We examine intraday abnormal returns associated with rights issue announcements in the Australian equity market over the period January 2000 to December 2022. Consistent with prior studies, we find significant abnormal returns ranging from −2.9% to −2.7% on the event day. We provide the first evidence on intraday price reactions pertaining to rights issues in Australia. Within 15 min of an announcement, we find significant abnormal trade returns of −1.2%. However, market participants are unable to profit by trading on these announcements due to transaction costs. Our results imply that the information content is fully impounded within 90 min.
Chinese firms simultaneously have high levels of loans and cash holdings. Through listed firms on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges, we establish a negative link between cash holdings and a firm's loan bargaining power, especially in regions with less bank competition, through a firm's passive response to bank requests rather than its voluntary excess cash reserves. Furthermore, state ownership, collateral, economic contribution, and reduced information asymmetry may effectively strengthen firm bargaining power and moderate the link. However, better marketisation strengthens the link. The banking sector may need to improve its efficiency through better credit rationing in future reforms.
The Indian Economic Journal, Ahead of Print. This study intended to explore the influence of informational asymmetry on stock liquidity in India. After controlling for the effects of firm-specific risk and investor sentiment, the results show that informational asymmetry, as measured by the delay factors has a significant positive association with illiquidity, indicating that market liquidity decreases with less transparency and a high level of informational asymmetry. The results also show that investor sentiment has a significant association with illiquidity, whereas firm-specific risk and illiquidity seem to have no noticeable relationship. The empirical results are validated using a dynamic panel-data approach, with two-stage GMM and remain robust. Theoretically, this study extends the existing literature on liquidity by offering new evidence from a prospective market like India. In practical terms, the findings of this study would help the stock exchange regulators and other regulatory bodies to strengthen the process of information dissemination and sensitise market participants and investors by maintaining a smooth flow of information.JEL Codes: G11, G12, G4, G32
The Indian Economic Journal, Ahead of Print. Based on a household survey of 210 borrowing households from the state of Tamil Nadu, India, we investigate the extent and determinants of over-indebtedness among microfinance borrowers. Our analysis based on logistic regression framework using three distinct measures of over-indebtedness shows that the extent of over-indebtedness among the borrowing households is relatively widespread. As regards the determinants, apart from the demographic factors, external and lender-related factors contribute more towards over-indebtedness rather than borrower-related factors. Within the lender-related factors informal sources of credit exert a much stronger influence on over-indebtedness than formal sources which includes microfinance. The above findings imply that the policy environment should facilitate easier access to formal sources such as microfinance, along with provision of social security schemes with a minimum guaranteed income and insurance coverage.
The Indian Economic Journal, Ahead of Print. Corporates have traditionally been modelled for their investment rather than saving behaviour. However, in recent times the firm-level saving has displayed an unprecedented behaviour across developed and developing economies. Corporate saving behaviour in India has also witnessed fluctuations, and this study captures a mix of aggregate and firm-level variables that may explain this behaviour. This article has three objectives (a) to understand the firm and macroeconomic factors that drive firm-level saving; (b) to examine whether the firm saving is affected by savings in preceding years; (c) to identify whether this saving behaviour of firms is for precautionary motives or not. The data set used in this article includes panel data of 2,109 publicly listed, manufacturing and service sector firms for the financial years 2004–2018. The data analysis has been done using dynamic panel-data models employing system GMM estimation with multiple robustness checks. The study findings show that firm-level saving in India is mainly driven by lagged corporate saving, Tobin’s Q, GDP growth rate, CPI inflation, and financial depth, among other factors. Additionally, empirical evidence supports the presence of dynamic persistence effect and precautionary motives for savings by firms.JEL Codes: E21, G01, G32, C33
The Indian Economic Journal, Ahead of Print. Impact of COVID-19 induced lockdown has been massive for the Indian economy; it witnessed a contraction in gross domestic product and massive employment loss. India being a poor country and a huge population having insignificant to no social security, a large number of those workers who lost employment were not having option to remain unemployed. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) which is a job-guarantee programme launched a decade earlier and that has been instrumental in providing employment opportunities to rural women casual workers witnessed a huge increase in demand as both men and women flocked to it. For the financial year 2020–2021 the share of women in the person-days worked under MGNREGA fell. The article using data from MGNREGA public data portal and the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy seeks to explain the reasons behind this fall and suggest that MGNREGA needs to be expanded and modified in favour of women casual workers till the recovery on the employment front does not happen.JEL Codes: H53, I38, J08, J16, J23, J30, J48, J71, J78
This study develops new evidence on risk versus mispricing explanations of the well-known profitability premium. First, we examine whether exposure to expected downside risk is a plausible explanation. We find that high profitability is associated with both lower ex ante and ex post probabilities of future price crashes. Thus, less profitable firms exhibit greater downside risk than highly profitable firms, making a downside risk explanation implausible. Although this fact is overlooked by the market in general, it is anticipated by options traders; we find that put options of low profitability firms are relatively more expensive. Simultaneously, these firms do not exhibit greater probability of jumps, indicating that volatility(risk)-based explanations for the profitability premium are unlikely to be descriptive. Second, we find that the sticky-expectations model of Bouchaud et al. (2019, The Journal of Finance, 74, 639–674) only partially explains the profitability premium. While on average, analysts' forecast revisions correct in the same direction as recent profitability, the profitability premium still exhibits a strong relationship to the non-sticky component of analysts' forecast revisions. Third, institutional investors trade profitability-based signals but do so with a delay, likely contributing to the premium. Overall, our evidence favours the explanation that the profitability premium is related to investor mispricing of potential downside risk and provides greater clarity on recent findings in the literature.
We investigate how a disclosed risk item and key audit matter (KAM) relatedness combine to affect investors' riskiness assessment in financial and non-financial contexts. When management disclose a high-risk item, we find that investors react the same way across contexts with KAM relatedness having no effect. When management disclose a low-risk item, investors react differently in each context. When a KAM is related to the disclosed financial (non-financial) low-risk item, investors assess investment riskiness higher (lower) than when a KAM is unrelated to the low-risk item. Our findings indicate the varying communicative value of KAMs across financial and non-financial contexts.
Bond issues often result in negative revaluations of the market value of equity. These market reactions are usually explained by negative signals and asymmetric information about the use of the proceeds. In industries with rather transparent investment opportunities these arguments are not applicable and we expect to find no negative revaluations. Consequently, analysing the stock price reactions to 2299 bond issues by real estate companies between 1996 and 2019, we observe none to positive reactions on the announcement of an upcoming bond issue. The findings underpin the necessity for controlling of industry effects in empirical studies on capital structure decisions.
This paper responds to a call by the Australian Accounting Standards Board to investigate how Australian firms responded to a perceived loss of information pursuant to AASB 138 (IAS38) which mandated the de-recognition of previously recognised internally generated identifiable intangibles, from its effective date of 1 January 2005. We find that the sample firms did not choose to provide alternative or substitute disclosure elsewhere in their annual report or financial statements anytime during our sample period (2005–2010). Prima facie, this is surprising given prior evidence from the value relevance literature that disclosures relevant to the value of internally generated intangibles are correlated with firm value and presumably informative for investors. However, we caution against the drawing of simple conclusions that this finding implies alternative disclosure may not be valuable. Rather, it is important to understand the forces or frictions that contribute to this result. Schipper (The Accounting Review, 82, 2007, 301) and Skinner (Accounting and Business Research, 38, 2008, 191) offer valuable insights into the potential issues such as the costs of alternative disclosure including proprietary costs of disclosing competitive information and, the lower credibility of financial disclosures outside of audited financial statements. These are important considerations in the on-going standard-setting debate on recognition versus disclosure of value relevant information on intangible assets.
