We arranged for trained undercover men and women to pose as potential clients and visit all 65 local financial advisory firms in Hong Kong. At financial planning firms, but not at securities firms, women were more likely than men to receive advice to buy only individual or only local securities. Women clients who signaled that they were highly confident, highly risk tolerant or had a domestic outlook, were especially likely to receive this suboptimal advice. Our theoretical model explains these patterns as the result of statistical discrimination interacting with advisors’ incentives. Taste-based discrimination is unlikely to explain the results.

Pisa 2018: Financial Literacy In Australia, Sue Thomson, Lisa De Bortoli, Catherine Underwood, Marina Schmid

OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Australia

The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 is the seventh cycle of PISA since it was first conducted in 2000 and measures students’ skills in the core areas of reading literacy, mathematical literacy and scientific literacy. Since PISA 2012, financial literacy has been included as an additional optional assessment that accompanies the core assessments. In Australia, the financial literacy assessment is funded by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission. This report presents the results for the third assessment of financial literacy and focuses on the measurement of financial literacy for Australia as a whole and for different demographic groups, …

International Portfolio Prospects And Concerns, Dimitrios V. Siskos

Publications

The recent financial crisis amplifies the need for an updated and more universal investment strategy for both individuals and corporate investors. Diversification satisfies that condition, as it provides access to different economies operating in different countries while, simultaneously, it spreads the risk across different asset allocation[1]. However, to benefit the advantages of a diversified portfolio, a sophisticated decision making process and appeal to re-planning are required. Otherwise, international investors have to face the consequences of political-country risk and currency risk. The goal of this research is to correlate the benefits of diversification with risk undertaking for either individual …