In the 1980s, the first doubts about the validity of the Sharpe Single Index Model to explain the cross-sectional expected returns of financial assets appeared. Since then, the financial literature has proposed a wide variety of new factors, while many empirical studies have tried to determine their plausibility. In this paper, we present a new approach from the Random Matrix Theory to determine if

This paper examines whether CEO (Chief Executive Officer) career concerns affect ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investments and finds a positive relationship between them. More specifically, we find empirical evidence that CEOs with shorter tenure, more outside opportunities, and more long-term oriented compensation structure are more likely to invest in ESG investments as they have greater

This paper investigates whether climate risk and climate policy uncertainty (CPU) have traditional linear or complicated non-linear impacts on insurance demand. We find evidence that both phenomena exist. Linear model shows positive effect of climate risk and negative effect of CPU on insurance demand. However, climate risk and CPU are interdependent, non-linear analysis demonstrates that CPU acts

This paper investigates the impact of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance on corporate dividend policy. We employ a panel data set comprised of 1,094 non-financial listed firms in 21 European countries from 2002 to 2019. We show that companies with higher ESG performance are likely to pay higher dividends. Our results are robust to alternative variable definitions and specifications

Previous research on board diversity and firms’ innovation reported mixing results depending on the country studied. This paper is the first to investigate the association between three dimensions of board diversity: gender, education and tenure, and the innovation output of Canadian firms. We find that firms that have more than twenty-five percent of the board members as women are more innovative

This study examines the impact of mandatory CSR regulation on the innovations of Indian firms using the CSR regulation implemented in 2014 as a quasi-natural experiment setting. By employing the Difference in Differences approach, we show that CSR regulation positively impacted firm innovations, proxied using R&D intensity. Moreover, the results remain robust for various specifications and sample selection

Cryptocurrency has become an increasingly important tool in both portfolio investment and government regulation. As a relatively new asset class, cryptocurrencies are prone to extreme volatility, with the potential for significant downward movements over the short term. This paper uses MES and △CoVaR to forecast the systemic risk in the cryptocurrency market and subsequently tests the validity based

We examine the impact of mandatory environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure on firms’ default risk. Using a comprehensive sample of 17 emerging countries, we empirically show that firms subject to the mandatory ESG regulation have decreased default risk subsequent to the mandate. This result is consistent with the argument that implementation of mandatory ESG disclosure improves corporate

A large number of modern practices in financial forecasting rely on technical analysis, which involves several heuristics techniques of price charts visual pattern recognition as well as other technical indicators. In this study, we aim to investigate the potential use of those technical information (candlestick information as well as technical indicators) as inputs for machine learning models, especially

This study examines the association between product recall and CEO compensation. Using a sample of U.S. automobile industry product recalls from 1999 to 2018, we find that product recalls have significant negative impacts on CEO compensation. Our findings hold after controlling for the common determinants of CEO compensation, such as firms’ stock market and operating performance and CEO-specific characteristics

Using the ‘Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code’ (IBC) in India, we show that, despite an increase in the supply of credit, IBC led to a higher reduction in the secured debt of the high tangibility firms compared to the low tangibility firms. We also find that secured debt was substituted with other sources like equity, retained earnings, and accounts payable; more cash was held back. Our findings suggest

We examine the relation between geopolitical risk and the cost of bank loans using a sample of 31,004 loan facilities in the US over the period 1991–2019. We show that geopolitical risk is associated with higher loan prices and more stringent nonprice loan terms. With one standard deviation increase in the geopolitical risk index, the average cost of bank loans increases by 7.253 basis points. Delving

We provide new evidence of sign-asymmetry in dividend payout policy in the postwar period in the U.S. Using a nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag model, we show that managers: (i) smooth the time-path of dividends relative to earnings; (ii) target a higher long-run payout ratio when earnings increase than when they decrease; and (iii) cut dividends faster than they raise dividends. Our findings

Our paper investigates the effect of economic policy uncertainty on investment by chaebol and non-chaebol firms in Korea. We find that while both types of firms reduce investment during high-policy-uncertainty periods, chaebol firms do so more aggressively than non-chaebols. The negative effect of uncertainty on investment is exacerbated in chaebol firms that are financially constrained, face a higher

The Covid-19 Pandemic has increased the attention paid to money market funds. Using Covid-19 cases and a measure of lockdowns, shutdowns, etc., we analyze if money market fund investors and managers responded to the intensity of the pandemic. We ask whether or not the Federal Reserve implementation of the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility (MMLF) had an effect on market participant behavior

In this paper, we use the multilateral price approach to eliminate the numéraire effect and then examine whether gold and conventional safe haven currencies can serve as safe haven against crude oil in extreme market conditions. The estimation results show that safe haven currencies outperform gold in terms of the refuge for crude oil during market turmoil. Specifically, the US dollar, the Swiss franc

Abstract not available

The main contribution of this paper is the derivation of the asymptotic behaviour of the out-of-sample variance, the out-of-sample relative loss, and of their empirical counterparts in the high-dimensional setting, i.e., when both ratios p/n and p/m tend to some positive constants as m→∞ and n→∞, where p is the portfolio dimension, while n and m are the sample sizes from the in-sample and out-of-sample

In this study, we explore whether and to what extent Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors impact banks’ funding costs. Using a sample composed of 493 banks located in 39 advanced and emerging economies over the 2003-2020 period, we find that banks benefit from incorporating ESG practices into financial decisions, enjoying lower costs of raising interest-bearing liabilities (total cost

Recent studies report muted price reactions to large dividend increases, attributing the phenomenon to the fact that these events are part of volatile dividend streams and are followed by dividend cuts. I find that the price also reacts slower to large dividend increases, suggesting the price effects of these events are more uncertain than small dividend increases. Further analysis shows that large

Using a sample of international equity markets over the period 2001-2020, this paper aims to empirically investigate the implications in terms of asset allocation and the key properties of kurtosis-based strategies compared to the more traditional volatility-based strategies for financial portfolios construction. Furthermore, the contribution demonstrates that the portfolio recommended by the novel

This paper introduces a model-free connectedness approach by constraining the model-based connectedness approach of Diebold and Yilmaz (2012). By doing so, we demonstrate how the adoption of this benchmark model is relevant for statistical, theoretical, and practical purposes as well as illuminate analytical relations that have previously been observed only empirically. Moreover, we investigate eight

We use returns across 13 African stock markets to perform factor-spanning tests. Contradicting US-based results, HML is not redundant in the five-factor model, UMD generates a reliable alpha in the Q-based regression, and the mispricing-purged SMB does not consistently dominate the other SMB factors. Because they cannot explain HML and UMD, the Q and Q5 models do not subsume the five- and six-factor

YouTube content drives prices and trading volume of low cap cryptocurrencies. Using a sample of 305 YouTube videos, we find significant positive abnormal returns as well as abnormal trading volume in the wake of the coverage of a specific coin. These effects are transitory though, excess returns and excess volume are reversed shortly thereafter.

This paper mainly checks the predictability of geopolitical risk (GPR) from export and import oil countries for oil futures volatility using dynamic model average and dynamic model selection methods. Empirical results show that information of GPR indices of both export and import oil countries can predict oi futures volatility. Applying DMA and DMS models can further improve the forecasting accuracy

We analyze the predictive content of climate risks, proxied by change in global temperature anomaly and its volatility, on a dummy variable capturing periods of zero and negative growth rates of eight industrialized countries. In this regard, we apply a Probit model to longest possible historical datasets available for these countries covering 1311 till 2020, and control for inflation and interest

This paper assesses the impact of the new strong customer authentication (SCA) requirements introduced by the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) on the security of remote payments in Italy. We find that the regulation was effective in improving remote payments security, saving consumers several million euros in terms of less fraud on online transactions. Using a model for panel data, we estimate

We revisit a recent article, Kim et al. (2022) Finance Research Letters, vol.45,102146, exploring factors influencing the likelihood of margin trading and margin call for retail investors. We demonstrate that use of a more representative sample and consideration of factors, such as allowing brokers to trade for clients and fee structures, produce estimates different from Kim et al. We find that investors

This study investigates the impacts of the macroeconomic variables and global economic policy uncertainty (GEPU) on gold futures return predictability using a simple regression. We find that few macroeconomic variables (e.g., inflation) can significantly have impact on gold futures excess returns. Out-of-sample results indicate that inflation can increase the forecast accuracy compared to other strategies

Following strong regulations such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), privacy protection in the financial sector has recently emerged as an urgent issue. To manage the privacy risk in robo-advisor, a representative fintech service, we propose a novel framework that allows robo-advisors to offer the optimal portfolio while complying with the privacy of their customers by encrypting

This study investigates the impact of earnings management (EM) on the efficiency of Working Capital Management (WCM) and its components. The study uses M-Score, based on the Beneish Model, as a proxy for EM and applies generalized method of moments and panel quantile regression methods to a sample of 461 Indian-listed firms. We find that EM may inversely influence the WCM efficiency of Indian firms

This research examines the associations between two of the most interesting disclosure characteristics of annual reports and information asymmetry. It illustrates that the length of annual reports is negatively associated with information asymmetry. By contrast, our research shows that an improvement in the readability of annual reports does not positively affect information asymmetry among investors

Dual-class capital structures create a gap (“wedge”) between voting and cash flow rights. Our analysis indicates that the larger the wedge, the higher the quality of financial reporting, reflecting a tradeoff between the dilution of voting rights and enhancement of the credibility of information provided to investors. It suggests that increasing management’s insulation from the market for corporate

We find a negative relationship between overnight and daytime returns on the Korean equity market. Overnight returns are positively (negatively) and nonlinearly associated with subsequent daytime returns when the overnight news is relatively good (bad). Trades by individual investors respond negatively to overnight returns, whereas those by domestic and foreign institutional investors exhibit positive-feedback

The efficiency of the Fintech market is still an unverified issue. We aim to investigate the Fintech market efficiency for four S&P Kensho Fintech indices using the multifractal detrended fluctuation analysis (MF-DFA) method. All indices except one are found to be inefficient based on the joint hypothesis tests. We also find combinations of autocorrelation and/or extreme values as the main causes of

This study examines the impact of two critical events, the introduction of Bitcoin futures and the COVID-19 pandemic, on Bitcoin's returns and volatility. We find that the inception of Bitcoin futures (positively) impacts its returns in the spot market while no significant interaction occurs for volatilities. The pandemic does not seem to influence Bitcoin's returns or volatility, which is consistent

We examine the connectedness between CBDC uncertainty, cryptocurrency policy uncertainty (UCRY policy), cryptocurrency price uncertainty (UCRY price), and digital payment stock returns and volatility using data from November 20, 2015, to December 30, 2022. We find CBDC uncertainty is a net recipient, while UCRY policy and UCRY price are net transmitters. Most digital payment stocks are net recipients

We estimate short-term capital-market effects of unionization efforts at publicly-listed firms and their subsidiaries in the United States between 2011 and 2019. Our short-horizon event study reports significant negative average cumulative abnormal returns at the public announcement of successful union election certifications. Our results suggest that, on average, the market perceives successful unionization

This paper considers pricing multi-step double barrier options. The non-crossing probability for a multi-step double boundary is vital in valuing the options. We extend an explicit formula for the non-crossing probability using the solutions to the relevant Fokker-Plank equations. The derived formula not only provides a new look at the non-crossing probability but also outperforms the existing probability

We investigate the impact of Asset Purchase Programs by 14 EME central banks during COVID-19, finding a statistically significant effect in compressing bond spreads vis-à-vis the US. A counterfactual analysis shows that without APPs, EME bond spreads would have been higher. Country-specific VAR impulse response functions indicate that a shock imposed on asset purchases becomes persistent on bond spreads

We provide an innovative application of explainable artificial intelligence to economic panel data. We apply boosted trees in combination with Shapley values to achieve post-model explanations. As a benchmark, we assess a pooled regression approach to discuss the economic information content of interpretable machine learning. The investigated data set comprises daily Value-at-Risk figures of 594 American

The loan standards question in the Federal Reserve's quarterly Senior Loan Officer Survey is shown to be predictive of quarterly stock returns a month or two after its release. This is an apparent violation of semi-strong form stock market efficiency. Out-of-sample, we use this signal and develop a simple risk and alpha model to market time the S&P 500. It outperformed the S&P 500 with a Sharpe (1966)

We analyse micro-level data concerning four financial variables in Sveriges Riksbank's Prospera Survey to evaluate the precision of forecasts provided by professionals active in the Swedish fixed-income market. Our results indicate that for the SEK/EUR and SEK/USD exchange rates, and the five-year government bond yield, none of the market participants that frequently participate in the survey manage

We study the effects of hedge fund manager’s ambiguity aversion for jump and diffusion risks on the leverage policy under a high-water mark contract. We find that the jump risk has an inverted U-shaped effect on the leverage choice, which can be explained by the variance effect and skewness effect. Our result also indicates that diffusion ambiguity aversion has a larger negative impact on leverage

Unlike existing studies that mostly focus on investors’ biased behavior in explaining the lottery-related anomaly, our study highlights the importance of CEO overconfidence for the anomaly. We propose that CEO overconfidence could enhance investors’ confidence in the stock's price even if the stock exhibits lottery-like payoffs. As a result, lottery stocks with overconfident CEOs are less prone to

This paper incorporates high-frequency information to measure systemic risk. Under the Multivariate Realized GARCH framework, we compute the CoVaR measure using a multivariate skew-t distribution. Using 5-minute data of 98 U.S. financial institutions from 2000 to 2022, we show the empirical improvement of the high-frequency measurement. We also investigate the relationship between institutions’ systemic

This paper examines the effect of individual investors’ dividend tax on stock price crash risk. By introducing the implementation of dividend tax reform (DTR) for individual investors, we present strong evidence that the reduction of the individual investors' dividend tax reduces the stock price crash risk. Mechanism analysis shows that DTR reduces the stock price crash risk by enhancing investor supervision

The Quantile connectedness approach, which allows for a detailed scrutinization of the connectedness, to analysis the connectedness for oil price and BRICS stock markets. Russia and South Africa plays the net transmitting roles, and similar evidence is obtained in Brazil after 2010. Brent oil, India, and Shanghai are net recipients for most time. The extent of the connectedness is further stronger

This study examines how investor trading behavior changes following environmental, social, and governance (ESG) controversies by analyzing textual news data. We use deep-learning-based natural language processing to classify news articles into specific categories of controversy. ESG controversies generally increase investors’ trading activities regardless of their type, while their reactions differ

The paper explores the effects of different religion groups on portfolio investment decisions for the case of UK households both in terms of mean and the volatility of such choices. The findings illustrate that certain groups (Catholics, Buddhists and Others/Atheists) favor investments in risky assets, while they increase the associated volatility. The results support the undertaking of higher speculative

Portfolio optimization can lead to misspecified stock returns that follow a known distribution. To investigate tractable formulations of the portfolio selection problem, we study these problems with the ambiguity set defined by the Wasserstein metric. Robust optimization with Wasserstein models protects against ambiguity in the distribution when analyzing decisions. This study considers portfolio optimization

In this paper, we construct a new measure of FinTech adoption based on textual analysis and examine how product market competition affects FinTech adoption at the firm level. We document that firms operating in more competitive environments have a higher incentive to adopt FinTech, especially when they produce similar products as their competitors. We also find that the positive relation between competition

This paper ameliorates the existing empirical literature on the oil-stock nexus in three ways. First, we expand the literature on return-volatility interactions by adding non-linear dimensions to it. Second, we propose a threshold VAR asymmetric GARCH-in-mean (TVAR-AGARCH-M) model to examine the mean-spillover and return-volatility associations under heterogeneous market conditions of bull and bear

We show that aggregate insider trading (AIT) in the S&P 500 is a reliable predictor of the U.S. equity premium, while AIT outside the S&P 500 seems to be uninformative. In an international setting, we find that AIT based on S&P 500 insiders predicts international equity premia. Contrary to our U.S. based measure of AIT, we do not find any predictive content of domestic AIT for international equity

This study examines the relationship between strategic deviation and idiosyncratic return volatility (IRV). Using a large sample of U.S. public firms, we find that firms that strategically deviate from industry peers are related to higher IRV. This relationship is weaker for firms with transparent information environments and better corporate governance. Robustness tests show that our results are not

Empirical studies show that quite a few firms that initially filed for Chapter 11 were converted to Chapter 7 by bankruptcy judges, and that the conversion rate differs across judges. This study examines a firm’s optimal financial decisions when it is exposed to forced conversion. We find that forced conversion decreases shareholders’ incentives to invest and reduces the optimal leverage ratio. We

The COVID-19 pandemic increased people’s propensity for precautionary savings in response to economic recession (e.g., Mody et al., 2012; Gropp and McShane, 2021; Levine et al., 2021). However, as the relevant vaccine roll-out continues, it mitigates people’s concerns and boosts the macroeconomy, which leads to significant declines in household precautionary saving motives. Consistent with this expectation

Climate policy uncertainty is a widely used measure of climate risk based on policy fronts. On the other hand, energy metals offer avenues for the use of clean, green, and sustainable energy to combat the environmental hazards and reduce carbon footprint. Following this, the current study aims to investigate the relationship between climate policy uncertainty and energy metals through a novel technique

It has been established that in a standard two-country asset pricing model the usage of a privately-issued crypto-asset as a global means of payment leads to the enforced synchronization of nominal interest rates, and hence to a loss of monetary policy autonomy. This paper uses the same framework to show that an identical result obtains in a world in which central banks issue digital currencies (CBDC)

Abstract not available