Market Mispricing Research Articles

Investigating the Relationship Between ESG Performance and Market Capitalization

This study investigates the potential connection between a company's environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and its market capitalization within the Indian context. Utilizing a scatter plot analysis of a large dataset encompassing 693 companies, the research revealed a weak negative trend between ESG combined score and market capitalization. However, the significant dispersion of data points across the plot suggested a more complex relationship. The analysis acknowledged the limitations of scatter plots, particularly their inability to account for the influence of other factors on market valuation. Factors such as company size, financial performance, industry affiliation, and economic conditions might be playing a significant role. Additionally, the observed data dispersion hinted at potential market mispricing, where companies with strong ESG practices might be undervalued by investors, and industry-specific effects, where the impact of ESG on market value could be stronger in certain sectors. To gain a deeper understanding of this intricate relationship, future research directions were identified. These included analysing correlations between individual ESG subcomponents and market capitalization to identify specific areas with a stronger association. Segmenting the data by industry could reveal industry-specific effects. Furthermore, employing regression analysis can offer a more robust understanding of the relative influence of various factors on market valuation. Finally, a long-term perspective might be necessary to capture potential delayed effects of ESG practices on market value. By addressing these limitations and exploring these avenues, future research can contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the interplay between ESG performance and market valuation in the Indian market.

Biodiversity Risk, Firm Performance, and Market Mispricing

Biodiversity Risk, Firm Performance, and Market Mispricing

Environmental, social, and governance disclosure and capital market mispricing

AbstractWith the development of sustainability, ESG information has become a key factor for investors in capital market, but researches on the relationship between ESG disclosure and capital market efficiency has not been clear. Using the data of Chinese A‐share listed companies from 2011 to 2019, this study examined the relationship between ESG disclosure and market mispricing. The results showed that the higher ESG disclosure with lower level of mispricing, which was also verified in both the overvalued and undervalued samples. The test of environmental (E), social (S), and, governance (G) showed that environmental disclosure can restrain the over‐valuation, social disclosure can mitigate the under‐valuation, and corporate governance disclosure has no significant impact on the mispricing. In addition, this paper identified the effect of ESG disclosure on market mispricing by using exogenous market fluctuation. Furtherly, mechanism analysis results showed that ESG disclosure can affect pricing deviation through signaling and supervision effects.

Corporate investment sensitivity to equity market misvaluation

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of equity market misvaluation on manager behavior. Using a sample of 535 French-listed over 2000–2018, the authors analyze whether corporate investment decision is sensitive to equity market overvaluation.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopts market-to-book (M/B) decomposition developed by Rhodes-Kropf and Viswanathan (2004, RKV) that proxies for market misvaluation at the firm and industry levels. The authors conducted a long-term performance analysis via a portfolio sorting procedure and a Carhart (1997) four-factor pricing model. The authors tested the relationship between equity misvaluation, corporate investment decisions and equity issuance. The authors ran several robustness tests.FindingsThe empirical results show that equity market misvaluation affects corporate investment positively as the stock price deviates further away from its fundamental. Based on market timing theory, the authors find that corporate investment occurs in periods of high valuation motivated by equity issuance to benefit from the low cost of capital. This effect is more prominent for financially constrained firms. Consistent with the catering channel, the authors find that the misvaluation-investment nexus is more pronounced in firms with short-horizon investors. By examining the stocks’ long-term performance of misvalued firms, via a sorting portfolio procedure, the authors find that undervalued firms outperform and generate higher abnormal returns (Jensen’s alpha) than overvalued firms, suggesting that mispricing-driven investment appear to be short-lived and lead to lower return in the long term.Practical implicationsCorporate decision-makers and governance structures should pay attention to the rationality of the corporate investment decision in the context of equity market misvaluation. Managers who focus on maximizing the stock market value in the short-run at the expense of its long-term performance must give preference to value-creating investment, not driven by an external mechanism such as equity market mispricing. More generally, investors and portfolio managers must take into account the market mispricing process in decision-making. Nonetheless, from the portfolio sorting perspective, decision-makers must act in terms of high governance quality to mitigate suboptimal investment due to stock market mispricing (Jensen, 2005). Finally, equity market overvaluation, leading managers to invest via equity financing in particular, should be a signal to attract investors’ attention to seize the window of opportunity and embark on a short-term portfolio strategy. Such a strategy promises high returns in the short term.Originality/valueThis paper investigates jointly two theoretical channels: equity market timing and catering. The authors propose for the analysis three components of the M/B decomposition to dissociate market misvaluation at the firm and industry level from the fundamental component of market value (growth). This procedure provides a better understanding of the role of firm and industry misvaluation in explaining corporate investments. The authors provide evidence of the equity market misvaluation via a portfolio sorting procedure and a Carhart (1997) four-factor pricing model. The authors examine the effect of misvaluation on both the investment and the financing decisions.

Investor sentiment and futures market mispricing

We examine the effects of sentiment on mispricing in a highly liquid index futures market. Investor sentiment significantly affects futures mispricing, supporting its role in explaining price dynamics. Overly optimistic sentiment induces futures market overvaluation whereas pessimistic sentiment loses its explanatory power in undervaluation after controlling for trading activities and macroeconomic factors. The sentiment effect is more pronounced when noisy individual trading prevails.

Independent Corporate Governance Organ Busyness, Earnings Quality, And Market Mispricing: Evidence From Indonesia

This research aims to give empirical evidence of the impact of independent corporate governance organ's busyness on earnings quality and market mispricing. This research utilized a sample of non-financial firms. It investigated the effect of independent corporate governance organ's busyness on earnings management and earnings persistence using random-effect panel data regression. Furthermore, the Mishkin Test was used to investigate market mispricing. The results showed that the busyness of independent commissioners and independent audit committees had a positive effect on increasing the magnitude of earnings management and a negative impact on the persistence of the accrual component but did not cause market confusion in assessing the company's earnings components. Furthermore, it was discovered that the degree of independent director's business did not influence the magnitude of earnings management. Instead, it resulted in poor persistence of the accrual component and market uncertainty in assessing earnings components.

Market Mispricing Timing and Post-acquisition Performance: Evidence from Chinese A-share Firms

This study examines the impact of market mispricing timing on the short-term and long-term performance of acquiring firms in the context of China's capital market. Using a comprehensive dataset of A-share listed companies engaged in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) between 2007 and 2021, we investigate whether M&A activities conducted during periods of market overvaluation lead to enhanced short-term performance while failing to generate sustained long-term benefits. Our findings reveal that acquisitions executed during market overvaluation exhibit significantly improved short-term stock market performance, reflecting the alignment of merger announcements with optimistic investor sentiment. However, such positive effects on short-term performance do not extend to long-term outcomes. The study underscores the critical influence of market timing on the immediate post-acquisition performance of acquiring firms but highlights its limited impact on long-term financial and market performance. These insights contribute to a better understanding of M&A behavior within the Chinese capital market, demonstrating that while capitalizing on market mispricing can yield short-term advantages, sustainable long-term gains hinge on other factors beyond market timing.

Investor attention and IPO returns: evidence from Indian markets

PurposeThe regulatory design of Indian stock market provides us with the opportunity to disaggregate initial returns into two categories, i.e. voluntary premarket underpricing and post market mispricing. This study explores the impact of investor attention on the disaggregated short-run returns and long-run performance of initial public offerings (IPOs).Design/methodology/approachThe study employs regression techniques on the sample of IPOs listed from 2005 to 2019. It measures investor attention with the help of the Google Search Volume Index (GSVI) extracted from Google Trends. Along with GSVI, the subscription rate is used as a proxy to measure investor attention.FindingsThe empirical results suggest a positive and significant relationship between initial returns and investor attention, thus validating the attention theory for Indian IPOs. Furthermore, when the returns are analysed for a more extended period using buy-and-hold abnormal returns (BHARs), it was found that price reversal holds in the long run.Research limitations/implicationsThis study highlights the importance of information diffusion in the market. It emphasizes the behavioural tendency of the investors in the pre-market, which reduces the market efficiency. Hence, along with fundamentals, investor attention also plays an essential role in deciding the returns for an IPO.Originality/valueAccording to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies that has attempted to explore the influence of investor attention and its interplay with underpricing and long-run performance for IPOs of Indian markets.

Emotions and Market Mispricing

Emotions and Market Mispricing

Investor Sentiment and Futures Market Mispricing

Investor Sentiment and Futures Market Mispricing

The Social Welfare of Stock Market Mispricing

The Social Welfare of Stock Market Mispricing

Does environmental uncertainty of enterprises aggravate the accrual anomaly in the stock market? Evidence from China.

Enterprises do not exist independently of the external environment, so uncertainty affects their earnings volatility and exacerbates the information asymmetry between internal and external stakeholders. As a major manifestation of capital market mispricing, the accrual anomaly is caused by investors’ functional fixation on total surplus under information asymmetry. Against this backdrop, taking A-share listed companies in China from 2007 to 2019 as our research objects, this study explores the impact of environmental uncertainty on the accrual anomaly based on the information asymmetry and investor irrationality perspective. We find that environmental uncertainty enterprises facing exacerbates the accrual anomaly in the Chinese stock market, and internal control quality, state ownership and the media coverage will affect this impact. Furthermore, this study shows that there are three factors playing the mediating role in the effect, accounting information quality, investment growth and the investor attention. The results show that environmental uncertainty exacerbates the accrual anomaly driven by information manipulation, empire building and investor irrationality. Improving investor irrationality behavior and restraining the self-interest behavior of managers can help alleviate the mispricing of accruals caused by information asymmetry in psychology.

An overview of investor sentiment: Identifying themes, trends, and future direction through bibliometric analysis

Investor sentiment is the result of trading behavior and irrational beliefs of investors leading to high volatility and market mispricing. This review aims to study the entire spectrum of articles in the domain of investor sentiment using a bibliometric analysis approach. To this end, the study analyzes a total of 1,919 articles published in the Scopus database between 1979 and 2022. The review uncovers major themes, leading authors, influencing articles, trend topics, top contributing countries, and affiliations. The review shows that the research in the domain of investor sentiment is growing exponentially with an annual growth rate of 15.88%, and the year 2020 witnessed the highest number of scientific productions accounting for 252 (13.68%) total publications. The results display that the USA and China are leading countries in terms of the total contribution and volume of studies from respective authors. The review also reveals that existing research in the field has mainly focused on themes such as market efficiency, asset pricing, stock returns, sentiment analysis, IPO underpricing, overreaction, and volatility, whereas Covid-19 and Bitcoin depicted as emerging themes from recent scholarly works.

The impact of analyst forecast errors on fundamental indexation: the Australian evidence

Evidence from many developed markets suggests that fundamental indices outperform capitalisation-weighted indices. Existing studies suspect a story of market mispricing, yet a mechanism has not been identified. Using Australian data, we study the relation between analyst forecast errors and the performance of various fundamental indices. We find that fundamental indices contain a relatively higher exposure to stocks with low analyst long-term growth forecasts. Valuations for these stocks are ex ante overly pessimistic and drive the statistical significance of alphas produced by fundamental indexation. We show how hedging against analyst forecast errors can generate additional alpha for investors using fundamental indexation.

The Role of Accruals Anomaly on Stock Market Return of Non-Financial Firms Listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange

The accrual anomaly arises due to the market mispricing of the total accruals and their components and the investors fail to incorporate the differential persistence of the cash flow components and accruals of firm earnings. This study sought to determine the effect of accruals anomaly on stock market return of non-financial firms listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange. The study adopted positivism as data collection and hypothesis development and testing was achieved. The study used quantitative research design to correlate study variables using mathematical analysis methods. Correlation results indicate that accrual anomaly was negatively and significantly associated to stock market return of non-financial firms. Regression results for the static model indicate that accrual anomaly and stock market return of non-financial firms is negatively and significantly related. The results for the dynamic model indicate that accrual anomaly and stock market return is negatively and significantly related. The study concluded that accruals anomaly has a negative and significant effect on stock market return in non-financial firms on the Nairobi Securities Exchange. The analysis concluded that the accrual anomaly has implications because firms with high reported accruals exhibit lower stock market returns. High valuations of the investors are related to accruals because of the accounting distortions. The study recommends that having knowledge regarding accrual toward stock return in the future will help the investors to minimize the earning prediction error so that investors can make appropriate decision making. The study recommends for the investors to implement the investment strategy, which to short (sell) low accrual stocks and long (buy) high accrual stocks in Nairobi Securities Exchange with prediction that the stock gains higher return in the future based on the prevailing investor projections. Keywords: Accruals Anomaly, Stock Market Return & Non-Financial Firms Listed

Persistence of investor sentiment and market mispricing

AbstractWe investigate changes in US market sentiment using structural break analysis over a period of five decades. We show that investor sentiment was trending and nonstationary from 1965 to 2001, a period associated with numerous crashes. Since 2001, sentiment has been substantially more mean reverting, implying the diminished effect of noise investors and their associated mispricing. We illustrate how these changes in sentiment persistence affect equity anomalies and assess the predictive power of sentiment on short‐run returns when regime changes are considered. Our findings suggest that the presence of sentiment‐driven investors and their market impact is significantly time‐variant.

Timing the volatility risk of beta anomaly: Evidence from hedge fund strategies

Hedge funds are known to engage in the betting-against-beta (BAB) strategy arising from beta-anomaly-related market mispricing. This paper examines if equity-oriented hedge funds time the volatility risk when executing the BAB strategy. We apply realised and downside volatility risk measures to assess the BAB strategy. We show that for top volatility risk timers, older funds tend to be better risk timers, while among the bottom volatility risk timers, younger and larger-sized funds stand out as stronger timers of BAB volatility. We observe that the Long/Short Equity funds show evidence as the strongest volatility risk timers of BAB strategy when the market condition turned bad. This is supported by their other effective timing strategies at the same time, including timing the market sentiment. Our findings provide important references for private investors when selecting hedge funds as risk management is crucial to the success/failure of any investments.

Forecasting Skills in Experimental Markets: Illusion or Reality?

There is an ongoing debate regarding the degree to which a forecaster’s ability to draw correct inferences from market signals is real or illusory. This paper attempts to shed light on the debate by examining how personal characteristics do or do not affect forecaster success. Specifically, we investigate the role of fluid intelligence, manipulativeness, and theory of mind on forecast accuracy in experimental asset markets. We find that intelligence improves forecaster performance when market mispricing is low, manipulativeness improves forecaster performance when mispricing is high, and the degree to which theory of mind skills matter depends on both the level of mispricing and how information is displayed. All three of these results are consistent with hypotheses derived from the previous literature. Additionally, we observe that male forecasters outperform female forecasters after controlling for intelligence, manipulativeness, and theory of mind skills as well as risk aversion. Interestingly, we do not find any evidence that forecaster performance improves with experience across markets or within markets.This paper was accepted by Axel Ockenfels, behavioral economics and decision analysis.

Europe, public debts, and safe assets: the scope for a European Debt Agency

The Covid-19 crisis has radically changed the game for world and EU-economies, and urged for a reappraisal of the guidelines for a healthy management of public expenditure. This requires a deep rethinking of the role of public debt in modern capitalistic economies and of efficient, equitable and politically viable ways of financing it. This paper outlines the main operating framework of a Debt Agency tasked with the management of the Eurozone sovereign debts and the creation of a truly European safe asset. The framework leverages on the potential irredeemable nature of sovereign debts in order to build a common bond. By structurally filtering liquidity risk, the Debt Agency can price the Member States’ funding costs by referring only to their credit risk, as defined by EU agreed rules. The common bond issued by the Debt Agency thus avoids mutualisation by design; hence, it can be directly bought by the ECB. Due to its structural intertemporal sustainability, the Debt Agency’s framework delineated in this paper can serve as a benchmark for institutional and political decisions. In this perspective, a counterfactual exercise has been conducted in order to evaluate the future potential impact of the Debt Agency as well as the past distortions in market pricing of Member States’ fundamental risk due to market mispricing of the liquidity risk.

The dynamics of the house price‐to‐income ratio: Theory and evidence

AbstractThe house price‐to‐income ratio (PIR) is widely used as an affordability indicator. This paper complements the cross‐sectionally focused literature by proposing a tractable model for the PIR dynamics. Our model predicts that the PIR is very persistent and is correlated to the lagged aggregate output. Cross‐country analysis confirms this prediction and provides evidence for a long‐term, positive, and significant relationship between PIR and aggregate production. Our results hint at the construction of an early warning system for housing market mispricing. Our tractable formulation of a stochastic money growth rule may carry independent research interest.