29.07.2021 • 20/2021
Communication instead of conflict – why are female CEOs so interesting for hedge funds
The value of female-led firms is enhanced more by the intervention of activist investors than that of firms with male CEOs. This is the result of a recent paper by Iftekhar Hasan (Fordham University and IWH) and Qiang Wu (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, RPI) at the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH). "The results show that female CEOs particularly benefit from the intervention of hedge fund activists due to their strong communication and interpersonal skills," explains Iftekhar Hasan. This is because, on average, the intervention of an activist hedge fund increases the value of the firm ex post. To achieve this, activist hedge funds such as Carl Icahn, Trian Fundmanagement or Elliott prefer to rely on communication and cooperation with the management.
Reint E. Gropp
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The Effect of Language on Investing: Evidence from Searches in Chinese Versus English
Hui-Ching Chuang, Iftekhar Hasan, Yin-Siang Huang, Chih-Yung Lin
Pacific-Basin Finance Journal,
June
2021
Abstract
This study examines the language effect on investing behavior in local stock markets for local- and foreign-language investors using Google search records. First, we find that attention to a local language stimulates attention to a foreign language, increases abnormal news coverage, and has better predictability on stock returns. Second, investors who do Google searches in the local language react faster to a news event's shock than those who search in the foreign language. Third, only attention to the local language can reduce the price drift of an earnings surprise. Last, firm-level information asymmetry is a channel for local advantage. Therefore, we suggest that investors who use a stock market's local language have a local advantage when seeking more profitable investment opportunities in that stock market.
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01.02.2021 • 4/2021
During Corona, households are saving more – not for fear of unemployment but for lack of spending opportunities
During the Corona crisis, European households increased their savings dramatically. According to an analysis carried out by the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH), the increase in savings is largely due to the inability of households to consume in the face of government lockdown measures, rather than other factors such as economic uncertainty. IWH President Reint Gropp therefore sees potential for a significant catch-up effect in consumption as soon as the lockdown is lifted.
Reint E. Gropp
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14.10.2020 • 21/2020
Recovery Loses Momentum ‒ Economy and Politics Still Shaped by the Pandemic
The corona pandemic leaves substantial marks in the German economy and its impact is more persistent than assumed in spring. In their autumn report, the leading German economic research institutes have revised their economic outlook downwards by roughly one percentage point for both this and next year. They now expect gross domestic product to fall by 5.4% in 2020 (previously -4.2%) and to grow by 4.7% (5.8%) in 2021 and 2.7% in 2022.
Oliver Holtemöller
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The Economic Record of the Government and Sovereign Bond and Stock Returns Around National Elections
Stefan Eichler, Timo Plaga
Journal of Banking and Finance,
September
2020
Abstract
This paper investigates the role of the fiscal and economic record of the incumbent government in shaping the price response of sovereign bonds and stocks to the election outcome in emerging markets and developed countries. For sovereign bonds in emerging markets, we find robust evidence for higher cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) if a government associated with a relatively low primary fiscal balance is voted out of office compared to elections where the fiscal balance was relatively high. This effect of the incumbent government's fiscal record is significantly more pronounced in the presence of high sovereign default risk and strong political veto players, whereas the quality of institutions does not explain differences in effects for different events. We do not find robust effects of the government's fiscal record for developed countries and stocks.
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Police Reorganization and Crime: Evidence from Police Station Closures
Sebastian Blesse, André Diegmann
Abstract
Does the administrative organization of police affect crime? In answering this question, we focus on the reorganization of local police agencies. Specifically, we study the effects police force reallocation via station closures has on local crime. We do this by exploiting a quasi-experiment where a reform substantially reduced the number of police stations. Combining a matching strategy with an event-study design, we find no effects on total theft. Police station closures, however, open up tempting opportunities for criminals in car theft and burglary in residential properties. We can rule out that our effects arise from incapacitation, crime displacement, or changes in employment of local police forces. Our results suggest that criminals are less deterred after police station closures and use the opportunity to steal more costly goods.
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National Culture and Risk-taking: Evidence from the Insurance Industry
Chrysovalantis Gaganis, Iftekhar Hasan, Panagiota Papadimitri, Menelaos Tasiou
Journal of Business Research,
April
2019
Abstract
The gravity of insurance within the financial sector is constantly increasing. Reasonably, after the events of the recent financial turmoil, the domain of research that examines the factors driving the risk-taking of this industry has been signified. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the interplay between national culture and risk of insurance firms. We quantify the cultural overtones, measuring national culture considering the dimensions outlined by the Hofstede model and risk-taking using the ‘Z-score’. In a sample consisting of 801 life and non-life insurance firms operating across 42 countries over the period 2007–2016, we find a strong and significant relationship among insurance firms' risk-taking and cultural characteristics, such as individualism, uncertainty avoidance and power distance. Results remain robust to a variety of firm and country-specific controls, alternative measures of risk, sample specifications and tests designed to alleviate endogeneity.
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Banks Fearing the Drought? Liquidity Hoarding as a Response to Idiosyncratic Interbank Funding Dry-ups
Helge Littke, Matias Ossandon Busch
IWH Discussion Papers,
No. 12,
2018
Abstract
Since the global financial crisis, economic literature has highlighted banks’ inclination to bolster up their liquid asset positions once the aggregate interbank funding market experiences a dry-up. To this regard, we show that liquidity hoarding and its detrimental effects on credit can also be triggered by idiosyncratic, i.e. bankspecific, interbank funding shocks with implications for monetary policy. Combining a unique data set of the Brazilian banking sector with a novel identification strategy enables us to overcome previous limitations for studying this phenomenon as a bankspecific event. This strategy further helps us to analyse how disruptions in the bank headquarters’ interbank market can lead to liquidity and lending adjustments at the regional bank branch level. From the perspective of the policy maker, understanding this market-to-market spillover effect is important as local bank branch markets are characterised by market concentration and relationship lending.
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Evidence for the Existence of Downward Real-Activity Earnings Management
Bill Francis, Iftekhar Hasan, Lingxiang Li
Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance,
No. 2,
2016
Abstract
Prior studies of real-activity earnings management (REM) focus on earnings-inflating abnormal activities. We seek to establish the existence of downward REM by investigating several corporate events in which managers have incentives to temporarily deflate market valuations. Specifically, we focus on, and find downward REM before, share repurchases, management buyouts (MBOs), and CEO option awards. Large-sample evidence of downward REM is also found in our general analysis of earnings smoothing. Downward REM becomes much smaller or nonexistent when there is a lack of managerial incentives in those events, such as non-carry-through repurchases, incomplete MBOs, and unexpected option awards. Following the research design of Zang, we find that various REM and accrual-based earnings management (AEM) cost factors consistently influence the magnitude of downward REM and AEM around the three corporate events.
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An Empirical Analysis of Legal Insider Trading in The Netherlands
Frank de Jong, Jérémie Lefebvre, Hans Degryse
De Economist,
No. 1,
2014
Abstract
In this paper, we employ a registry of legal insider trading for Dutch listed firms to investigate the information content of trades by corporate insiders. Using a standard event-study methodology, we examine short-term stock price behavior around trades. We find that purchases are followed by economically large abnormal returns. This result is strongest for purchases by top executives and for small market capitalization firms, which is consistent with the hypothesis that legal insider trading is an important channel through which information flows to the market. We analyze also the impact of the implementation of the Market Abuse Directive (European Union Directive 2003/6/EC), which strengthens the existing regulation in the Netherlands. We show that the new regulation reduced the information content of sales by top executives.
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