Applied Finance Letters (E-Journal - Auckland Centre for Financial Research)
Not a member yet
149 research outputs found
Sort by
Market Sentiment and Stock Splits: Differential Impacts in High and Low Sentiment Regimes
Full text linkThis study examines the impact of stock split events on abnormal returns, identifying significant effects both short-term and long-term. We find that market sentiment plays a crucial role, with abnormal returns being more pronounced during high sentiment periods. Our research highlights two key contributions: it emphasizes the importance of market sentiment in stock price reactions to corporate events and supports the signaling hypothesis, suggesting that management uses stock splits to convey positive information, especially when sentiment is high. These findings are valuable for investors and corporate managers considering the implications of stock splits
Auditor’s Reporting Change and Insider Trading Behavior: Evidence from Critical Audit Matters as an Exogenous Shock
Full text linkMandating the public reporting of Critical Audit Matters (CAMs) found during an audit changes when and how negative firm information is disclosed to market participants. These issues must be reported in the firm’s annual 10-K report starting in 2019. Relative to this regulatory change, we find that insiders at firms reporting CAMs purchase 50 million shares in the 60 days following a 10-K, doubling the amount purchased at these firms prior to the CAMs mandate. Consistent with our multivariate results, this implies that insiders change their trading patterns and purchase shares after the CAMs release date. There are also significant negative abnormal returns for purchases whose 90-day window overlaps with the CAMs release. This suggests that the market reacts negatively to CAMs information, and that insiders are utilizing their private knowledge of the forthcoming audit to shift their purchases to the period after CAMs are released to avoid significant negative returns
The Effect of Financial Stress on Bitcoin Volatility
Full text linkThis study contributes to the growing literature on the determinants of Bitcoin volatility by examining its relationship with financial stress. Building on prior research linking Bitcoin volatility to broader economic and financial uncertainty, we employ a combination of regression analysis, a GARCH-MIDAS framework, and a Vector Autoregression (VAR) model to evaluate both the static and dynamic effects of financial uncertainty on Bitcoin. Preliminary regression results indicate that financial stress measures significantly and negatively predict Bitcoin volatility. The GARCH-MIDAS model confirms these results, showing a strong negative impact of financial stress on the long-term component of volatility. VAR analysis further reveals that Bitcoin volatility decreases in response to shocks in financial stress indicators. These findings highlight Bitcoin’s sensitivity to systemic financial conditions and carry important implications for risk management among cryptocurrency traders, institutional investors, and financial regulators
CLIMATE RISK AND THE PREDICTABILITY OF JUMPS IN GREEN ASSETS
Full text linkThis paper shows that climate uncertainty can help predict the size and direction of intraday jumps in green assets, both in and out-of-sample. Using tick data to capture the size and intensity of intraday jumps, we find that news that relate to transition climate uncertainty including international summits and climate policy, particularly those that could be interpreted as bad news for brown industries, are the most dominant predictors of jumps in green assets compared to proxies of physical climate risks. Our findings provide a novel perspective to the role of climate uncertainty as a driver of idiosyncratic tail risk and jump innovations in green assets and imply that pricing models that incorporate jump risk as a risk factor can be improved by exploiting the predictive power of climate uncertainty over jump dynamics
THE EFFECTS OF LOCAL SHAREHOLDERS ON FIRM PERFORMANCE: EVIDENCE FROM CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY
Full text linkThis paper shows that local institutional shareholders tend to improve firm performance through corporate social investments. Using an extensive U.S. mutual fund-firm dataset, we find that local mutual funds tend to promote corporate social responsibility (CSR). In addition, the social investments are positively associated with firm performance. Finally, it is evident that CSR mediates the relation between local ownership and firm performance. Consistent with instrumental stakeholder theory, our findings suggest that local shareholders help firms develop reputational and relationship capital through CSR and lead to higher firm performance
INFECTIOUS DISEASE AND ASYMMETRIC INDUSTRIAL VOLATILITY
Full text linkWe examine the time-varying effect of stock market volatility due to infectious diseases on industrial sectorsin the US from 2012 to 2021. We extend the current literature by exploring the diverse impact of infectiousdiseases on various industrial sectors and decomposing industrial volatility into good and bad volatility toquantify how good and bad components vary in response to the transmission of shocks due to infectiousdiseases. The results show that the transmission of volatile shocks from the stock market more stronglyenhances the good component of industrial volatility as compared with bad volatility during COVID-19. Weconclude that the relationship between infectious disease equity market volatility and industrial volatilitydepends on the good and bad volatile components and their respective conditions at different quantiles
GEOPOLITICS, UNCERTAINTY, AND CRYPTOCURRENCY: A LOVE TRIANGLE GONE WRONG
No full textThis study aims to investigate the spillover effects from geopolitical risks (proxied by the geopolitical risk index GPRD) and cryptocurrencies-related uncertainty (proxied by the Cryptocurrency Uncertainty Index UCRY) to cryptocurrencies. We utilize the Baruník and Křehlík (2018) framework to detect time-frequency connectedness. Our investigation for the period 2017 to 2022 discovers significant spillover effects from both indices (GPRD and UCRY) to cryptocurrencies. Utilizing the information transmission theory and network graphs, our findings reveal that some cryptocurrencies function as net receivers of spillovers from geopolitical risks and uncertainty in the short-term, while over longer time horizons they transform into net transmitters of spillovers to uncertainty. The study underscores the importance of comprehending how uncertainty due to various factors (geopolitical, policy changes, regulatory changes, etc.) could affect the cryptocurrencies’ markets
OIL VOLATILITY-OF-VOLATILITY AND TAIL RISK OF COMMODITIES
Full text linkWe examine the information content of oil volatility-of-volatility (VOV), constructed from the past 1-month OVX (implied volatility in crude oil market), on the expected tail risk of commodities. Specifically, we find oil VOV predicts 1-step-ahead tail risks of Energy, Precious Metals, Agriculture, Livestock sectors and the Aggregate Commodity sector (GSCI) for both in-sample and out-of-sample. Our results indicate the important role of crude oil in overall commodity markets by incorporating forward-looking information of OVX. Our findings are robust and complement the strand of literature about the leading role of crude oil in commodity markets.  
INDEPENDENT DIRECTORS AND FIRM VALUE: NEW EVIDENCE FROM THE 2023 REGULATORY REFORM IN CHINA
Full text linkThis paper explores the “Measures for the Management of Independent Directors of Listed Companies” announced on August 4, 2023, for Chinese listed firms. We find that firms failing to meet the criteria in the Measures suffer losses in the stock market. The 2023 Measures exogenously increase the demand for qualified independent directors and incur high search costs for firms facing more labor market constraints
IMPACTS OF RISK PREFERENCE AND SOCIAL INSURANCE ON HOUSEHOLD FINANCIAL MARKET PARTICIPATION IN CHINA: ARE THERE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN URBAN AND RURAL RESIDENTS?
Full text linkThis letter examines the impact of risk preference and social insurance on household financial market participation and diversification using the 2017 and 2019 China Household Finance Survey. A multi-value treatment model is used to address the selection bias between risk preference and household financial investment, considering the moderation role of social insurance in between. Overall, our results show that high-risk takers are more likely to participate in the financial market and diversify their portfolios than low risk takers. Focusing on rural and urban differentials, we find marked differences in the impacts of risk preference and social insurance on household financial investment. Having social insurance may widen the difference in investment decisions between high- and low-risk takers in urban areas; the latter group tends not to participate in or diversify when socially insured. In contrast, having social insurance encourages low- and intermediate-risk preferred rural households to participate in the financial market and diversify their financial portfolios. Our work highlights the different consequences of social insurance on investment incentives of the rural and urban households. Whilst the obvious benefits of having social insurance for rural households via risk-sharing, there is undesired consequence of incentive distortion of urban households