Finance Literature (finance + literature)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Corporate Governance and Capital Structure Decisions of the Chinese Listed Firms

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2002
Yu Wen
This paper studies the relationship between some characteristics of the corporate board and the firm's capital structure in Chinese listed firms. The findings provide some preliminary empirical evidence and seem to suggest that managers tend to pursue lower financial leverage when they face stronger corporate governance from the board. However, the empirical results of the relationships are statistically significant only in the case of the board composition and the CEO tenure. The results are statistically insignificant in the case of the board size and fixed CEO compensation. This may in general suggest that, up to the time period of our investigation, the corporate board structures and processes in Chinese listed firms might not as yet be fully working in the manner, or as well, as might have been so far assumed on the basis of Western theoretical finance literature. [source]


International real interest rate differentials, purchasing power parity and the behaviour of real exchange rates: the resolution of a conundrum

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FINANCE & ECONOMICS, Issue 1 2004
Mark P. Taylor
Abstract According to one strand of the international finance literature, market efficiency implies that the real exchange rate follows a martingale process, in direct conflict with the long-run absolute purchasing power parity hypothesis, which requires a stationary real exchange rate process. This conflict between market efficiency and long-run PPP appears as something of a conundrum. We resolve this conundrum by relaxing the assumption of a constant real interest rate differential and analysing the vector equilibrium correction system linking prices and the exchange rate, and draw out the economic intuition of our result. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Stochastic Volatility in a Macro-Finance Model of the U.S. Term Structure of Interest Rates 1961,2004

JOURNAL OF MONEY, CREDIT AND BANKING, Issue 6 2008
PETER D. SPENCER
affine term structure model; macro finance; unit root; stochastic volatility This paper generalizes the standard homoscedastic macro-finance model by allowing for stochastic volatility, using the "square root" specification of the mainstream finance literature. Empirically, this specification dominates the standard model because it is consistent with the square root volatility found in macroeconomic time series. Thus it establishes an important connection between the stochastic volatility of the mainstream finance model and macro-economic volatility of the Okun,Friedman type. This research opens the way to a richer specification of both macro-economic and term structure models, incorporating the best features of both macro-finance and mainstream finance models. [source]


On the Asymmetric Volatility of Employment Outflows

LABOUR, Issue 4 2002
Gareth Leeves
Recent research into job flow dynamics highlights the asymmetry in aggregate employment adjustment. This has implications for patterns of worker flow adjustment. This paper draws upon modelling strategies developed in the applied finance literature to characterize the asymmetry of aggregate employment outflow volatility. It is found that higher employment outflow volatility is associated with negative shocks, when the outflow is lower than expected. This, it is suggested, could be associated with the dynamic processes linking the hiring and turnover of workers. [source]


Economic Evaluation of Scale Dependent Technology Investments

PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT, Issue 1 2005
Phillip J. Lederer
We study the effect of financial risk on the economic evaluation of a project with capacity decisions. Capacity decisions have an important effect on the project,s value through the up-front investment, the associated operating cost, and constraints on output. However, increased scale also affects the financial risk of the project through its effect on the operating leverage of the investment. Although it has long been recognized in the finance literature that operating leverage affects project risk, this result has not been incorporated in the operations management literature when evaluating projects. We study the decision problem of a firm that must choose project scale. Future cash flow uncertainty is introduced by uncertain future market prices. The firm's capacity decision affects the firm's potential sales, its expected price for output, and its costs. We study the firm's profit maximizing scale decision using the CAPM model for risk adjustment. Our results include that project risk, as measured by the required rate of return, is related to the inverse of the expected profit per unit sold. We also show that project risk is related to the scale choice. In contrast, in traditional discounted cash flow analysis (DCF), a fixed prescribed rate is used to evaluate the project and choose its scale. When a fixed rate is used with DCF, a manager will ignore the effect of scale on risk and choose suboptimal capacity that reduces project value. S/he will also misestimate project value. Use of DCF for choosing scale is studied for two special cases. It is shown that if the manager is directed to use a prescribed discount rate that induces the optimal scale decision, then the manager will greatly undervalue the project. In contrast, if the discount rate is set to the risk of the optimally-scaled project, the manager will undersize the project by a small amount, and slightly undervalue the project with the economic impact of the error being small. These results underline the importance of understanding the source of financial risk in projects where risk is endogenous to the project design. [source]


A Measure of Fundamental Volatility in the Commercial Property Market

REAL ESTATE ECONOMICS, Issue 4 2003
Shaun A. Bond
The low level of volatility observed in appraisal-based commercial property indices relative to other asset classes has been frequently noted and extensively commented on in the real estate finance literature. However, the volatility of such commercial property indices is only one source of information on the second moment of commercial property returns. The volatility of securitized property returns forms another potential source of information, though there is some uncertainty about how closely the volatility of securitized returns may match the volatility of the underlying asset. Each measure of volatility has a potential source of noise associated with it. This paper proposes a fundamental measure of volatility for the commercial property market by using a stochastic volatility model to filter out the signal in the different sources of volatility information. This allows for different measures of volatility to be decomposed into transitory noise and unobserved fundamental volatility. The suitability of such an approach and the properties of the underlying fundamental volatility series are analyzed using data from the U.K. property market. [source]


Linking Product Development Outcomes to Market Valuation of the Firm: The Case of the U.S. Pharmaceutical Industry,

THE JOURNAL OF PRODUCT INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 5 2004
Anurag Sharma
The purpose of this research was to examine empirically the effects of new product development outcomes on overall firm performance. To do so, first product development and finance literature were connected to develop three testable hypotheses. Next, an event study was conducted in order to explore whether the changes in the stock market valuation of firms are influenced by the outcomes of efforts to develop new products. The pharmaceutical industry was chosen as the empirical context for the present study's analysis largely because the gate-keeping role played by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provides a specific event date on which to focus the event study methodology. As such, this study's events were dates of public announcements of the FDA decisions to approve or to reject the New Drug Applications submitted by the sponsoring firms. Consistent with the efficient market hypothesis, this study's results show that market valuations are responsive strongly and cleanly to the success or failure of new product development efforts. Hence, one of this study's key results suggests that financial markets may be attuned sharply to product development outcomes in publicly traded firms. This study also finds that financial market losses from product development failures were much larger in magnitude than financial market gains from product development successes,indicating an asymmetry in the response of financial markets to the success and failure of new product development efforts. Hence, another implication of this study's results is that managers should factor in a substantial risk premium when considering substantial new development projects. The present study's results also imply that managers should refrain from hyping new products and perhaps even should restrain the enthusiasm that the financial community may build before the product fully is developed. The effect on firm value is severe when expectations about an anticipated new product are not fulfilled. Managers in effect should take care to build reasonable and realistic expectations about potential new products. [source]