Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Does Industry Timing Ability Of Hedge Funds Predict Their Future Performance, Survival, And Fund Flows?, Turan G. Bali, Stephen J. Brown, Mustafa O. Caglayan, Umut Celiker

Business Faculty Publications

This paper investigates hedge funds’ ability to time industry-specific returns and shows that funds’ timing ability in the manufacturing industry improves their future performance, probability of survival, and ability to attract more capital. The results indicate that the best industry-timing hedge funds in the manufacturing sector have the highest return exposure to earnings surprises. This, together with persistently sticky earnings surprises, transparent information environment in regards to earnings releases, and large post-earnings-announcement drift in the manufacturing industry, explain to a great extent why best-timing hedge funds can generate significantly larger future returns compared to worst-timing hedge funds.

State Ownership And Banks Information Rents: Evidence From China, Fengyan Ru, Qi Liang, Wei Wang

Business Faculty Publications

In a lending relationship, a bank with an information advantage regarding its client tends to hold up the borrower and charge higher interest rates. We conjecture that state-owned enterprises (SOEs), with worse information asymmetry, are subject to greater information
rents. State-owned banks place less emphasis on information production and hence extract lower rents compared to profit maximizing private banks. We use the decline of loan interest rates around the borrowers’ equity initial public offerings (IPOs) as the proxy of banks’ information rents. We find SOEs in China experience
larger declines in loan interest rates around their IPOs; the central government-controlled …

Incorporating Active Adjustment Into A Financing Based Model Of Capital Structure, Neal Maroney, Wei Wang, M. Kabir Hassan

Business Faculty Publications

The conventional partial adjustment model, which focuses on leverage evolution, has difficulty identifying deliberate capital structure adjustments as it confounds financing decisions with the mechanical autocorrelation of leverage. We propose and estimate a financing-based partial adjustment model that separates the effects of financing decisions on leverage evolution from mechanical evolution. The speed of adjustment (SOA) is firm specific and stochastic, and active targeting of capital structure has a multiplier effect that depends on the size of financial deficit. Overall, we find expected SOA from active rebalancing
(30%) more than doubles what is expected from mechanical mean reversion alone (13%).

Governance Structure And Performance Of Private Family Firms, Tarun Mukherjee, Vighneshwara Swami, Wei Wang

Business Faculty Publications

A debate exists on the issue of whether a governance system is value additive or even necessary for a privately-held firm. One side of the debate suggests that, since agency problems do not exist in a small private firm, it does not need a costly governance system. The other side argues that a private firm indeed faces agency costs in the form of altruism and, therefore, could extract net gains from a governance system. In this paper, we empirically investigate whether a good governance system crates or destroys value of private family firms. We first demonstrate that a multifamily firm …

Market Share Growth And Stock Returns, Jaideep Chowdhury, Gokhan Sonaer, Umut Celiker

Business Faculty Publications

We find a negative relationship between market share growth and subsequent stock returns, three- and four-factor alphas. We report the potential explanatory role of market share growth in explaining subsequent average monthly stock returns. High (Low) market share growth firms report good (poor) operating performance and positive (negative) SUEs in the quarter in which market share growth is measured and investors overact to that good (bad) news. However, high (low) market share growth firms experience decrease (increase) in operating performance and SUEs in the subsequent quarters resulting in corrections in investors’ expectations and subsequent lower (higher) stock returns.

Hedge Fund Vs. Non-Hedge Fund Institutional Demand And The Book-To-Market Effect, Mustafa Onur Caglayan, Umut Celiker, Gokhan Sonaer

Business Faculty Publications

Recent studies have documented that institutional investors trade contrary to the predictions of the book-to market anomaly. We examine whether a prominent sub-group of institutional investors, namely hedge funds, differ from other institutions in terms of their trading behavior with respect to the book-to-market effect. We find that hedge funds significantly alter their trading preferences with respect to growth and value stocks, after book-to-market values become public information. More importantly, we show that hedge funds are better able to identify overpriced growth stocks compared to other institutions. Our results contribute to the literature on institutional investors’ trading with respect to …

Market Imperfections, Macroeconomic Conditions, And Capital Structure Dynamics: A Cross-Country Study, Moonsoo Kang, Wei Wang, Ying Xiao

Business Faculty Publications

This paper investigates how “systematic” adjustment costs proxied by market imperfections and macroeconomic conditions affect capital structure dynamics in a cross-country setting. We document substantial variations in firms’ capital structure adjustments across countries and, particularly, over time. Consistent with adjustment costs impeding firms from rebalancing their capital structures, worse market imperfections are associated with slower speeds of adjustment (SOA) and larger leverage deviations. Intertemporally, capital structure adjustment is procyclical, with SOA increasing by 0.9 percentage point for a one-percentage-point increase in GDP growth rate. The procyclicality is attributable to good macroeconomic conditions mitigating market imperfections through channels of 1) facilitating …

Managerial Conservatism, Board Independence And Corporate Innovation, Jun Lu, Wei Wang

Business Faculty Publications

Using panel data on U.S. public firms, we document a positive effect of board independence on corporate innovation. This effect is concentrated in firms that are larger in size, in the non-technical industries, facing less product market competition, and using more debt, where managers are more likely to be excessively risk averse. We establish causality of board independence on innovation using a difference-in-difference approach that exploits an exogenous shock to board composition, namely, the mandate of a majority of outside directors on company boards by NYSE and NASDAQ in response to the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. We further …

Ceo’S Inside Debt And Dynamics Of Capital Structure, Eric Brisker, Wei Wang

Business Faculty Publications

Debt-type compensation (inside debt) exacerbates the divergence in risk preferences between the chief executive officer (CEO) and shareholders and, in turn, affects capital structure decisions. An excessively risk-averse CEO tends to use less debt than the shareholders desire, reduce debt
quickly when the firm is overlevered, but is reluctant to increase debt when the firm is underlevered. We find that higher CEO’s inside debt ratio (i.e., inside debt as a percentage of total incentive compensation) is associated with lower firm leverage and faster (slower) leverage adjustments toward the shareholders’ desired level for overlevered (underlevered) firms. The CEO’s inside debt ratio …

Blockholder Characteristics And Earnings Quality, Aslihan G. Korkmaz, Qingzhong Ma, Haigang Zhou

Business Faculty Publications

This study focuses on the impact of blockholder characteristics on earnings quality. Most of the studies in
literature make the implicit assumption that blockholders are a homogeneous group. This study is one of
few studies that acknowledges the heterogeneity of blockholders and attempts to understand the
unexplained proportion of blockholder heterogeneity. Earnings quality is calculated using the modified
Dechow and Dichev (2002) model with fixed effects (FDD model) by Lee and Masulis (2009), and it is
regressed on various blockholder characteristics. The results show that earnings quality is lower for
firms with market-driven and multilateral blockholders.

Corporate Investment And Stock Liquidity: Evidence On The Price Impact Of Trade, Moonsoo Kang, Wei Wang, Chanyoung Eom

Business Faculty Publications

We document that corporate investment contributes to stock liquidity. This study demonstrates a positive relationship between abnormal corporate investment and stock liquidity in the cross-section.Moreover, stock liquidity
improves more apparently for firms with financial constraints. Our robustness check confirms that the
existing regularities cannot explain the current finding. This analysis suggests that corporate investment decreases
the risk of a firm and that a change in the risk affects the behavior of a market maker, leading to an increase
in stock liquidity.

Determining The Multi-Scale Hedge Ratios Of Stock Index Futures Using The Lower Partial Moments Method, Jun Dai, Haigang Zhou

Business Faculty Publications

This paper considers a multi-scale future hedge strategy that minimizes lower partial moments (LPM). To do this, wavelet analysis is adopted to decompose time series data
into different components. Next, different parametric estimation methods with known distributions are applied to calculate the LPM of hedged portfolios, which is the key to
determining multi-scale hedge ratios over different time scales. Then these parametric methods are compared with the prevailing nonparametric kernel metric method. Empirical results indicate that in the China Securities Index 300 (CSI 300) index futures and spot markets, hedge ratios and hedge efficiency estimated by the nonparametric kernel metric …

Cash Flow News, Discount Rate News, And Momentum, Umut Celiker, Nuri Volkan Kayacetin, Raman Kumar, Gokhan Sonaer

Business Faculty Publications

We examine the effect of aggregate cash flow news and discount rate news on momentum returns. We find that momentum profits are higher following aggregate positive cash flow news, even in down markets or low sentiment periods. This finding expands on the evidence in Cooper et al. (2004) that momentum is significant only when past market returns are non-negative and in Antoniou et al. (2013) that momentum is weaker when sentiment is pessimistic. We find that the higher momentum profits during aggregate positive cash flow news periods are primarily driven by the losers continuing to underperform in subsequent periods. Our …

Acquisitions And Regulatory Arbitrage By Captive Finance Companies, Deborah Smith, Mina Glambosky, Kimberly Gleason, K. Bryan Menk

Business Faculty Publications

Captive finance firms play an important role as financial intermediaries. Yet, they receive little attention in financial research. Recently, finance companies have grown by engaging in acquisition activities. Given their unique characteristics, finance companies may be more capable of extracting gains from acquisitions than other firms. We explain their advantages, and assess the market response and long-term valuation of finance companies that engage in acquisitions. Our results indicate that acquisitions by captive finance firms are wealth enhancing in the short term and the long term. However, the market reacts negatively when flexible captive financing firms acquire highly regulated depository institutions.

Ipo Firms' Voluntary Compliance With Sox 404 As Evidence On The Value Relevance Of Internal Control Quality, Qianyun Huang, Kimberly Gleason, Leonard Rosenthal, Deborah Smith

Business Faculty Publications

Newly public firms are not required to comply with SOX 404 for their initial public offerings. This provides a unique setting in which to investigate the benefits of voluntary disclosure with SOX 404 and the value of information revealed as a consequence of compliance. We investigate whether voluntary compliance with SOX 404, either fully or partially, impacts the perceived risk of firms conducting IPOs on the first day of trading (reflected in underpricing) or following the IPO. Our results indicate that neither full compliance with SOX 404 at the time of the IPO, nor a managerial discussion of internal controls …

The Relationship Between Firm Resources And Joint Ventures: Revisited, Vivien E. Jancenelle

Business Student Publications

Purpose

– This study is a replication of Wolff and Reed’s (2000) work. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the combination of resources brought to joint ventures influence parent-firm performance. This study is also interested in whether or not the exposure of immobile resources through the semi-transparent membrane of the joint venture can have negative effects on parent-firm performance.

Design/methodology/approach

– The sample consists of two-parent joint ventures formed by publicly traded US firms between 1997 and 2013. The event-study methodology is used to calculate each parent-firm’s abnormal returns. This work also uses content analysis to analyze …

Do Mutual Funds Herd In Industries?, Umut Celiker, Jaideep Chowdhury, Sokhan Sonaer

Business Faculty Publications

This study examines whether mutual funds herd in industries and the extent to which such herding impacts industry valuations. Using two herding measures proposed by Lakonishok et al. (1992) and Sias (2004) we document that mutual funds herd in industries. We show that industry herding is not driven by fund flows and that it is not a manifestation of individual stock herding. We also find evidence indicating that herding in industries by mutual funds is related to the industry momentum phenomenon first documented by Moskowitz and Grinblatt (1999), but it does not drive industry valuations away from their fundamentals.

The Stock Market Impact Of Government Interventions On Financial Services Industry Groups: Evidence From The 2007-2009 Crisis, Deborah Smith

Business Faculty Publications

We examine the market reaction and shift in risk from nine prominent government interventions in response to the crisis between February 2007 and July 2009 on four types of institutions: banks, savings and loan associations (S&Ls), insurance companies, and real estate investment trusts (REITs). Overall, with the exception of the Troubled Assets Repurchase Program (TARP), the interventions were wealth-decreasing and risk-increasing events for financial institutions. Leveraged firms and firms with higher trading volumes earn significantly lower abnormal returns. For both during- and post-crisis periods, larger firms experience increases in systematic risk; non-U.S. firms experience lower changes in systematic risk.

Baker Hughes: Greasing The Wheels In Kazakhstan (Fcpa Violations And Implementation Of A Corporate Ethics And Anti-Corruption Compliance Program, Mark Holtzblatt, Norbert Tschakert

Business Faculty Publications

This case discusses the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) violations of Texas-based Baker Hughes, in connection with its oil service operations in Kazakhstan. You will assume the position of a newly assigned audit committee member who is trying to understand Baker Hughes’ FCPA violations related to its Kazakhstan operations. Your investigation will involve the examination of the SEC court complaint, press releases, government and company publications and 10-K annual reports. Baker Hughes’ FCPA experiences illustrate the corruption risks and difficulties that multinational corporations encounter in conducting international business. The subsequent creation of a new Baker Hughes Code of Conduct, FCPA …

Capital Structure Deviation And Speed Of Adjustment, Tarun Mukherjee, Wei Wang

Business Faculty Publications

As a firm deviates from its target leverage, marginal bankruptcy costs change at a faster speed than marginal tax shield. This renders the speed of adjustment (SOA) of capital structure an increasing function of the starting deviation from the target. Adopting a bootstrapping-based estimation, we confirm the existence of such heterogeneity in SOA that is statistically significant and economically nontrivial. Typically, if Firm A is one standard deviation (about 17%) and Firm B is two standard deviations away from their leverage targets, then B’s SOA is 41% greater than that of A, and the half life of B’s leverage deviation …

Asset Pricing, Jump Risk, And China's B-Share Discount Puzzle, Haigang Zhou, John Qi Zhu

Business Faculty Publications

This study examines whether differential systematic risks, along with other competing explanations, account for cross-sectional variations in B-share discounts in China, using both cross-sectional and panel data analysis. Results show strong evidence that variations in A-share systematic risks are positively related to variations in B-share discount after controlling for various competing explanations. No evidence shows a correlation between variations in B-share systematic risks and variations in B-share discounts. These findings survive various robustness checks. The study further decomposes total systematic risk into continuous and jump components. Regression results indicate that variations in B-share discounts are explained mostly by variations in …

Integrated Risk Study For Chinese Commercial Banks With Fuzzy Comprehensive Appraisal Method, Hongmei Li, Haigang Zhou

Business Faculty Publications

The Basel Capital Accord II proposes that commercial banks should supervise not only credit risk but also market risk, liquidity risk and operational risk. Using the fuzzy comprehensive appraisal method based on the Basel Capital Accord II, this paper measures the integrated risk of Chinese commercial banks. Our results indicate that the average values of the four types of risks are higher than the integrated risk of the four risks, indicating an overestimated whole risk. Our results illustrate the importance of considering the correlation between the different risk sources in order to efficiently allocate financial resources.

The Asymmetric Impacts Of Good And Bad News On Opinion Divergence: Evidence From Revisions To The S&P 500 Index, Jin Yu, Haigang Zhou

Business Faculty Publications

Motivated by the ambiguity theory of Epstein and Schneider (2003, 2008), we hypothesize that investors' beliefs on the prospects of firms converge upon the arrival of bad news, but do not converge - or even further diverge - on the arrival of good news. We expect firms with high divergence in opinions to experience lower stock returns around the announcements of bad news but not for good news. Using revisions to the S&P 500 index between 1962 and 2008 as information events, we find overwhelming support for the hypothesis. The results are robust to controlling for alternative hypotheses of price …

Jump Risk And Cross Section Of Stock Returns: Evidence From China's Stock Market, Haigang Zhou, John Qi Zhu

Business Faculty Publications

Various studies have confirmed the existence of jumps in different financial markets. However, there is sparse theoretical or empirical effort to examine the dynamic relation between jump risk and cross-sectional expected stock returns. We follow a stylized SDF-based diffusion-jump model to examine its testable implications about the relation between cross-section expected excess returns and variations in jump intensities across stocks. The zero-cost portfolio, exploiting the return spreads between the top and bottom decile portfolios formed on jump intensity, could earn an annualized return as high as 24% with an annualized Sharpe ratio of 1.67. A Fama-MacBeth test shows that stock …

Personal Financial Planning Attitudes - A Study, Scott A. Yetmar, D. Murphy

Business Faculty Publications

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on a survey about the personal financial planning attitudes of MBA students in the USA. Design/methodology/approach – The study surveyed 206 MBA students about their attitudes to personal financial planning. Participants were asked about their level of knowledge, whether they had prepared components of a financial plan, where they might seek assistance in such a process and the criteria for selecting a financial planner. In addition, participants were asked to indicate their level of confidence in a financial plan's capacity to help them meet their long-term needs and the likelihood …

Asymptotic And Numerical Solutions For Diffusion Models For Compounded Risk Reserves With Dividend Payments, Sally S. L. Shao, C. L. Chang

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

We study a family of diffusion models for compounded risk reserves which account for the investment income earned and for the inflation experienced on claim amounts. We are interested in the models in which the dividend payments are paid from the risk reserves. After defining the process of conditional probability in finite time, martingale theory turns the nonlinear stochastic differential equation to a special class of boundary value problems defined by a parabolic equation with a nonsmooth coefficient of the convection term. Based on the behavior of the total income flow, asymptotic and numerical methods are used to solve the …

Asymptotic Solutions Of Diffusion Models For Risk Reserves, Sally S. L. Shao

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

We study a family of diffusion models for risk reserves which account for the investment income earned and for the inflation experienced on claim amounts. After we defined the process of the conditional probability of ruin over finite time and imposed the appropriate boundary conditions, classical results from the theory of diffusion processes turn the stochastic differential equation to a special class of initial and boundary value problems defined by a linear diffusion equation. Armedwith asymptotic analysis and perturbation theory, we obtain the asymptotic solutions of the diffusion models (possibly degenerate) governing the conditional probability of ruin over a finite …