Industry Concentration and the Cross-section of Stock Returns: Evidence from the UK

In this paper, I examine the relationship between industry concentration and the cross-section of stock returns in the London Stock Exchange between 1985 and 2010. Using Multifactor asset pricing theory, I test whether industry concentration is a new asset pricing factor in addition to conventional risk factors such as beta, firm size, book-to-market ratio, momentum, and leverage. I find that industry concentration is negatively related to the expected stock returns in all Fama and MacBeth cross-sectional regressions. In addition, the negative relationship between industry concentration and expected stock returns remain significantly negative after beta, size, book-to-market, momentum, and leverage are included, while beta is never significant. The results are robust to firm- and industry-level regressions and the formation of firms into 100 size-beta portfolios. The findings indicate that competitive industries earn, on average, higher risk-adjusted returns compared to concentrated industries which is consistent with Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction.Industry concentration, Stock returns, Multifactor asset pricing theory, Competitive industries, Concentrated industries, Creative destruction, London Stock Exchange

Industry concentration and stock returns: evidence from publicly listed firms in the U.K

In this dissertation, I examine the relationship between market structure and average stock returns in the London Stock Exchange during 1985 and 2010. Using Multifactor asset pricing theory, I test whether industry concentration is a new asset pricing factor in addition to conventional risk factors such as beta, size, book-to-market equity, momentum, and leverage. I find that industry concentration is negatively related to average stock returns in all Fama-MacBeth cross-sectional regressions, even after controlling for beta, size, book-to-market equity, momentum, and leverage. In addition, there is strong evidence of a growth effect. Firms or industry portfolios with smaller book-to-market equity ratios have significantly higher returns. In contrast, beta is never statistically significant. The above results are robust to firm- and industry-level regressions, and the formation of firms into 100 size-beta portfolios. The time-series results show some evidence that industry concentration premium contains separate information compared with other risk premiums or risk factors and helps explain the time-series variation in stock returns, even after accounting for the premiums of beta, size, book-to-market, momentum, and leverage. The empirical findings indicate that competitive industries earn, on average, higher risk-adjusted returns than concentrated industries. An explanation is that investors in more competitive industries require larger return premiums for greater distress risks associated with these industries

Industry Concentration and the Cross-section of Stock Returns: Evidence from the UK

In this paper, I examine the relationship between industry concentration and the cross-section of stock returns in the London Stock Exchange between 1985 and 2010. Using Multifactor asset pricing theory, I test whether industry concentration is a new asset pricing factor in addition to conventional risk factors such as beta, firm size, book-to-market ratio, momentum, and leverage. I find that industry concentration is negatively related to the expected stock returns in all Fama and MacBeth cross-sectional regressions. In addition, the negative relationship between industry concentration and expected stock returns remain significantly negative after beta, size, book-to-market, momentum, and leverage are included, while beta is never significant. The results are robust to firm- and industry-level regressions and the formation of firms into 100 size-beta portfolios. The findings indicate that competitive industries earn, on average, higher risk-adjusted returns compared to concentrated industries which is consistent with Schumpeter’s concept of creative destruction

Product-market competition, corporate governance and innovation: evidence on US-listed firms

The debate on competition and innovation has produced a wide range of theoretical and empirical findings. Recently, corporate governance quality has emerged as an additional factor that may complement or substitute for competition’s effect on innovation. We aim to contribute to the debate by investigating whether product-market competition and corporate governance quality affect firm-level innovation, utilising a dataset for 1,400 non-financial US-listed companies. Using two-way cluster-robust estimation, we report several findings. First, the relationship between industry-level competition and input as well as output measures of innovation is non-linear. Secondly, the non-linear relationship is of an inverted-U shape with respect to input measures of innovation, but the relationship has a U-shape when output measure of innovation is estimated. Third, corporate governance indicators such as anti-takeover defences and insider control tend to have a negative effect on input measures of innovation but their effect is positive with respect to the output measure. Finally, when interacted with market concentration, anti-takeover defences and insider control emerge as substitutes, leading to sign reversals in the relationship between competition and innovation. The results are obtained by using two-way cluster-robust estimation that controls for dependence within company/year and industry/year clusters, but they are robust to different estimation methods including fixed-effect and Fama-Macbeth procedure

Industry Concentration and The Cross-Section Of Stock Returns: Evidence From The UK

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the relationship between market structure and ex- pected stock returns in the London Stock Exchange during 1985 and 2010. Using Fama- MacBeth regressions, we find that industry concentration is negatively related to average stock returns, even after controlling for beta, size, book-to-market equity, momentum, and leverage. In addition, there is a strong evidence of a growth effect. Firms or industry portfolios with smaller book-to-market ratios have significantly higher returns. In contrast, beta is never statistically significant. The above results are robust to firm- and industry- level regressions, and the formation of firms into 100 size-beta portfolios. Our findings indicate that competitive industries earn, on average, higher risk-adjusted returns than concentrated industries. An explanation is that investors in more competitive industries require larger premiums for greater distress risks associated with these industries. Our paper is one of the first to link market competition with the average stock returns in the UK, and contributes to the asset pricing literature by extending the evidence from the US to another important financial market.</p

Market concentration, corporate governance and innovation: partial and combined effects in US-listed firms

Mehmet Ugur and Nawar Hashem aim to contribute to the debate by investigating both partial and combined effects of corporate governance and market concentration on innovation. Utilising a dataset for 1,400 non-financial US-listed companies and two-way cluster-robust estimation methodology, they report several findings. First, the relationship between market concentration and innovation is non-linear. Secondly, the relationship has a U-shape in the case of input measure of innovation (research and development - R&D – expenditures); but it has an inverted-U shape when net book-value of brands and patents is used as output measure of innovation. Third, corporate governance indicators such as antitakeover defences and insider control tend to have a negative partial effect on R&D expenditures but a positive partial effect on net book-value of brands and patents. Finally, when interacted with market concentration, anti-takeover defences and insider control act as complements to market concentration

Firms' degree of internationalisation and the cross-section of stock returns: evidence from multinational listed companies in the U.K.

This paper proposes two main opposing channels through which firms’ degree of internationalisation affects stock returns. In particular, firms that operate internationally benefit from risk reduction via diversification channel and also encounter higher risk exposure due to various risk factors in international markets. Using a sample of 566 multinational publicly listed companies in the London Stock Exchange during 1999 and 2010, this paper empirically tests whether firms’ degree of internationalisation is a new asset pricing factor in addition to the standard risk factors such as beta, size, book-to-market, leverage, momentum, and product market competition. The results show that firms’ degree of internationalisation is positively and significantly related to the cross-section of stock returns in all Fama and MacBeth regressions, even after accounting for beta, size, book-to-market, leverage, and momentum. In addition, the effect of internationalisation on stock return becomes statistically insignificant after controlling for product market competition, indicating that the interaction term between competition and internationalisation plays a role in explaining stock returns. Overall, the empirical findings indicate that firms or industries with higher degree of internationalisation earn, on average, higher risk-adjusted returns. The results of this paper suggest that although multinational firms can benefit from cash flow diversification by going international, firms with higher degree of internationalisation are risky than firms with lower degree of internationalisation due to higher political, foreign exchange, and distress risks faced by multinational companies in international markets