Finance and Financial Management Commons^™

Lessons From The Financial Crisis: Report Of The Asian Financial Regulatory Committee, Jeremy Choo Yong Goh, Sri Adiningsih, Maria S. Gochoco-Bautista

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.

Audit Committee Observation/Recommendations Versus Practices As A Compliance Of Corporate Governance In India, Debabrata Chatterjee

DLSU Business & Economics Review

The series of accounting scandals have intensified pressure from stakeholders and regulators on the audit committees to do the jobs for which they are hired. Though most companies have audit committees, their role has been limited due to the lack of expertise and time. An active audit committee is important because it indicate the commitment to the issues of interest because of the reports it release about the activities undertaken during the financial year and the efforts made to ensure adequate internal control. Audit committees must be given the role to approve and review audit fees, thus neutralizing the bias …

Analyst Following, Capital Market Pressure, And Real Activity Manipulation, Melanie Maureen Rose

Theses and Dissertations in Business Administration

I investigate the impact of analyst following on real activity manipulation. Because analysts follow firms and serve as information intermediaries, analyst following should reduce earnings management through real activity manipulation. However, given the negative ramifications of missing analysts' earnings forecasts, the fact that analysts are watching and issuing forecasts might actually create capital market pressures as managers try to ensure that they do not miss earnings targets. Because managers can engage in earnings management through real activities manipulation and accrual manipulation, I control for accrual manipulation in examining the relationship between analyst following and real activity manipulation. I find that …

Style-Related Comovement: Fundamentals Or Labels?, Brian H. Boyer

Faculty Publications

I find that economically meaningless index labels cause stock returns to covary in excess of fundamentals. S&P/Barra follow a simple mechanical procedure to define their Value and Growth indices. In doing so, they reclassify some stocks from Value to Growth even after their book-to-market ratios have risen, and vice versa. Such stocks begin to covary more with the index they join and less with the index they leave. Backdated constituent data from Barra reveal no such label-related shifts in comovement during the 10 years prior to the actual introduction of the indices in 1992.

Implications Of Executive Succession Upon Financial Risk And Performance, Susan F. Weiss

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Executive replacements have historically created fluctuations in the market value of a company and precipitated inappropriate investor reaction. However, the direction and statistical significance of relationships between executive turnover, market value, financial risk, and investor reaction among a census of highly performing firms was previously unexplored. The purpose of this study was to determine the extent of the relationship between CEO turnover and indicators of company performance. Theoretical foundation for this study was the efficient markets hypothesis. Hypotheses tests were designed to support an ex-post facto research methodology for pre-post comparison of volatility of financial metrics, which are indicators of …

Reit Going Private Decisions, James C. Brau, J. Troy Carpenter, Mauricio Rodriguez, C. F. Sirmans

Faculty Publications

Over the recent decade there was a wave of REITs going private, from an average of about three per year to 40 between 2005 and 2007. Standard corporate finance theory posits that firms go private when there is no longer a positive tradeoff between the expected benefits and the costs of being public, and it provides empirical evidence that going private decisions are motivated by potential gains from leverage, tax benefits, and expected improvements in corporate governance. Given the unique institutional environment for the REIT industry, this paper sheds new light on the going-private decision. Specifically, we examine the determinants …

When Constraints Bind, Karl B. Diether, Ingrid M. Werner

Faculty Publications

We create proxies for constrained supply of lendable shares by combining unique data on loan fees, stock lending activity, and failures to deliver to examine how contrarian short-sale strategies are affected by constraints. Constraints affect roughly one-third of the cross- section of stocks and result in a significant reduction in the contrarian response of short sellers to past returns. When short sellers’ contrarian strategies are constrained, the market is significantly less efficient. Furthermore, the previously documented relation between short selling activity and future returns breaks down for the most constrained stocks.

Behavioral Economics Perspectives On Public Sector Pension Plans, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

We describe the pension plan features of the states and the largest cities and counties in the U.S. Unlike in the private sector, defined benefit (DB) pensions are still the norm in the public sector. However, a few jurisdictions have shifted towards defined contribution (DC) plans as their primary savings plan, and fiscal pressures are likely to generate more movement in this direction. Holding fixed a public employee‘s work and salary history, we show that DB retirement income replacement ratios vary greatly across jurisdictions. This creates large variation in workers‘ need to save for retirement in other accounts. There is …

$100 Bills On The Sidewalk: Violations Of No-Arbitrage In 401(K) Accounts, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

We identify employees at seven companies whose 401(k) investment choices are dominated because they are contributing less than the employer matching contribution threshold despite being vested in their match and being able to make penalty-free 401(k) withdrawals for any reason because they are older than 59½. At the average firm, 36% of match-eligible employees over age 59½ forgo arbitrage profits that average 1.6% of their annual pay, or $507. A survey educating employees about the free lunch they are forgoing raised contribution rates by a statistically insignificant 0.67% of income among those completing the survey.

How Does Simplifi Ed Disclosure Affect Individuals’ Mutual Fund Choices?, John Beshears, James J. Choi, David Laibson, Brigitte C. Madrian

Faculty Publications

Some regulators believe that the average investor has a hard time reading the statutory prospectuses mutual funds distribute. In the words of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), “Prospectuses are often long . . . Too frequently, the language of prospectuses is complex and legalistic, and the presentation formats make little use of graphic design techniques that would contribute to readability.”1 Partly as a result, two- thirds of investors do not read the prospectus before purchasing mutual fund shares (Investment Company Institute 2006).

Insurance Theory And Challenges Facing The Development Of Microinsurance Markets, James C. Brau, Craig B. Merrill, Kim B. Staking

Faculty Publications

Microinsurance institutions and instruments have developed rapidly over the last decade, with policies covering tens of millions at the base of the economic pyramid. Ranging from simple policies providing life or health insurance to complex policies covering catastrophic risks for small landholders, it is a market with proven potential that demands closer attention. This paper provides a review of the nascent academic literature and then suggests some critical elements of insurance theory that may help us understand the challenges facing microinsurance markets and how these markets can better serve the needs of their customers. Although the basic theory is well …

Portfolio Rebalancing In General Equilibrium, Miles S. Kimball, Matthew D. Shapiro, Tyler Shumway, Jing Zhang

Faculty Publications

Standard portfolio advice is that agents should hold a constant share of risky assets. All agents cannot, however, follow this advice because supply and demand of risky assets must be equal. To study equilibrium rebalancing, the paper develops an overlapping generations model in which agents differ both in age and risk tolerance. Equilibrium rebalancing is driven by a leverage effect that affects levered and unlevered agents in opposite directions, an aggregate risk tolerance effect which depends on the distribution of wealth, and an intertemporal hedging effect. Optimal equilibrium portfolio rebalancing departs significantly from the standard advice.

Friends Or Foes? Target Selection Decisions Of Sovereign Wealth Funds And Their Consequences, Jason Kotter, Ugur Lel

Faculty Publications

This paper examines investment strategies of sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), their effect on target firm valuation, and how both of these are related to SWF transparency. We find that SWFs prefer large and poorly performing firms facing financial difficulties. Their investments have a positive effect on target firms’ stock prices around the announcement date but no substantial effect on firm performance and governance in the long run. We also find that transparent SWFs are more likely to invest in financially constrained firms and have a greater impact on target firm value than opaque SWFs. Overall, SWFs are similar to passive …

Forecasting Multivariate Realized Stock Market Volatility, Gregory H. Bauer, Keith Vorkink

Faculty Publications

We present a new matrix-logarithm model of the realized covariance matrix of stock returns. The model uses latent factors which are functions of lagged volatility, lagged returns and other forecasting variables. The model has several advantages: it is parsimonious; it does not require imposing parameter restrictions; and, it results in a positive-definite estimated covariance matrix. We apply the model to the covariance matrix of size-sorted stock returns and find that two factors are sufficient to capture most of the dynamics.

International Financial Reporting Standards: A Cautionary Note For Emerging Economies, Khursheed Omer, Darshan Wadhwa

Business Review

Long before the present economic crisis unfolded, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) had been working to achieve harmonization in accounting and financial reporting standards across the globe. Now that the world economic community has become more integrated, cross border flow of capital has gained unprecedented momentum and steps are underway to achieve this goal as early as possible. Initial efforts to harmonize local accounting principles and practices with those followed in developed economies were generally aimed at facilitating foreign multinationals operating in other countries. The desired goal of harmonization now ought to …

Foreign Direct Investment And Manufacturing Export In Nigeria, Nasiru Musa Yauri

Business Review

The potential impact of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) on recipient and investing economies is of considerable policy interest (Pain and Wakelin, 1997). Important to the theory of foreign investment in Nigeria is the question whether foreign investors coming to Nigeria are market-seeking or export-driven. This finding is relevant to economic managers in the design and implementation of appropriate macroeconomic policies to attract FDI. It is also relevant to investigate whether FDI contributes to the overall capacity of developing economies to export. This study investigates the contribution of FDI to manufacturing export in Nigeria. Using firm level data collected from 232 …

Internal Debt And Private Investment: Evidence From Pakistan, Muhammad Ramzan Sheikh, Muhammad Zahir Faridi, Shoukat Malik

Business Review

In most of the developing countries financial sectors are characterized by limited availability of loanable funds. Public sector borrowing leads to crowding out of the private sector as well as high interest rates and inflation. In Pakistan, government has relied more on borrowing from the domestic sources as well. The study explores the impacts of internal debt on private investment in Pakistan applying the OLS technique for the period of 1972 to 2009. The study indicates that the stock of internal debt and debt servicing affects the private investment negatively in Pakistan. This implies that internal debt and internal debt …

A Profile Analysis Of The Customers Of Islamic Banking In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Syed Umar Farooq

Business Review

Interviews conducted with the subscribers of Islamic banks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa revealed their key characteristics and patterns. The study sample comprised 100 subscribers of Al-Meezan Bank and Bank of Khyber in N.W.F.P. A comprehensive profile analysis and a series of chi-square tests were conducted to elaborate the main attributes of the customers of Islamic banking system: the majority of Islamic bank customers are well educated; approximately 80 percent are between 25-50 years of age; more than 50 percent of the surveyed customers have maintained their current banking relationship with Islamic banks for more than one year; customers’ awareness and usage …

Earnings Management And The Effect On Long-Run Performance For Firms With Seasoned Equity Offerings, Danielle Enderson

Honors Program Theses

Managers of publicly traded firms use various methods to signal to the market their beliefs about their company's current performance and future prospects. These methods include, among others, the declaration of dividends to common stockholders, a firm's repurchase of its shares in the market, or the issuance of seasoned equity. Each of these actions can be used to send a specific signal to the market based on management's beliefs regarding the firm's financial outlook.

This study focuses on a firm's issuance of seasoned equity. Seasoned equity offerings, or SEOs, are the issuance of additional shares of stock by a firm …

Consumer Financial Protection, John Y. Campbell, Howell E. Jackson, Brigitte C. Madrian, Peter Tufano

Faculty Publications

Over the past 65 years, fi nancial innovation has presented U.S. households with an ever-widening set of fifi nancial options from an expanding set of fifi rms and accompanied by a sometimes dizzying amount of information. At the same time, consumer fifi nance has increasingly become a “do-it-yourself ” activity (Ryan, Trumbull, and Tufano, 2010). Households are expected to make decisions about pension plan contributions and payouts, to choose from a wide array of credit instruments to fund everything from home purchase to short-term cash needs, and more generally to assume a greater level of responsibility for their fifi nancial …