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Full-Text Articles in Business

The Influence Of Societal Nationalist Sentiment On Trade Flows, Douglas Dow, Ilya Cuypers Mar 2024

The Influence Of Societal Nationalist Sentiment On Trade Flows, Douglas Dow, Ilya Cuypers

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In recent years, the world has witnessed a backlash against globalization and a rise in populist and nationalist movements around the world. However, there appears to be little empirical research concerning how these movements, and especially nationalist sentiment, actually influence trade. Therefore, we explore how and when nationalist sentiment within a country influences trade. Our results indicate that the effect of nationalist sentiment on imports is mediated by lower participation in free trade agreements (FTAs) but not via tariffs. Furthermore, we are unable to confirm support for a direct effect of nationalist sentiment on imports, as predicted by the consumer …


Geographic Links And Predictable Returns, Zuben Jin, Frank Weikai Li Jan 2024

Geographic Links And Predictable Returns, Zuben Jin, Frank Weikai Li

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using establishment-level data of U.S. public firms, we construct a novel measure of geographic linkage between firms. We show that the returns of geography-linked firms have strong predictive power for focal firm returns and fundamentals. This effect is distinct from other cross-firm return predictability and is not easily attributable to risk-based explanations. It is more pronounced for focal firms that receive lower investor attention, are more costly to arbitrage, and during high sentiment periods. The cross-firm information spillovers and return predictability are also stronger for geographic peers with economic linkages and with positive information. Our results are broadly consistent with …


Legal Risk And Insider Trading, Marcin Kacperczyk, Emiliano Sebastian Pagnotta Dec 2023

Legal Risk And Insider Trading, Marcin Kacperczyk, Emiliano Sebastian Pagnotta

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Do illegal insiders internalize legal risk? We address this question with hand-collected data from 530 SEC (the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) investigations. Using two plausibly exogenous shocks to expected penalties, we show that insiders trade less aggressively and earlier and concentrate on tips of greater value when facing a higher risk. The results match the predictions of a model where an insider internalizes the impact of trades on prices and the likelihood of prosecution and anticipates penalties in proportion to trade profits. Our findings lend support to the effectiveness of U.S. regulations' deterrence and the long-standing hypothesis that insider …


Are Bond Returns Predictable With Real-Time Macro Data?, Dashan Huang, Fuwei Jiang, Kunpeng Li, Guoshi Tong, Guofu Zhou Dec 2023

Are Bond Returns Predictable With Real-Time Macro Data?, Dashan Huang, Fuwei Jiang, Kunpeng Li, Guoshi Tong, Guofu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the predictability of bond returns using real-time macro variables and consider the possibility of a nonlinear predictive relationship and the presence of weak factors. To address these issues, we propose a scaled sufficient forecasting (sSUFF) method and analyze its asymptotic properties. Using both the existing and the new method, we find empirically that real-time macro variables have significant forecasting power both in-sample and out-of-sample. Moreover, they generate sizable economic values, and their predictability is not spanned by the yield curve. We also observe that the forecasted bond returns are countercyclical, and the magnitude of predictability is stronger during …


How Commonality Persists? (Through Investors' Sentiment And Attention), Chyng Wen Tee, Raja Velu, Zhaoque Zhou Dec 2023

How Commonality Persists? (Through Investors' Sentiment And Attention), Chyng Wen Tee, Raja Velu, Zhaoque Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Studies on commonality generally attribute the variation in asset returns to the variation in order flows. In this research study, we show that order flows do not predict asset returns, rather their relationship have been static over time. Thus we model both returns and the order flows as endogenous variables, and use investors' sentiment and attention as exogenous factors via a reduced-rank regression. We provide empirical evidence to demonstrate that cross-sectional commonality in attention (sentiment) is linearly (nonlinearly) associated with both returns and order flows at the intraday level, while the sentiment and attention measures themselvesexhibit a nonlinear mutual relationship, …


Reproducibility In Management Science, MiloˇS Fišar, Ben Greiner, Christoph Huber, Elena Katok, Ali I. Ozkes, Hannah H. Chang Dec 2023

Reproducibility In Management Science, MiloˇS Fišar, Ben Greiner, Christoph Huber, Elena Katok, Ali I. Ozkes, Hannah H. Chang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

With the help of more than 700 reviewers, we assess the reproducibility of nearly 500 articles published in the journal Management Science before and after the introduction of a new Data and Code Disclosure policy in 2019. When considering only articles for which data accessibility and hardware and software requirements were not an obstacle for reviewers, the results of more than 95% of articles under the new disclosure policy could be fully or largely computationally reproduced. However, for 29% of articles, at least part of the data set was not accessible to the reviewer. Considering all articles in our sample …


In Search Of Cryptocurrency Failure, Donglian Ma, Jun Tu, Zhaobo Zhu Dec 2023

In Search Of Cryptocurrency Failure, Donglian Ma, Jun Tu, Zhaobo Zhu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper explores the determinants of cryptocurrency failure and the pricing of crypto failure risk. We document different significant market- and characteristic-based predictors for coin and token failures. The introduction of Bitcoin futures and the outbreak of COVID19 affect the importance of many predictors. Investors require extra return for bearing high failure risk of crypto assets. The return difference across high and low failure risk crypto assets is not explained by the market, size and momentum factors in the cryptocurrency market. Finally, investors benefit from diversifying into high failure risk crypto assets that is little correlated with the stock market.


What Drives The Value Of Financial Analysts’ Advice? The Role Of Earnings And Growth Forecasts, Ohad Kadan, Leonardo Madureira, Rong Wang, Tzachi Zach Sep 2023

What Drives The Value Of Financial Analysts’ Advice? The Role Of Earnings And Growth Forecasts, Ohad Kadan, Leonardo Madureira, Rong Wang, Tzachi Zach

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We offer a parsimonious index at the individual analyst level to measure the extent to which an analyst relies on earnings and long-term growth forecasts in producing her advice. Using this index, we evaluate the contribution of earnings and growth forecasts to the investment value of analysts’ stock recommendations. We find that the fraction of analysts’ advice attributed to forecasts varies considerably across analysts and sectors. The investment value of recommendations is higher for analysts who rely less on their forecasts and more on other sources of information when forming investment advice. Investors recognize the superiority of recommendations from analysts …


Does Abstract Thinking Facilitate Information Processing? Evidence From Financial Analysts, Frank Weikai Li, Rong Wang, Yang Yu, Gloria Yang Yu Sep 2023

Does Abstract Thinking Facilitate Information Processing? Evidence From Financial Analysts, Frank Weikai Li, Rong Wang, Yang Yu, Gloria Yang Yu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study whether abstract thinking – an essential cognitive trait established by psychological and neuroscientific studies – facilitates analysts’ information processing. Exploiting analysts’ questions during earnings calls, we construct an Abstract Thinking Index (ATI) that measures their tendency to involve abstract words, logical reasoning, broader topics, and future outlooks. We find that abstract thinking improves analysts’ forecast accuracy and recommendation informativeness. Consistent with abstract thinking featuring identifying central characteristics and comprehending intangible things, ATI has stronger effects for firms with fundamentals co-moving more with peers and less tangible information. Additional analyses suggest that ATI captures analysts’ cognitive traits rather than …


Seeking Better Sharpe Ratio Via Bayesian Optimization, Peng Liu Jul 2023

Seeking Better Sharpe Ratio Via Bayesian Optimization, Peng Liu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Developing an excellent quantitative trading strategy to obtain a high Sharpe ratio requires optimizing several parameters at the same time. Example parameters include the window length of a moving average sequence, the choice of trading instruments, and the thresholds used to generate trading signals. Simultaneously optimizing all these parameters to seek a high Sharpe ratio is a daunting and time-consuming task, partly because of the unknown mechanism determining the Sharpe ratio. This article proposes using Bayesian optimization to systematically search for the optimal parameter configuration that leads to a high Sharpe ratio. The author shows that the proposed intelligent search …


Liquidity Constraints, Consumption, And Debt Repayment: Evidence From Macroprudential Policy In Turkey, Sumit Agarwal, Muris Hadzic, Changcheng Song, Yildirim Yildiray Apr 2023

Liquidity Constraints, Consumption, And Debt Repayment: Evidence From Macroprudential Policy In Turkey, Sumit Agarwal, Muris Hadzic, Changcheng Song, Yildirim Yildiray

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using account-level credit card data from a large Turkish bank, we study the impact of a unique credit card policy that increases minimum payment on consumption and debt repayment. We show that the policy reduces credit card spending and debt, boosts existing debt repayment, and reduces credit card delinquency. The credit card debt of affected consumers falls on average by 50% two years into the policy’s implementation. An increase in minimum payment has a stronger effect than does a decrease of a similar magnitude. We build a benchmark life cycle model with soft liquidity constraint to explain the reduction in …


Exchange-Traded Funds And Real Investment, Constantinos Antoniou, Frank Weikai Li, Xuewen Liu, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, Chengzhu Sun Mar 2023

Exchange-Traded Funds And Real Investment, Constantinos Antoniou, Frank Weikai Li, Xuewen Liu, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, Chengzhu Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the link between exchange-traded funds and real investment. Cross-sectionally, higher ETF ownership is associated with an increased sensitivity of real investment to Tobin's q and a heightened ability of stock returns to forecast future earnings. Inclusion of stocks in industry ETFs enhances investment-q sensitivity and implies greater incorporation of earnings information into prices prior to public releases. Greater nonmarket ETF ownership leads to increased (reduced) reliance of real investment on own (peers') stock prices. Overall, the evidence is consistent with ETFs positively affecting real investment efficiency via greater flows of information.


The Financialization Of Cryptocurrencies, Lei Huang, Tse-Chun Lin, Fangzhou Lu, Jian Sun Feb 2023

The Financialization Of Cryptocurrencies, Lei Huang, Tse-Chun Lin, Fangzhou Lu, Jian Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that change in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust premium is the single most significant predictor of Bitcoin daily return. This sentiment measure is similar to the closed-end fund discount measure as in Baker and Wurgler (2006), but more likely to reflect the excess demand from traditional investors than from blockchain specialists. Although there is a substantial variation in Bitcoin price quotes worldwide, this Grayscale premium and discount predict Bitcoin daily return for the most liquid Bitcoin exchanges. Using K-means clustering and LDA analysis, we find that this predictability is especially significant when there is a large variation in bullish and …


Impact Of Geographical Diversification And Limited Attention On Private Equity Fund Returns, Victor Ong Feb 2023

Impact Of Geographical Diversification And Limited Attention On Private Equity Fund Returns, Victor Ong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article analyzes the effect of geographical diversification on global private equity (PE) fund returns. We find that there is a negative correlation between geographical diversification and PE fund returns. To establish the causality between geographical diversification and PE fund returns, we employ an instrumental variable analysis where the instrument used is the stock market capitalization of the host country where the PE fund is based. Our results apply to Net IRR, TVPI and DPI as dependent variables used to proxy for PE fund returns in the main regression model. A one standard deviation increase in geographical diversification results in …


Presidential Economic Approval Rating And The Cross-Section Of Stock Returns, Zilin Chen, Zhi Da, Dashan Huang, Liyao Wang Jan 2023

Presidential Economic Approval Rating And The Cross-Section Of Stock Returns, Zilin Chen, Zhi Da, Dashan Huang, Liyao Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We construct a monthly presidential economic approval rating (PEAR) index from 1981 to 2019, by averaging ratings on the president’s handling of the economy across various national polls. In the cross-section, stocks with high betas to changes in the PEAR index significantly under-perform those with low betas by 1.00% per month in the future, on a risk-adjusted basis. The low PEAR beta premium persists up to one year, and is present in various sub-samples and even in other G7 countries. PEAR beta dynamically reveals a firm’s perceived alignment to the incumbent president’s economic policies and investors seem to misprice such …


Learning From Manipulable Signals, Mehmet Ekmekci, Leandrro Gorno, Lucas Maestri, Jian Sun, Dong Wei Dec 2022

Learning From Manipulable Signals, Mehmet Ekmekci, Leandrro Gorno, Lucas Maestri, Jian Sun, Dong Wei

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study a dynamic stopping game between a principal and an agent. The agent is privately informed about his type. The principal learns about the agent’s type from a noisy performance measure, which can be manipulated by the agent via a costly and hidden action. We fully characterize the unique Markov equilibrium of this game. We find that terminations/ market crashes are often preceded by a spike in (expected) performance. Our model also predicts that, due to endogenous signal manipulation, too much transparency can inhibit learning. As the players get arbitrarily patient, the principal elicits no useful information from the …


The Alphabet Soup In Reporting And Measuring Esg, Hao Liang, Kam Chee Chan Oct 2022

The Alphabet Soup In Reporting And Measuring Esg, Hao Liang, Kam Chee Chan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Harmonising frameworks with the Impact-Weighted Accounts Framework.


International Asset Pricing With Strategic Business Groups, Massimo Massa, Hong Zhang, Hong Zhang Aug 2022

International Asset Pricing With Strategic Business Groups, Massimo Massa, Hong Zhang, Hong Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Firms in global markets often belong to business groups. We argue that this feature can have a profound influence on international asset pricing. In bad times, business groups may strategically reallocate risk across affiliated firms to protect core “central firms.” This strategic behavior induces co-movement among central firms, creating a new intertemporal risk factor. Based on a novel data set of worldwide ownership for 2002–2012, we find that central firms are better protected in bad times and that they earn relatively lower expected returns. Moreover, a centrality factor augments traditional models in explaining the cross section of international stock returns.


The Cryptocurrency Participation Puzzle, Ran Duchin, David H. Solomon, Jun Tu, Xi Wang Aug 2022

The Cryptocurrency Participation Puzzle, Ran Duchin, David H. Solomon, Jun Tu, Xi Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that ongoing zero portfolio weights in cryptocurrency are surprisingly difficult to generate in a standard Bayesian portfolio theory framework. With ten years of prior data, equity market investors would need very pessimistic priors on mean returns to justify never having bought cryptocurrency: -10.6% per month for Bitcoin, and -19.6% per month for a diversified portfolio of cryptocurrencies. Moreover, most priors that involve never purchasing cryptocurrency imply that investors should short cryptocurrency. Optimal absolute weights are generally small but non-trivial (1-5%), frequently positive, and fairly smooth despite returns being volatile. Under a wide range of priors, the certainty equivalent …


Customer Concentration And Corporate Carbon Emissions, Saiying Deng, Tinghua Duan, Frank Weikai Li, Xiaoling Pu Aug 2022

Customer Concentration And Corporate Carbon Emissions, Saiying Deng, Tinghua Duan, Frank Weikai Li, Xiaoling Pu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines whether economic links with major corporate customers curb corporate carbon emissions. We show that supplier firms with a concentrated customer base have significantly lower carbon emissions. The baseline results are robust to alternative measures of carbon emissions and customer concentration, and various approaches that mitigate endogeneity concerns due to omitted variables and reverse causality. Moreover, the curbing effect of customer concentration on supplier carbon emissions is more pronounced in firms facing lower customer switching costs, with less (more) supplier (customer) bargaining power, fewer redeployable assets, operating in more carbon-intensive industries, and after the Paris Agreement of 2015. …


Inflation Expectations Can Be A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Aurobindo Ghosh, Khyati Chauhan, Muskan Bagrodia Aug 2022

Inflation Expectations Can Be A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Aurobindo Ghosh, Khyati Chauhan, Muskan Bagrodia

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a commentary, SMU Assistant Professor of Finance (Education) Aurobindo Ghosh, SMU postgraduate student and Research Assistant for the SInDEx Project Muskan Bagrodia and International Monetary Fund Economic Research Assistant Khyati Chauhan weighed in on why inflation expectations matter as much as economic data. They discussed how inflation expectations can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, and shared the key takeaways of the quarterly DBS-Sim Kee Boon Institute’s Singapore Index of Inflation Expectations (DBS-SKBI SInDEx) survey. They concluded that effective communication on inflation control measures, in addition to credible policy decisions, will help consumers feel assured and refrain from basing purchasing decisions …


Oil Price Shocks And Stock Market Anomalies, Zhaobo Zhu, Licheng Sun, Jun Tu, Qiang Ji Jul 2022

Oil Price Shocks And Stock Market Anomalies, Zhaobo Zhu, Licheng Sun, Jun Tu, Qiang Ji

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper provides a novel perspective to the nexus of oil prices and stock markets by examining the impact of oil price shocks on stock market anomalies. After decomposing oil price shocks into three types , we find that aggregate demand shocks have the strongest influence on stock market anomalies. In contrast, oil supply shocks and oil-specific demand shocks have little impact. Similar results are also found in the industry analysis. Interestingly, the link between aggregate demand shocks and anomalies is the strongest among firms with either small size or high idiosyncratic risks. The documented effects are robust after controlling …


Why Do U.S. Firms Invest Less Over Time?, Fangjian Fu, Sheng Huang, Rong Wang Jul 2022

Why Do U.S. Firms Invest Less Over Time?, Fangjian Fu, Sheng Huang, Rong Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Capital expenditures of U.S. public firms, relative to total assets, decrease by more than half from 1980 to 2020. The decline is pervasive across industries and firms of different characteristics and cannot be explained by the usual determinants of investment and many other seemingly plausible reasons. The decline is consistent with the transformation in production technology — firms rely more on intangible capital and less on fixed assets in production. Industry-level analyses yield supporting evidence. We observe similar declining trend in capital expenditure in other developed countries but not in most emerging markets.


Eradicating Malaria: Innovation Diffusion In The Face Of Grand Challenges, Han Jiang, Hao Liang, Dongning Yang Jul 2022

Eradicating Malaria: Innovation Diffusion In The Face Of Grand Challenges, Han Jiang, Hao Liang, Dongning Yang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

What is the role of organizational innovation—beyond technological innovation—in an era of grand challenges concerning health, poverty, and economic development around the world? How is organizational innovation developed and diffused to influence resource allocation in the field? We conduct a qualitative case study by analyzing a Chinese pharmaceutical firm’s efforts to combat malaria in Africa over 10 years. Through documentation and extensive interviews, we study the role of innovation diffusion and resource allocation to address grand challenges in emerging markets with significant institutional voids. Our conceptual model delineates the different stages of innovation diffusion to show how organizations can draw …


Internal Capital Markets And Predictability In Complex Ownership Firms, Ran Chang, Angelica Gonzalez, Sergei Sarkissian, Jun Tu Jun 2022

Internal Capital Markets And Predictability In Complex Ownership Firms, Ran Chang, Angelica Gonzalez, Sergei Sarkissian, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using global cross-firm ownership data, we find that both stock returns and cash-flow news of ownership-linked firms predict focal firm's returns for all types of ownership structures: subsidiary-parent, parent-subsidiary, subsidiary-subsidiary, and parent-parent. This effect, observed only after the establishment of cross-firm ownership, is not subsumed by focal firm or industry momentum, or alternative inter-firm relations, including customer-supplier links and shared analyst coverage. Our findings are explained by mispricing due to internal capital markets - a mechanism unique to complex ownership firms. Higher internal capital market activity among ownership-linked firms also induces larger investments and lower external financing of the focal …


A Black-Scholes User's Guide To The Bachelier Model, Jaehyuk Choi, Minsuk Kwak, Chyng Wen Tee, Yumeng Wang May 2022

A Black-Scholes User's Guide To The Bachelier Model, Jaehyuk Choi, Minsuk Kwak, Chyng Wen Tee, Yumeng Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

To cope with the negative oil futures price caused by the COVID-19 recession, global commodity futures exchanges switched the option model from Black-Scholes to Bachelier in April 2020. This study reviews the literature on Bachelier's pioneering option pricing model and summarizes the practical results on volatility conversion, risk management, stochastic volatility, and barrier options pricing to facilitate the model transition. In particular, using the displaced Black-Scholes model as a model family with the Black-Scholes and Bachelier models as special cases, we not only connect the two models but also present a continuous spectrum of model choices.


Inflation And Ukraine War Make It Challenging For Our Beloved Value Stores To Survive, Aurobindo Ghosh, Taimur Baig May 2022

Inflation And Ukraine War Make It Challenging For Our Beloved Value Stores To Survive, Aurobindo Ghosh, Taimur Baig

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a joint commentary, SMU Assistant Professor of Finance (Education) and Principal Investigator of DBS-SKBI Singapore Index of Inflation Expectations Project Aurobindo Ghosh and Chief Economist and Managing Director at DBS Bank Dr Taimur Baig discussed how global inflationary pressures and rising commodity prices due to war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia are culminating into a perfect storm and making it challenging for value stores to survive. They also gave advice on what value stores can do to survive this perfect storm.


Do Underwriters Short-Change Corporations Issuing Bonds?, Choo Yong, Jeremy Goh, Lisa Yang Apr 2022

Do Underwriters Short-Change Corporations Issuing Bonds?, Choo Yong, Jeremy Goh, Lisa Yang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We confirm prior evidence that bonds on average are offered at prices below their immediate post-offer secondary market prices. However, in cases where banks lead-manage their own bond offerings the underpricing is significantly less as compared to other non-self-marketed offerings. These findings are robust across various matched samples and selection models. Our results suggest that the bond offering process is characterized by substantive agency conflicts between shareholders of corporations (issuers) and underwriters.


Why Commonality Persists?, Chyng Wen Tee, Raja Velu, Zhaoque Zhou Apr 2022

Why Commonality Persists?, Chyng Wen Tee, Raja Velu, Zhaoque Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that order flows do not exhibit predictive power on asset returns, and their relationships have been static over time. We use a reduced-rank regression formulation to model both returns and the order flows as endogenous variables, and use investors' sentiment and attention as exogenous factors. We provide empiricalevidence to demonstrate that cross-sectional commonality in attention (sentiment) is linearly (nonlinearly) associated with both returns and order flows at the intraday level, while the sentiment and attentionmeasures themselves exhibit a nonlinear mutual relationship, thus revealing the multi-dimensional aspect of the commonality relationship.


Investor Sentiment And Paradigm Shifts In Equity Premium Forecasting, Liya Chu, Kai Li, Tony Xue-Zhong He, Jun Tu Apr 2022

Investor Sentiment And Paradigm Shifts In Equity Premium Forecasting, Liya Chu, Kai Li, Tony Xue-Zhong He, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study investigates the impact of investor sentiment on excess equity return forecasting. A high (low) investor sentiment may weaken the connection between fundamental economic (behavioral-based non-fundamental) predictors and market returns. We find that although fundamental variables can be strong predictors when sentiment is low, they tend to lose their predictive power when investor sentiment is high. Non-fundamental predictors perform well during high-sentiment periods while their predictive ability deteriorates when investor sentiment is low. These paradigm shifts in equity return forecasting provide a key to understanding and resolving the lack of predictive power for both fundamental and non-fundamental variables debated …