Proxy For Investors Research Articles

A comparison of analysts’ and investors’ information efficiency of corporate social responsibility activities

Purpose This paper aims to examine the extent to which sell-side analysts efficiently incorporate firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities into their earnings forecasts. In addition, this paper also investigate the CSR information efficiency of analysts vis-à-vis that of investors. Design/methodology/approach This paper measures CSR activities by using CSR strength and CSR concern scores from the Morgan Stanley Capital International Environmental, Social and Governance database. This paper uses analysts’ earnings forecast errors and dispersion as proxies for their information efficiency. To compare the CSR information efficiency of analysts to that of investors, this paper uses the Vt/Pt ratio, which is the equity value estimates inferred from analysts’ earnings forecasts (a proxy for analysts’ CSR information efficiency) to the stock price of the focal company (a proxy for investors’ CSR information efficiency). Findings The regression analysis indicates that analysts’ earnings forecasts are optimistically biased and more dispersed for firms with positive CSR activities. The paper also finds that analysts’ forecasts are more optimistically biased than investors in interpreting CSR activities. Practical implications The lack of standardized protocols in CSR reporting and activities has raised the risk of mispricing by analysts, threatening the stability of sustainable investments. This paper suggests that regulators and standard-setters should establish a uniform framework governing firms’ CSR activities, along with their reporting and measurement, to ensure more consistent and reliable evaluations of CSR practices. Social implications Analysts’ mispricing of CSR activities may distort sustainable investing, as it can overly focus on the positive impacts of stakeholder theory, overlooking agency theory’s warnings about managerial self-interest. Investors need to assess CSR efforts with a dual perspective, acknowledging their societal value but also examining their alignment with shareholder interests. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to assess the efficiency of analysts versus investors in processing CSR information amidst growing sustainable investment interests. Furthermore, building on Dhaliwal et al. (2012), which found that voluntary CSR disclosures correlate with more accurate analyst forecasts, this research provides fresh perspectives on the evolving nature of how analysts assimilate CSR information over time.

Partisan Return Gap: The Polarized Stock Market in the Time of a Pandemic

Using two proxies for investors’ political affiliation, we document sharp differences in stock returns between firms likely dominated by Democratic investors (blue stocks) and those dominated by Republican investors (red stocks) during the COVID pandemic. Red stocks have 20 basis points higher risk-adjusted returns than blue stocks on COVID news days (Partisan Return Gap). Lockdown policies, COVID cases, industry and firm fundamentals only explain at most 40% of the return gap. Polarized political beliefs about COVID, revealed through people’s social distancing behavior, contribute to about 40% of the return gap beyond the fundamental channel. Our paper provides partisanship as a novel aspect in understanding abnormal stock returns during the pandemic. This paper was accepted by Lukas Schmid, finance. Supplemental Material: The data and e-companion are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4913 .

How relative competitive strength moderates stock price responses after European soccer tournaments

Stock price responses of soccer clubs to national and international tournaments have been interpreted in light of fan investors who are prone to emotions. We employ Champions League and Europa League fixtures between 2004 and 2020 to investigate whether postmatch stock price responses are driven by emotions. We argue that a soccer club’s relative competitive strength can be a proxy for investors’ emotions, such as rage and disappointment, after losing against a strong opponent, which then leads to abnormal decreases in stock prices. While we find several factors, such as the percentage of shares held by institutional investors less subject to emotions, whose effects on postmatch abnormal returns are in line with rational information processing, our evidence also suggests that the effect of a club’s relative competitive strength on stock performance is driven by investor emotion. We outline the general applicability of stock price responses arising from relative competitive strength in corporate finance settings.

The Influence of Critical Audit Matters in the US on the Informativeness of Investors

In 2017, the PCAOB announced its new audit standard, AS 3101. One requirement is reporting critical audit matters (CAMs), starting June 30, 2019, for large accelerated filers. Using US data of CAM, we investigate whether the reporting of CAMs is informative for investors using a difference-in-differences approach and we use as proxies for investors’ informativeness, absolute abnormal returns and abnormal trading volume. Our motivation is to assess the relevance and the effectiveness of a new regulation aiming to improve audit quality. Overall, our findings provide some indications that the first-time implementation of CAMs might lead to investors avoiding those companies presumably because of uncertainty about the information being released. We also investigate the content of the CAM paragraph and do not find that the number, categories, or firm-specific/industry-common CAMs are value-relevant for investors. The results of this study provide insight into the new US auditor standard and the value-relevance of CAMs for investors. We suggest that standard setters should aim to improve the auditor report to make it more informational. Overall, our paper provides some evidence on the implementation and communicative value of the new CAM reporting, suggesting that CAMs are not informative for investors. We argue that this is the case potentially due to the additional information from CAMs which leads to complex information or information overload making investors less reluctant to invest on the companies with a significant number of CAMs reported.

Sports Mood Index, institutional investors, and earnings announcement anomalies

I construct the Sports Mood Index (SMI) of 49 metropolitan areas in the U.S. and Canada based on the performance of Big 4 professional sports teams and build the firm-level SMI based on institutional investors’ holdings as a proxy for investors’ mood. In sports-induced bad mood settings, earnings announcement premium becomes higher because of increased uncertainty avoidance premium, and post-earnings-announcement drift (PEAD) becomes lower because of the reversal effect. A one-standard-deviation increase in the SMI leads to a 22 bps increase in earnings announcement premium and a 16 bps decrease in PEAD in the following week. Whereas sports-induced good mood has no significant impact on the trading behavior of institutional investors, sports-induced bad mood leads to inattention. Institutional investors with sports-induced bad mood underreact to standardized unexpected earnings when faced with both positive and negative news, as evidenced by lower abnormal trading volume around earnings announcement days.

The MAX Effect in an Oil Exporting Country: The Case of Norway

This paper assesses the effects of investors’ lottery-seeking behavior on expected returns in the Norwegian equity market, a relatively small equity market dominated by the energy industry. We use the MAX factor defined as maximum daily return over the previous month as the proxy of investors’ preference for lottery-like stocks. Despite evidence from recent literature that MAX has a negative relationship with the expected returns in other developed European markets, we find that the relationship is generally insignificant in Norway; however, it becomes more nuanced when we control for the state of the oil market. The dominance of firms related to the oil industry, which have experienced tremendous growth over the last couple of decades, masks the effect to a large extent. Conditional regressions show that the MAX effect is only significant in the Norwegian stock market when the oil market is in the bearish state.

Google’s Post-IPO Development: risks, rewards, and shareholder value

Internet history shows that states, military, universities and other public institutions were essential drivers of innovation in the early stages of network development. However, once risky stages pass, commercialisation starts and investors often reap disproportionate rewards from technological innovation. In this paper, we use the risk-reward nexus (RRN) approach (Lazonick & Mazzucato, 2013; Mazzucato, 2013, 2018; Mazzucato & Shipman, 2014) to understand the imbalance between risky public investment and private allocation of rewards regulated by financial markets. We analyse risk reporting in Form 10-K market reports submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by Google Inc. (Alphabet Inc.) for the period between 2005 and 2019. We detected 58 organisational, marketing and advertising, technological, legal, competitive, and macroeconomic risks. Based on changes in risk reporting three stages of Google’s development can be discerned: post-IPO growth and expansion (2005-2008), growth management and investment diversification (2009-2013), legal struggles and regulatory scrutiny (2014-2019). Reported risks are primarily directed at shareholders, omitting risks relating to internet users, courts, regulators, and nation states. Such an approach is historically rooted in the construction of financial regulation in the name of public interests and markets, with public interests largely interpreted as a proxy for investors’ interests.

Investor Attention towards coronavirus and response of Stock and Sovereign Credit Default Swaps Markets

We use search queries with the word “CORONAVIRUS” in Google Trends as a proxy for investors’ attention and track its impact on the stock markets and sovereign risk. By using daily data of 41 countries for the period of January-June 2020, it is found that increased coronavirus related search is negatively linked with stock market returns and positively linked with country risk. Further, stock market returns are depressed, and sovereign risk is higher in developed countries than emerging countries in response to rising concern about the spread of COVID-19.

Institutional allocations in the primary market for corporate bonds

Using 2002–2014 insurer transactions, we provide the first empirical evidence on underwriters’ allocation practices in the primary market for corporate bonds. Since bonds are often underpriced, allocations generate for investors an estimated $41 billion of first-day profits. These profits increase with proxies for investors’ information production during the bookbuilding process and, more strongly, with investors’ prior trading with underwriters. Information production has a larger impact when asymmetric information is higher, while prior trading has a larger impact when the issuer-underwriter agency problem is more severe. When there is more competition for allocations, prior trading further increases an insurer’s first-day profits.

Institutional Allocations in the Primary Market for Corporate Bonds

Using 2002–2014 insurer transactions, we provide the first empirical evidence on underwriters' allocation practices in the primary market for corporate bonds. Since bonds are often underpriced, allocations generate for investors an estimated $41 billion of first-day profits. These profits increase with proxies for investors’ information production during the bookbuilding process and, more strongly, with investors’ prior trading with underwriters. Information production has a larger impact when asymmetric information is higher, while prior trading has a larger impact when the issuer-underwriter agency problem is more severe. When there is more competition for allocations, prior trading further increases an insurer's first-day profits.

Investors’ Attention and American Depository Receipts Pricing: Evidence from Indian Stocks

This paper is an attempt to examine the impact of investors’ attention on returns and the traded volume of American Depository Receipts prices for selected ten Indian Stocks. The Google search volume index has been used as a proxy for investors’ attention in this paper. However, factors such as size and book to market ratio were used to indicate as control variables. The results reveal that investors’ attention variable significantly affects ADRs traded volume, but has no impact on the ADR prices.

Dynamic Cross-Correlations between Investors’ Attention and CSI300 Index Futures

Using search volume on Baidu Index as the proxy for investors’ attention, we investigate the dynamic nonlinear relationship between investors’ attention and CSI300 index futures market. Multifractal detrend cross-correlation analysis (MF-DCCA) is employed to explore the multifractal features of the cross-correlations between investors’ attention and the return and relative activity of index futures market. We find that the power-law cross-correlations between investors’ attention and CSI300 index futures market are stronger in the short term than in the long term, and the cross-correlations are significantly multifractal. Precisely, the cross-correlation between abnormal search volume (ASV) and the relative activity is persistent, and the cross-correlation between ASV and return of IF is persistent in the short term but weakly anti-persistent in the long term. Besides, we also find that, with the restriction on index futures market, the cross-correlations between investors’ attention and CSI300 index futures market become less stable.

Risk, culture and investor behavior in small (but notorious) Eurozone countries

This research investigates how culture moderates the impact of risk on individual investors’ trading behavior in nine Eurozone countries, where risk is measured by conventional and extreme risk. These markets were particularly affected by the global financial crisis, the subsequent European banking crisis, and the European sovereign debt crisis. Using mutual fund flows as proxy of investors’ trading behavior, our evidence indicates that country culture variable significantly affects investor’ trading responsiveness to risk. Specifically, the impact of risk on fund flows is significantly positive and is larger in scale in countries with individualist cultures.

Corporate payout-form: investors’ preference and catering theory

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate new robust measures of investors’ preference for the form of regular corporate payout. Then, the paper adds to the empirical evidence on catering theory by examining managers’ catering to such preference. Design/methodology/approach The authors use the matching method to control for firm characteristics. The authors apply two robustness tests to validate the measures. The authors use the rigorous multivariate analysis. Findings US investors’ preference for regular dividends vs regular stock repurchases, being different forms of corporate payout, varies over time. Managers cater to investors’ preference for payout form. The findings are consistent with the catering theory of Baker and Wurgler (2004a). The number of firms that pay cash dividends regularly continue to outnumber the ones that purchase their shares regularly. Research limitations/implications The study only uses US data. It does not cover other countries. Practical implications The measures can be used in several future research endeavors, such as examining investors’ payout-form preferences in other countries (see Booth and Zhou, 2017) and exploring their determinants, the corporate governance characteristics of firms that cater to investors’ preference vs firms that do not, etc. Social implications The study contributes to understanding investors’ preferences and corporate payout behavior which is prerequisite to efficient policy formulation. Originality/value The proxies for investors’ payout-form preference control for firm characteristics and are unrelated to investors’ time-varying risk preferences. Also, they are robust to measurement issues. Moreover, the study covers a period of 40 years.

Assessing investors’ earnings expectations: the contextual usefulness of composite forecasts

ABSTRACTThis study constructs composite forecasts and evaluates their contextual usefulness as a proxy for investors’ expectations of annual earnings. Our empirical tests utilize composites of three forecast sources: financial analysts’, time-series and security-price based forecasts. Our full sample results support the incremental usefulness of composite forecasts, over and above that of any of the three forecast sources. Moreover, results from partitioned subsamples show that the usefulness of composite forecasts is contextual. Composite forecasts are a better proxy for investors’ earnings expectations when (1) the information environment is relatively poor; or (2) firms experience negative performance in the prior year.

An Investigation of Audit Quality in Mauritius

Objectives: The objective of the study was to investigate the importance of audit quality in Mauritius and the factors affecting audit quality in Mauritius, from the perception of accounting professionals in Mauritius. Methodology: For the purpose of this study, a survey was carried out among accounting professionals in Mauritius. Based on existing literature, the questionnaire was designed and a five point-likert scale was used. The target population was accountants, auditors and stock brokers who were used as a proxy for investors. A stratified random sampling approach was used for the purpose of this study. A sample size of 200 accounting professionals was out of the 200 questionnaires administered, 188 were collected, of which 8 were discarded because they were not properly filled. Statistical analysis techniques for example; Factor Analysis, Descriptive Statistics, Independent Samples T-test and One-Way-ANOVA were used for the purpose of analysis. Findings: Majority of respondents have shown agreement with the importance of audit quality for its multiple beneficial contributions to successful corporate performance, and good governance in general. In addition the impacting factors on audit quality, by Turley and Willekens [1], regarding audit fees, firm size, tenure, reputation, financial statements-restatements, industry expertise, independence, non-audit services, and audit rotation, have been perceived as essential for achieving audit quality in Mauritius. The study reveals that female are more agreeable than male that audit quality enhances firm performance. The study also reveals that female are more agreeable than male that Long auditor tenure leads to high audit quality and that financial restatements of faulty statements negatively impact audit quality. Scope for Future Research: The study has investigated the audit quality from the perspectives of accounting professionals. Further study can include the perception of different users of accounting information such as shareholders, potentials investors, creditors, customers, employees amongst others to have a better evaluation of audit quality in Mauritius.

The asymmetric impact of rational and irrational components of fear index on S&P 500 index returns

PurposeInvestors’ fear can be rational, emanating from the natural dynamics of economic fundamentals, or it can be quasi rational and not attributable to any known risk factors. Using VIX from Chicago Board Options Exchange as a proxy for investors’ fear, the purpose of this paper is to consider the following research questions: to what extent does noise play a role in the formation of investors’ fear? To what extent is the impact of fear on S&P 500 index returns driven by rational reactions to new information vs fear induced by noise in stock market returns? To what extent do S&P 500 index returns display asymmetric behavior in response to investor’s rational and quasi rational fear?Design/methodology/approachIn a two-step process, the authors first decompose investors’ fear into its rational and irrational components by generating two additional variables representing fear induced by rational expectations and fear due to noise. The authors then estimate a three-vector autoregression (VAR) model to examine their relative impact on S&P 500 returns.FindingsImpulse responses generated from a 13-variable VAR model show that investors’ fear is driven by risk factors to some extent, and this extent is well captured by the Fama and French three-factor and the Carhart four-factor models. Specifically, investors’ fear is negatively related to the market risk premium, negatively related to the premium between value and growth stocks, and positively related to momentum. The magnitude and duration of the impact of the market risk premium is almost twice that of the impact of the premium on value stocks and the momentum of investors’ fear. However, almost 90 percent of the movement in investors’ fear is not attributable to the 12 risk factors chosen in this study and thus may be largely irrational in nature. The impulse responses suggest that both rational and irrational fear have significant negative effects on market returns. Moreover, the effects are asymmetric on S&P 500 index returns wherein irrational upturns in fear have a greater impact than downturns. In addition, the component of investors’ fear driven by irrationality or noise has more than twice the impact on market returns in terms of magnitude and duration than the impact of the rational component of investors’ fear.Originality/valueThe results are consistent with the view that one of the most important drivers of stock market returns is irrational fear that is not rooted in economic fundamentals.

Tax avoidance and ex ante cost of capital

AbstractThis study examines the association between tax avoidance and ex ante cost of equity capital. Based on prior research, we develop two proxies for investors’ expectations of tax avoidance and explore whether deviations from those expectations result in higher ex ante cost of equity capital. We find that the ex ante cost of equity capital increases with tax avoidance that is either below or above investor expectations and that the increase is larger for tax avoidance that exceeds investors’ expectations. We then examine whether firms that alter their future tax avoidance exhibit a lowering of their ex ante cost of equity capital and find that tax avoidance decreases (increases) from the prior year for firms that were above (below) investors’ expectations in the prior year. These results are consistent with the trade‐off suggested by the Scholes and Wolfson framework and reinforce the notion that balancing tax benefits and non‐tax costs is an important feature of firms’ tax planning.

Investorss Sentiment and Stock Market Return in the Saudi Stock Market

The objective of this paper is to conduct an analysis on a very significant behavioral finance issue discussed in its recent studies; namely, the relationship between investors’ sentiment and the returns of stock markets. This study will be conducted in the context of the Saudi stock exchange (SSE), that is the largest market in the Gulf area, and cover the period of 2010-2015. In the literature of investors’ sentiment, a number of proxies to measure investors’ sentiment are found, for the purpose of this research, we will employ the stock market liquidity or volume as a proxy of investors’ sentiment. Our results find a positive relationship between aggregate market volume as a proxy for investor sentiment and aggregate market return. This finding is in line with the previous work's results that test the association between investors' sentiment with various proxies and market returns.

The Asset Pricing Implications of Disclosed Risk Factors

We show theoretically that differences in priors, which are key inputs for Bayesian investors who face time-series uncertainty about parameters, have implications for the differential pricing of risk in the cross-section. Specifically, different priors for the same asset can generate differences in perceived (vs. actual) risk exposures, and consequently, generate differences in required rates of return. The main testable implication is that the Security Market Line is steeper when the prior is low risk exposure than when the prior is high risk exposure. Using novel proxies for investors' priors about firms' exposure to risk factors, we find strong empirical support for our main prediction. Our results have important implications for understanding how parameter uncertainty affects asset returns.