Large dividend increases and leverage

This study documents the fact that large dividend increases are followed by a significant increase in leverage, consistent with management increasing the dividend to use up excess debt capacity. However, the leverage increase is not captured by a standard partial adjustment model of leverage. Nor does it reflect variables known to be related to dividend increases, such as firm maturity, investment, and risk. Instead, the dividend increase signals a complex change in the way firms adjust to their leverage target, but it does not signal a change in the target

Mapping the trading behavior of the middle class in emerging markets: evidence from the Istanbul Stock Exchange

Predicted to grow above 4.9 billion by 2030, with an overall spending capacity of $56 trillion, the rise of the middle class in emerging markets has attracted global practitioner and academic attention. How this new wealth will be invested is a central question; yet our understanding still remains fragmented. Drawing on the literatures of international business, behavioral economics and finance and using high-frequency stock market data, we examine and map the trading behavior of the middle class in Turkey, one of the fastest rising economic powers of the East. We find that middle class traders exhibit discernible differences to professionals, with respect to risk attitudes and stock preferences (e.g. prefer lower-risk, smaller-size and ‘value’ stocks). In addition, while they typically hold small portfolios and tend to realize lower gains than professionals, their role has become considerably influential to the direction of the entire market

Short-horizon excess returns and exchange rate and interest rate effects

We examine the effects of foreign exchange (FX) and interest rate changes on the excess returns of U.S. stocks, for short-horizons of 1-40 days. Our new evidence shows a tendency for the volatility of both excess returns and FX rate changes to be negatively related with FX rate and interest rate effects. Both the number of firms with significant FX rate and interest rate effects and the magnitude of their exposures increase with the length of the return horizon. Our finding seems inconsistent with the view that firms hedge effectively at short-return horizons

Tourism stocks in times of crises: An econometric investigation of unexpected non-macroeconomic factors

Following the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, the European media emphatically pronounced that billions of Euros were wiped from tourism related stocks. The theoretical relationship of the industry with such unexpected non-macro incidents received moderate academic coverage. Nevertheless, the quantifiable impact of such events on tourism-specific stock values, both in terms of returns and volatility, is still a barren landscape. Using econometric methodology, the paper investigates the reaction of five hospitality/tourism stock indices to 150 incidents depicting major Acts of Terrorism, ‘Acts of God’, and War conflicts in the 21st Century. Empirical findings underscore the effect of such incidents on hospitality/tourism stock indices, with distinctive differences among the different types, the specificities of each event, and the five regions under investigation. This paper contributes to the extant literature and enhances our conceptual capital pertaining to the industry’s current financial practices that are related to stock performance and behavior

Tourism stocks in times of crises: An econometric investigation of non-macro factors

Following the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, the European media emphatically pronounced that billions of euros were wiped from tourism related stocks. This comes at a troublesome time for the tourism industry, in the midst of a global financial crisis, and the unpredictable rise of radical Islamic ideologies, which have caused chaos in the Middle East and Europe. The relationship and vulnerability of the industry to non-macro incidents have been well documented in the literature, mostly in theoretical terms. Nevertheless, the quantifiable impact of such events on tourism-specific stock values, both in terms of returns and volatility, received much less attention. With the use of an econometric methodology, the paper aims to enhance our conceptual capital pertaining to the effects of such possibilities on five hospitality and tourism stock indices. The empirical findings are of interest to stakeholders at all echelons of the spectra of the tourism and financial industries

Tourism Stocks in Times of Crises: an Econometric Investigation of Non-macro Factors

Following the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, the European media emphatically pronounced that billions of euros were wiped from tourism related stocks. This comes at a troublesome time for the tourism industry, in the midst of a global financial crisis, and the unpredictable rise of radical Islamic ideologies, which have caused chaos in the Middle East and Europe. The relationship and vulnerability of the industry to non-macro incidents have been well documented in the literature, mostly in theoretical terms. Nevertheless, the quantifiable impact of such events on tourism-specific stock values, both in terms of returns and volatility, received much less attention. With the use of an econometric methodology, the paper aims to enhance our conceptual capital pertaining to the effects of such possibilities on five hospitality and tourism stock indices. The empirical findings are of interest to stakeholders at all echelons of the spectra of the tourism and financial industries

Optimal Equity Valuation Using Multiples: The Number of Comparable Firms

We examine how the accuracy of a multiples-based valuation changes as the number of comparable firms used to estimate the valuation multiple increases. Our research is motivated by a contrast between the approach followed by practitioners, who typically use a small number of closely comparable firms, and the academic literature which often uses all firms in an industry. Using a simple selection rule based on growth rates, we find that using ten closely comparable firms is as accurate on average as using the entire cross-section of firms in an industry. Using five comparable firms is slightly less accurate. However, the loss of accuracy from using five comparable firms rather than ten firms or the entire industry is not great. The relative accuracy of a valuation based on five comparables does not vary in a predicable way across industries, except that it is generally better to use a small number rather than all firms in an industry with a large number of members. However, the relative accuracy of a valuation based on a small number of comparables does depend heavily on the similarity of the comparable firms to the target firm. If there are firms in the same industry with growth rates close to that of the target firm, then it is better to use a small number of comparables. Adding more firms simply adds noise, on average

A Critique of the Agency Theory Viewpoint of Stock Price Crash Risk: The Opacity and Overinvestment Channels

This study documents a puzzling historical trend in crash risk for US‐listed firms: between 1950 and 2019, the firm‐year occurrences of idiosyncratic stock price crashes rose from 5.5% to an astonishing 27%. The vastness of the literature notoriously attributes crashes to agency reasons, i.e. self‐interested executives who strategically camouflage bad news via the financial reporting opacity and overinvestment channels. Nonetheless, we document that the opacity– and overinvestment–crash relations are non‐significant, especially in the period following the enforcement of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act. The statistically non‐significant relations are also witnessed in tests that account for the effect of equity‐based compensation incentives and corporate governance functions. Overall, this study criticizes the efficacy of opacity and overinvestment as channels in explaining crash risk. Our conclusions offer avenues for future research to pursue in rationalizing the puzzling surge in stock price crashes

The effect of security and market order flow shocks on co-movement

In this paper, we apply the smooth transition conditional correlation model to examine the impact that shocks to order flow imbalance have on stock market co-movement. We show that positive and negative shocks to security order flow reduce co-movement. Market order flow shocks have only a small impact on post shock correlations. Our results suggest that investors can increase diversification opportunities when forming dynamic portfolio strategies if they take account of security order flow information. We show that pre-shock firm characteristics allow investors to identify those stocks with the greatest diversification benefits

The effects of non-trading on the illiquidity ratio

Using a simulation analysis we show that non-trading can cause an overstatement of the observed illiquidity ratio. Our paper shows how this overstatement can be eliminated with a very simple adjustment to the Amihud illiquidity ratio. We find that the adjustment improves the relationship between the illiquidity ratio and measures of illiquidity calculated from transaction data. Asset pricing tests show that without the adjustment, illiquidity premia estimates can be understated by more than 17% for NYSE securities and by more than 24% for NASDAQ securities