Int. J. Financial Stud., Volume 6, Issue 1 (March 2018) – 33 articles

This paper explores the market efficiency of the six base metals traded on the LME (London Metal Exchange) using daily data from January 2000 to June 2016. The hypothesis that futures prices 3M (3-month) are unbiased predictors of spot prices (cash) in the LME is rejected based on the false premise that the financialization of commodities has been growing. For the robustness check, monthly data is analyzed using ordinary least squares (OLS) and GARCH (1,1) models. We reject the null hypothesis for all metals except for zinc. Full article

There are indications that value investing strategies have been able to outperform the overall market in several countries across the globe. In this article, the specific case of South Korea is analyzed. It would appear that from a rigorous statistical point of view there are no strong evidence supporting the outperformance of value stocks versus growth stocks in South Korea, particularly when measured on a yearly basis. These results were consistent using both MSCI value and growth indexes as well as constructing portfolios using the P/E, P/B, cash flow per share and average 5-year sales growth. The statistical tests performed failed to reject for the majority of the years that the monthly returns come from distributions with different medians. The test yielding rather consistent results on a yearly basis but for large periods of time (decades) the results were more mixed, pointing in some cases to value investing outperforming over that very long time frame. It should be noted that the final value of the portfolios was rather different when using criteria, such as low P/E, typically associated with value stocks. The tests also failed to reject the hypothesis of different means for the monthly returns of small, medium and large companies. Full article

A new method for pricing contingent claims based on an asymptotic expansion of the dynamics of the pricing density is introduced. The expansion is conducted in a preferred coordinate frame, in which the pricing density looks stationary. The resulting asymptotic Kolmogorov-backward-equation is approximated by using a complete set of orthogonal Hermite-polynomials. The derived model is calibrated and tested on a collection of 1075 European-style ‘Deutscher Aktienindex’ (DAX) index options and is shown to generate very precise option prices and a more accurate implied volatility surface than conventional methods. Full article

In this paper, I study the impact of market competition on mutual fund marketing expenses. In a sample of US domestic equity mutual funds, I find that marketing expenses decrease with the competition. This effect is stronger for top-performing funds. These results are counterintuitive, as one would ordinarily expect funds to incur more marketing expenses in response to pressure from competing funds. However, these results support the narrative that mutual funds employ marketing to draw attention to their performance in a tournament-like market, where the top-performing funds (the winners) are rewarded with disproportionately high new investments. Higher competition decreases the chances of each fund to outperform the others and adversely affect their ability to attract new investments, and the funds respond by decreasing marketing expenses. Thus, competition appears to have implications for investor search cost. Full article

This paper examines short- and long-term behavior of the price-to net asset value ratio in six Asian public real estate markets. We find mean-reverting behavior of the ratio and spillover effects, where each of the examined public real estate markets correlates with other markets. Additionally, the unexpected shock correlating with the price-to-net asset value ratio in one market has a positive or negative correlation with the ratios of other markets. Our results offer fresh insights to portfolio managers, policymakers, and academic researchers into the regional and country market dynamics of public real estate valuation and cross-country interaction from the long-term and short-term perspectives. Full article

This paper focuses on the valuation and hedging of gas storage facilities, using a spot-based valuation framework coupled with a financial hedging strategy implemented with futures contracts. The contributions of this paper are two-fold. Firstly, we propose a model that unifies the dynamics of the futures curve and spot price, and accounts for the main stylized facts of the US natural gas market such as seasonality and the presence of price spikes in the spot market. Secondly, we evaluate the associated model risk, and show not only that the valuation is strongly dependent upon the dynamics of the spot price, but more importantly that the hedging strategy commonly used in the industry leaves the storage operator with significant residual price risk. Full article

This paper gives a review of numerical methods for solving the BSDEs, especially, finite difference methods. For numerical methods of finite difference, we should divide them into three branches. Distributed method (or parallel method) should now become a hot topic. It is a key reason we present the review. We give a brief survey on the financial problems. The problems include solution and simulation methods for the BSDEs. We first describe the BSDEs, and then outline the main techniques and main results of the BSDEs. In addition, we compare with the errors between these methods and the Euler method on the BSDEs. Full article

In this paper, we examine whether the readability of different types of corporate risk disclosures influences the risk judgments of nonprofessional investors. Our study contributes evidence to the Security and Exchange Commission’s ongoing initiative to improve corporate financial statement disclosures. Using 359 responses from an experimental survey of nonprofessional investors (NPIs), we find that readability, in conjunction with risk factor type, significantly influences investors’ judgments of probability and size of economic loss, cause for worry, and overall risk. NPIs judged the risk from an industry-related risk factor (competition) to be higher when written in plain English, but judged the risk of a company-specific risk factor (internal control weakness over financial reporting) to be higher when written in a less readable format (i.e., legalese). We found no significant differences in judgments between plain English and less readable language on a combined industry/company risk factor, information security. Results suggest that a move to plain English for all types of risk factors may have consequences that are not fully understood or expected. This area needs further research before regulators enact (or enforce) mandates for risk factors to be presented in plain English. Full article

This study tests for racial discrimination against minority managers in Major League Baseball using financial-market imbalances as it relates to the wagering marketplace for the sport. Using detailed betting data on the percentage bet on the favorite from Sports Insights, we test for prejudice against minority mangers using an ordinary least squares multiple regression model. The results reveal that bettors have a clear preference for the favored team as the percentage bet on the favorite increases with the odds on the favorite. In addition, they prefer road favorites by an even greater margin. In terms of minority managers, there is no evidence of discrimination against minorities. In fact, bettors prefer to wager on minority managers by a statistically significant margin when they are favorites. This finding suggests that either the participants in this financial marketplace are not prejudiced against minority managers or the financial incentives inherent in the market drive out discrimination against the minority managers. Full article

Cochrane (2014) shows that high-powered money balances and short-term government bonds can be considered as perfect substitutes for the U.S economy during the past twenty years. We build on this claim and consider a variant of the standard cashless new-Keynesian model with two types of government bonds, which can be thought of as short- and long-term bonds. The first one has a macroeconomic role in the sense that it provides transaction services in addition to generating a yield. The other type of government bond pays only an interest rate. Consistent with previous findings, the Taylor principle is not a panacea for equilibrium determinacy in a model without money. When the government bond market matters beyond the need for fiscal solvency, monetary policy rules do not need to comply with the Taylor principle for unique equilibria to exist. Full article

Does speculation facilitate price discovery or instability? If it is price discovery, it is beneficial and should be encouraged; if it is instability, welfare is enhanced by its reduction. This paper seeks to distinguish between these two characteristics by analysing those times when speculation in the foreign exchange market is most extreme. A series of event studies are conducted on the extremes of speculative sentiment and speculative activity. If speculation is noise, extreme sentiment and extreme positions should lead to overshooting and increase risk of subsequent reversals. The finding that speculative extremes do not provide information about subsequent returns implies that speculation is part of the process of price discovery and that efforts to reduce it would reduce the informational efficiency of financial markets. Full article

This paper applies long-memory techniques (both parametric and semi-parametric) to examine whether Brexit has led to any significant changes in the degree of persistence of the FTSE (Financial Times Stock Index) 100 Implied Volatility Index (IVI) and of the British pound’s implied volatilities (IVs) vis-à-vis the main currencies traded in the FOREX (foreign exchange market), namely the euro, the US dollar and the Japanese yen. We split the sample to compare the stochastic properties of the series under investigation before and after the Brexit referendum, and find an increase in the degree of persistence in all cases except for the British pound-yen IV, whose persistence has declined after Brexit. These findings highlight the importance of completing swiftly the negotiations with the European Union (EU) to achieve an appropriate Brexit deal. Full article

This paper analyses the integration of financial market supervision at international level, particularly focusing on EU law and the actual processes taking place in this area considering Brexit as its part. Current legislative action at EU level has a significant impact on legislation in all member countries of European Union. This paper seeks, among other things, to find the causes of the increasingly ongoing process of integration of financial market supervision and determine whether or not the direction in which the international integration is going is the right one. The objective of this paper is to determine whether or not the process of integration increases the efficiency of financial market supervision itself and helps to develop the European single market, while simultaneously reducing systemic risk to financial market stability. Full article

Assuming that a time series incorporates “signal” and “noise” components, we propose a method to estimate the extent of the “noise” component by considering the smoothing properties of the state-space of the time series. A mild degree of smoothing in the state-space, applied using a Kalman filter, allows for noise estimation arising from the measurement process. It is particularly suited in the context of a reputation index, because small amounts of noise can easily mask more significant effects. Adjusting the state-space noise measurement parameter leads to a limiting smoothing situation, from which the extent of noise can be estimated. The results indicate that noise constitutes approximately 10% of the raw signal: approximately 40 decibels. A comparison with low pass filter methods (Butterworth in particular) is made, although low pass filters are more suitable for assessing total signal noise. Full article

Using a generalized linear model to determine the claim frequency of auto insurance is a key ingredient in non-life insurance research. Among auto insurance rate-making models, there are very few considering auto types. Therefore, in this paper we are proposing a model that takes auto types into account by making an innovative use of the auto burden index. Based on this model and data from a Chinese insurance company, we built a clustering model that classifies auto insurance rates into three risk levels. The claim frequency and the claim costs are fitted to select a better loss distribution. Then the Logistic Regression model is employed to fit the claim frequency, with the auto burden index considered. Three key findings can be concluded from our study. First, more than 80% of the autos with an auto burden index of 20 or higher belong to the highest risk level. Secondly, the claim frequency is better fitted using the Poisson distribution, however the claim cost is better fitted using the Gamma distribution. Lastly, based on the AIC criterion, the claim frequency is more adequately represented by models that consider the auto burden index than those do not. It is believed that insurance policy recommendations that are based on Generalized linear models (GLM) can benefit from our findings. Full article

We study the effect of board governance in state-owned and private banks by undertaking a study of commercial banks in India that has both bank groups. Covering a ten-year period from 2003 to 2012 that witnessed a large number of governance reforms in India, the results of our empirical analysis provide evidence of strong ownership effects with board independence exhibiting a significant positive correlation with the performance of private banks and a significant but negative correlation with the performance of state-owned banks. The effect of CEO duality is negative in state-owned banks where incidence of CEO duality is high. We find that a longer CEO tenure has significant positive effects on bank outcomes with these effects strengthening in the later years of CEO tenure. Our results have governance implications for strengthening the composition of board of directors and CEO tenure especially in state-owned banks. Full article

Although one of the primary objectives of microfinance has been the reduction of poverty through the provision of credit for income-generating purposes, evidence of its impact on poverty has been mixed. Even if there is no direct impact of microfinance, there may be an indirect positive impact through the effect of microcredit availability on families’ decisions to invest in their children’s education. In this paper, I describe a study undertaken to gauge the impact of microcredit availability on education expenditures for children of clients of a South Indian microfinance institution. I first look at some determinants of the demand for education and then go on to consider what we know about how microcredit affects this demand. I find that microcredit has an impact on the demand for education as mediated by wealth effects and status effects, i.e., microloans increase spending on education the greater the wealth and the greater the social status of the family. Focus group interviews suggest that the impact of microcredit on the demand for education comes mainly from the greater access to financial resources and, to a lesser degree, from an accompanying appreciation of the value of education. Full article

After diversification, periodic portfolio rebalancing has become one of the most widely practiced methods for reducing portfolio risk and enhancing returns. Most of the rebalancing strategies found in the literature are generally regarded as contrarian approaches to rebalancing. A recent article proposed a rebalancing approach that incorporates a momentum approach to rebalancing. The momentum approach had a better risk adjusted return than either the traditional approach or a Buy-and-Hold approach. This article identifies an improvement to the momentum approach and then examines the impact of transactions costs and taxes on the portfolio performance of four active rebalancing approaches. Full article

This paper examines whether there is a causal relationship between bank loans and deposits in the Vietnamese banking system and the efficiency of the use of loans and deposits by the Vietnamese banks. In a country such as Vietnam, where inter-bank money markets are relatively underdeveloped, one would expect a reasonably strong relationship between deposits and loans. A pooled cross-sectional sample of financial ratios is collected from annual reports of 44 Vietnamese banks covering the period 2008–2015. The explanatory power of instrumental variables in relation to the endogenous variables is tested. A deterministic frontier model based on corrected ordinary least squares, estimated by three-stage least squares on a simultaneous equations model, is employed to derive the frontiers for the sampled banks as well as to estimate the causality between bank loans and deposits. Our findings suggest that, in an underdeveloped banking system such as Vietnam, bank deposits have a positive and significant impact on bank loans, but the reverse relationship is not significant. It is further suggested that in deposit-taking and loan-creating activities, Vietnamese banks performed moderately well over the period examined; however, in the near future, they should start to focus more on deposit-taking activities. Full article

This paper empirically examines the significance of credit ratings for optimal capital structure decisions. Non-financial Asian listed companies, evaluated by Standard and Poor’s, are selected from 2000 to 2016. Panel data analysis with pooled ordinary least square (OLS), fixed effect (FE), and generalized method of moment (GMM) estimation techniques are employed to test the effect of each credit rating scale on capital structure choices. For the problem of heteroskedasticity in OLS, the heteroskedastic white consistent variance is used for the best fit of the model. Findings of all estimation techniques show that the relationship between credit rating scales and leverage ratio is a non-linear inverted U shape. High- and low-rated companies have a low level of leverage, whereas mid-rated companies have a high level of leverage. It is evident that costs and benefits of each rating scale have a substantial effect on the behavior of a company’s choices for optimal capital structure. The study suggests that policymakers, investors, and financial officers should consider credit rating as an important measure of financing decisions. Full article

Previous research has assessed the impact of policy uncertainty on a few macro variables. In this paper, we consider its impact on oil prices. Oil prices are usually determined in global markets by the law of demand and supply. Our concern in this paper is to determine which country’s policy uncertainty measure has an impact on oil prices. Using both the linear and the nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) methods, we find that while policy uncertainty measures of Canada, China, Europe, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the U.S. have short-run effects, short-run effects last into the long-run asymmetric effects only in the case of China. This may reflect the importance and recent surge in China’s engagement in world trade. Full article

The maritime industry is one of those rare industries that are both highly international integrated to international trade and also highly capital intensive dependent on substantial investment amount. In the literature, ship investments have not been widely examined through the firm-level investment theories to explore the link between investment level and asset price valuation. The general trend in the literature of ship investments is to analyse the relationship among the shipping markets (newbuilding, second-hand, freight rate and scrap) and their impact on asset price valuation, the timing of investments and market entry and exit conditions. In this paper, we extensively reviewed the literature of firm-level investment theories and ship investments. We showed that the application of firm-level investment theories to the ship investments is confined to the basic investment valuation models, such as Net Present Value and Real Option Analysis. Ship investments need to be examined by firm-level investment theories to define firm/industry value maximization level within the approach of the solid investment theories. Full article

Modigliani and Miller present an equity-quantity shifting equilibrating process to achieve an optimal firm value in the presence of corporate taxes. However, in the era in which they derived their various propositions regarding the relation between a firm’s value and its capital structure, well-capitalized takeover specialists including private equity firms and sovereign funds did not exist, at least by today’s standards. In this paper we develop a simple arbitrage strategy, made viable by the presence of takeover firms, which presents an alternative equilibrating process to achieve the same optimal firm value. This alternative process is markedly different from that of the Modigliani and Miller theorem in terms of its predictions for debt use and restores the prospect of capital structure irrelevancy despite the existence of corporate taxes. Full article

In this paper, we investigate investment flows into mutual funds that hold more high corporate social responsible stocks (top CSR funds) vs. mutual funds that hold more low corporate social responsible stocks (bottom CSR funds). Using a large sample of equity mutual funds spanning 2003–2012, we find that top CSR funds on average receive about 5% less investment per annum compared to the other funds; whereas bottom CSR funds receive about 5.6% more investments. These relative negative and positive flows into the top and bottom CSR funds respectively were larger during the pre-financial crisis period (2003–2007). This trend, however, reversed during the financial crisis (2008–2009). Top CSR funds attracted about 8.7% more investments during the financial crisis compared to the pre-crisis period; whereas bottom CSR funds received about 9.8% less investment. This higher investment into the top CSR funds during the crisis seems to have disappeared during the post-crisis period (2009–2012). Additional analysis shows that the corporate social ratings of top CSR funds improved through the crisis, whereas it deteriorated for the bottom CSR funds. Our findings are consistent with the “flight to quality” phenomenon observed in financial markets during market crises, indicating that investors perceive top CSR fund investments as relatively safe or of higher quality and hence, invest more in them during financial crises. Full article

The global economic crisis and deep financialization processes recently suffered by the real estate market have exposed the latter to further and greater risks. Against this, the importance of real estate risk management has noticeably grown within the dynamics of both markets, real estate and finance. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to develop a comprehensive tool for the risk rating that will consider both the systematic and idiosyncratic risks possibly incurred during a real estate operation, in order to deliver their actual magnitude. It will be composed of 33 criteria whose weights are determined through the application of an analytic hierarchic process on a panel of market operators. This tool is primarily addressed to investors since it allows making strategic decisions while being supported by an analytical procedure that also ensures transparency of the conduct for the rating. An application of the presented tool within the decision-making procedure of the re-functionalization of a former barracks in Milan’s city center is then described; this case study will also constitute an opportunity to highlight the strong relationship that occurs between the profitability of an operation and the risk incurred. Full article

The problems of tax evasion and tax avoidance are as old as taxes themselves. Between 2015 and 2016 alone, many U.S. multinational corporations were involved in tax disputes with the European Commission. From a historical perspective, these disputes are unprecedented as they have resulted in tremendous amount of tax penalties. The most notable case was Apple for €13 billion of unpaid tax. This article discusses what tax strategies these corporations used that caused such disputes. It specifically investigates seven corporations: Apple Inc., McDonald’s, Starbucks, Fiat, Amazon, Google, and Ikea, and elaborates on the following tax strategies: high royalties, intercompany transfer pricing, intercompany loans, and source of income in a high-tech industry. This article also discusses the European Commission’s charges of tax evasion and how these corporations defend against them. When multinational corporations are operating abroad, they must observe not only domestic tax law but also international law. Full article

This study investigates whether conference calls accompanying M&A announcements in Europe provide valuable information for capital market participants and hence induce an abnormal stock price revaluation on the bidder’s equity. Based on handpicked data for transactions between 2008 and 2012 we focus on the five most acquisitive country markets in Europe. Overall, our results show that bidders are more likely to conduct conference calls with increasing transaction value, for transactions with public targets and non-diversifying transactions. Further, the decision for voluntary disclosure is positively influenced by increased bidder size and the comparably weaker governance systems for German and Swiss firms. After controlling for self-selection bias and other determinants of stock returns around mergers and acquisitions (M&A) announcement, evidence is in strong support that firms with merger-related conference calls yield a higher abnormal return than firms merely publishing a press release. However, significant favourable investor reaction is only present in the UK and French subsamples and in the subsamples of industries with a focus on research and development (R&D). Full article

The aim of this research was to explore one of the most intriguing dimensions of every firm’s business—its performance. Aside from analysing the influence of industry’s characteristics on the firm’s performance, the authors addressed the characteristics of dynamic capabilities and their role in contribution to the firm’s ultimate success. The analysis was conducted on a sample of 118 small Croatian manufacturing companies. The application of the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) approach revealed a statistically significant influence of both the industry’s characteristics (represented by Porter’s five forces framework) and dynamic capabilities (based on Teece’s theory) on the firm’s performance, where the influence of dynamic capabilities is proven to be larger than that of the industry. Full article