Pub Date : 2021-03-17DOI: 10.31014/AIOR.1991.04.01.264
Terence K. Teo
In contrast to the substantial scholarship on whether bilateral investment treaties (BITs) increase foreign direct investment (FDI), there is less work on what drives governments to sign these treaties in the first place. I develop a theory of treaty signing that emphasizes the domestic factors that motivate a government to sign BITs. Using a panel dataset of developing countries from 1960 to 2010, I find that governments scarce in natural resources are more likely to sign BITs compared to their richer counterparts. In addition, governments with middle levels of property rights are more likely to sign BITs compared to those with low or high levels. Finally, the most likely BIT signers are resource-scarce countries with middle levels of property rights. That strategic dynamics exist in BIT signing has implications for assessing the effects of these treaties in other issue areas such as trade, human rights, and the environment.
{"title":"Natural Resources, Property Rights, and the Domestic Logic of BIT Signing","authors":"Terence K. Teo","doi":"10.31014/AIOR.1991.04.01.264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.31014/AIOR.1991.04.01.264","url":null,"abstract":"In contrast to the substantial scholarship on whether bilateral investment treaties (BITs) increase foreign direct investment (FDI), there is less work on what drives governments to sign these treaties in the first place. I develop a theory of treaty signing that emphasizes the domestic factors that motivate a government to sign BITs. Using a panel dataset of developing countries from 1960 to 2010, I find that governments scarce in natural resources are more likely to sign BITs compared to their richer counterparts. In addition, governments with middle levels of property rights are more likely to sign BITs compared to those with low or high levels. Finally, the most likely BIT signers are resource-scarce countries with middle levels of property rights. That strategic dynamics exist in BIT signing has implications for assessing the effects of these treaties in other issue areas such as trade, human rights, and the environment.","PeriodicalId":13701,"journal":{"name":"International Corporate Finance eJournal","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83781947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We estimate dynamic treatment effects of violent political conflicts on firm decisions to purchase inventory. We analyze monthly purchase data of 431 clients of a multinational beverage firm in Mozambique, as well as annual survey data. Firms respond to increases in conflict by decreasing purchases of inventory by up to 15%. This effect is significantly more pronounced for smaller firms. Firms exposed to violent conflicts also show greater intention to expand to less violent locations. The eruption of violent conflicts have significant short-term economic impact for small firms however, these do not persist beyond 2 months.
{"title":"Firm Responses to Violent Conflicts","authors":"Cláudia Custódio, Bernardo Mendes, Diogo Mendes","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3776784","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3776784","url":null,"abstract":"We estimate dynamic treatment effects of violent political conflicts on firm decisions to purchase inventory. We analyze monthly purchase data of 431 clients of a multinational beverage firm in Mozambique, as well as annual survey data. Firms respond to increases in conflict by decreasing purchases of inventory by up to 15%. This effect is significantly more pronounced for smaller firms. Firms exposed to violent conflicts also show greater intention to expand to less violent locations. The eruption of violent conflicts have significant short-term economic impact for small firms however, these do not persist beyond 2 months.","PeriodicalId":13701,"journal":{"name":"International Corporate Finance eJournal","volume":"82 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75789623","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Capital inflow surges destabilize the economy through a maturity shortening mechanism. The underlying reason is that firms tend to make their debt redeemable on demand in order to accommodate the potential liquidity needs of global investors, which makes international borrowing endogenously fragile. Based on a theoretical model and empirical evidence at both firm level and macro level, our main findings are threefold. First, corporate debt maturity shortens substantially during surges, especially for firms with foreign bank relationships. Second, surges change the shape of the interest rate term structure and lead to a more flattened yield curve. Third, the probability of a crisis following surges with a flattened yield curve is significantly larger than following surges without one. Our work suggests that debt maturity is key to understanding the consequences of capital inflow bonanzas.
{"title":"Surges and Instability: the Maturity Shortening Channel","authors":"Xiang Li, Dan Su","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3588490","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3588490","url":null,"abstract":"Capital inflow surges destabilize the economy through a maturity shortening mechanism. The underlying reason is that firms tend to make their debt redeemable on demand in order to accommodate the potential liquidity needs of global investors, which makes international borrowing endogenously fragile. Based on a theoretical model and empirical evidence at both firm level and macro level, our main findings are threefold. First, corporate debt maturity shortens substantially during surges, especially for firms with foreign bank relationships. Second, surges change the shape of the interest rate term structure and lead to a more flattened yield curve. Third, the probability of a crisis following surges with a flattened yield curve is significantly larger than following surges without one. Our work suggests that debt maturity is key to understanding the consequences of capital inflow bonanzas.","PeriodicalId":13701,"journal":{"name":"International Corporate Finance eJournal","volume":"78 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77201610","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The stock market is a dynamic and vibrant arena for both casual and professional investors. Oil has been a particular point of interest in recent news. In March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and after a series of disagreements within the OPEC+ alliance, an oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia took place, which caused prices to decrease drastically. Moreover, the demand for oil dramatically decreased because of the suspension of transportation and air travel. Prices kept dropping, and cost of storage became increasingly unattractive, to the point where traders were willing to pay to get oil taken off their hands. On 4/20/2020, for the first time in history, the generic first crude commodity contract dropped from $10.01 to $-37.63 recording a negative price, puzzling most investors. This unprecedented event shocked the stock market, and most average investors were perplexed on how to calculate returns on negative prices. Interestingly, there was a clear divergence between the equity and energy prices, where the former kept on rallying while the latter completely collapsed into negative territory. This paper pragmatically analyzes the reasons for this divergence between the two markets, the diversification benefit of investing in both assets simultaneously, and presents a “quantum mechanics” methodology to calculate returns when a price goes negative. We find that investors with oil exposure in their portfolios typically tend to outperform those who do not.
{"title":"Beyond Negative Prices: The Saga of the Commodity and Equity Market","authors":"Daniel Hayek, V. Madan","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3803375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3803375","url":null,"abstract":"The stock market is a dynamic and vibrant arena for both casual and professional investors. Oil has been a particular point of interest in recent news. In March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, and after a series of disagreements within the OPEC+ alliance, an oil price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia took place, which caused prices to decrease drastically. Moreover, the demand for oil dramatically decreased because of the suspension of transportation and air travel. Prices kept dropping, and cost of storage became increasingly unattractive, to the point where traders were willing to pay to get oil taken off their hands. On 4/20/2020, for the first time in history, the generic first crude commodity contract dropped from $10.01 to $-37.63 recording a negative price, puzzling most investors. This unprecedented event shocked the stock market, and most average investors were perplexed on how to calculate returns on negative prices. Interestingly, there was a clear divergence between the equity and energy prices, where the former kept on rallying while the latter completely collapsed into negative territory. This paper pragmatically analyzes the reasons for this divergence between the two markets, the diversification benefit of investing in both assets simultaneously, and presents a “quantum mechanics” methodology to calculate returns when a price goes negative. We find that investors with oil exposure in their portfolios typically tend to outperform those who do not.","PeriodicalId":13701,"journal":{"name":"International Corporate Finance eJournal","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89483155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of intellectual capital on the performance of listed non-financial firms in West Africa. The study used the Value Added Intellectual Coefficient (VAIC™) to measure intellectual capital performance while return on asset measures profitability. We used the panel-corrected standard error regression on the data from 2007 to 2018 to assess the nexus while controlling for some firm-specific and country-specific factors. The findings indicate that structural capital efficiency is a major driver of profitability. On the contrary, human capital efficiency and capital employed efficiency do not have a significant impact on profitability among non-financial firms. Intellectual capital has an inverted U-shaped nexus with performance. This differs from the findings in the financial sector which emphasize human capital. In the non-financial sector, structural capital like production infrastructure, production processes, formulas, databases and designs play a significant role in driving performance. The study adds to various voices calling for the inclusion of intellectual capital valuation and metrics in all corporate analysis.
本研究的目的是考察智力资本对西非非金融上市公司绩效的影响。本研究使用智力增值系数(Value Added Intellectual Coefficient, VAIC™)来衡量智力资本绩效,而资产回报率(return on asset)则衡量盈利能力。我们对2007年至2018年的数据使用了面板校正的标准误差回归来评估这种联系,同时控制了一些特定公司和特定国家的因素。研究结果表明,结构性资本效率是盈利能力的主要驱动因素。相反,人力资本效率和资本利用效率对非金融企业的盈利能力没有显著影响。智力资本与绩效呈倒u型关系。这与强调人力资本的金融部门的调查结果不同。在非金融部门,生产基础设施、生产流程、公式、数据库和设计等结构性资本对绩效的驱动作用显著。该研究增加了呼吁在所有企业分析中纳入智力资本估值和指标的各种声音。
{"title":"Intellectual Capital and Performance Among Listed Non-Financial Firms in West Africa","authors":"King Carl Tornam Duho, Philip Elikplim Agomor","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3803094","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3803094","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of intellectual capital on the performance of listed non-financial firms in West Africa. The study used the Value Added Intellectual Coefficient (VAIC™) to measure intellectual capital performance while return on asset measures profitability. We used the panel-corrected standard error regression on the data from 2007 to 2018 to assess the nexus while controlling for some firm-specific and country-specific factors. The findings indicate that structural capital efficiency is a major driver of profitability. On the contrary, human capital efficiency and capital employed efficiency do not have a significant impact on profitability among non-financial firms. Intellectual capital has an inverted U-shaped nexus with performance. This differs from the findings in the financial sector which emphasize human capital. In the non-financial sector, structural capital like production infrastructure, production processes, formulas, databases and designs play a significant role in driving performance. The study adds to various voices calling for the inclusion of intellectual capital valuation and metrics in all corporate analysis.","PeriodicalId":13701,"journal":{"name":"International Corporate Finance eJournal","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76428403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Enormous capital inflows into the emerging commodity futures markets in China raised concerns about the impact of speculation. Using a broad sample of 30 commodities across sectors, this paper investigates whether the increased presence of speculators in recent years destabilizes the commodities market in China. In a portfolio framework, we find that increased speculation does not give rise to higher volatilities, elevate the cross-market correlations, nor distort the market’s association with economic fundamentals. Consistent with the literature, long-short speculators contribute positively to the price discovery by reducing the broad market volatility and cross-correlation with stocks. Overall, the cross-speculative pressure remains relatively low, and the increased speculation does not cause seemingly unrelated commodities to become correlated.
{"title":"The ‘Necessary Evil’ in Chinese Commodity Markets","authors":"John Hua Fan, Di Mo, T. Zhang","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3459898","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3459898","url":null,"abstract":"Enormous capital inflows into the emerging commodity futures markets in China raised concerns about the impact of speculation. Using a broad sample of 30 commodities across sectors, this paper investigates whether the increased presence of speculators in recent years destabilizes the commodities market in China. In a portfolio framework, we find that increased speculation does not give rise to higher volatilities, elevate the cross-market correlations, nor distort the market’s association with economic fundamentals. Consistent with the literature, long-short speculators contribute positively to the price discovery by reducing the broad market volatility and cross-correlation with stocks. Overall, the cross-speculative pressure remains relatively low, and the increased speculation does not cause seemingly unrelated commodities to become correlated.","PeriodicalId":13701,"journal":{"name":"International Corporate Finance eJournal","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75475918","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
About 99 percent of cryptocurrency trades occur on organised exchanges and many investors subsequently keep their digital assets in accounts with cryptocurrency markets. This generates exposure to the risk of exchange closures. We construct a database containing eight key characteristics on 238 cryptocurrency exchanges and employ machine learning techniques to predict whether a cryptocurrency market will remain active or whether it will go out of business. Both in-sample and out-of-sample measures of forecasting performance are computed and ranked for four popular machine learning algorithms. While all four models produce satisfactory classification accuracy, our best model is a random forest classifier. It reaches accuracy of 90.4 percent on training data and 86.1 percent on test data. From the list of predictors we find that exchange lifetime, transacted volume and cyber security measures such as security audit, cold storage and bug bounty programs rank high in terms of feature importance across multiple algorithms. On the other hand, whether an exchange has previously experienced a security breach does not rank highly according to its contribution to classification accuracy.
{"title":"Cryptocurrency Exchanges: Predicting Which Markets Will Remain Active","authors":"George Milunovich, S. A. Lee","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3799742","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3799742","url":null,"abstract":"About 99 percent of cryptocurrency trades occur on organised exchanges and many investors subsequently keep their digital assets in accounts with cryptocurrency markets. This generates exposure to the risk of exchange closures. We construct a database containing eight key characteristics on 238 cryptocurrency exchanges and employ machine learning techniques to predict whether a cryptocurrency market will remain active or whether it will go out of business. Both in-sample and out-of-sample measures of forecasting performance are computed and ranked for four popular machine learning algorithms. While all four models produce satisfactory classification accuracy, our best model is a random forest classifier. It reaches accuracy of 90.4 percent on training data and 86.1 percent on test data. From the list of predictors we find that exchange lifetime, transacted volume and cyber security measures such as security audit, cold storage and bug bounty programs rank high in terms of feature importance across multiple algorithms. On the other hand, whether an exchange has previously experienced a security breach does not rank highly according to its contribution to classification accuracy.","PeriodicalId":13701,"journal":{"name":"International Corporate Finance eJournal","volume":"3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88835028","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
There is a positive relationship between cross-border bank-to-nonbank flows and country-level sustainability scores. This result is consistent with the signaling theory pointing out that a country’s sustainability score is a signal to attract more international fund flows. This finding suggests public policy makers to focus more on country-level sustainability investments in order to improve financing of resident firms.
{"title":"Country-Level Sustainability and Cross-Border Banking Flows","authors":"S. B. Avci, G. Esen","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3795642","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3795642","url":null,"abstract":"There is a positive relationship between cross-border bank-to-nonbank flows and country-level sustainability scores. This result is consistent with the signaling theory pointing out that a country’s sustainability score is a signal to attract more international fund flows. This finding suggests public policy makers to focus more on country-level sustainability investments in order to improve financing of resident firms.","PeriodicalId":13701,"journal":{"name":"International Corporate Finance eJournal","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89803384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We study a large currency cross section using recently developed asset pricing methods. First, we show that the implied pricing kernel includes three latent factors: a strong U.S. `Dollar' level factor, and two weak, high Sharpe ratio `Carry' and `Momentum' slope factors. The evidence for an additional 'Value' factor is scant. Second, based on this pricing kernel, we obtain robust estimates of the risk premia of more than 100 non-tradable risk factors. Some of these factors -- mostly relating to volatility, uncertainty and liquidity conditions in currency and other markets -- are priced, disclosing a clear nexus across asset classes.
{"title":"Currency Risk Premia Redux","authors":"Federico Nucera, Lucio Sarno, Gabriele Zinna","doi":"10.2139/SSRN.3796290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/SSRN.3796290","url":null,"abstract":"We study a large currency cross section using recently developed asset pricing methods. First, we show that the implied pricing kernel includes three latent factors: a strong U.S. `Dollar' level factor, and two weak, high Sharpe ratio `Carry' and `Momentum' slope factors. The evidence for an additional 'Value' factor is scant. Second, based on this pricing kernel, we obtain robust estimates of the risk premia of more than 100 non-tradable risk factors. Some of these factors -- mostly relating to volatility, uncertainty and liquidity conditions in currency and other markets -- are priced, disclosing a clear nexus across asset classes.","PeriodicalId":13701,"journal":{"name":"International Corporate Finance eJournal","volume":"17 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81455964","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Juuso Nissinen, Matti Suominen, Sara Ferreira Filipe
We measure funding constraints in international currency markets by deviations in the covered interest rate parity. Our measure of funding risk is the standard deviation of the magnitude of the funding constraints. This funding risk measure appears to be driven by conditions in the financial sector in the low interest rate, so called carry trade short countries, oil price volatility, as well as by the actions of the main central banks. Although funding risk has been present throughout our sample, it becomes only relevant in currency carry trading after 2008, suggesting that investors’ funding constraints start binding at that time. We document evidence that since 2008 funding risk has affected the magnitude of currency carry trading activity, carry trade returns, correlation between carry long and short currencies, relative equity returns in carry trade long vs. short countries, and the economies of carry trade long countries measured through changes in industrial production. We develop a theory of currency markets under funding constraints that has several testable implications. For instance, as funding constraints start to bind, our theory predicts that both the investment and funding currencies drop relative to a safe asset. This result is observable also in our empirical analysis, when we proxy for the safe asset with gold. In line with theory, funding risk forecasts currency crashes in the carry trade long and short countries.
{"title":"Currency Carry Trades and Global Funding Risk","authors":"Juuso Nissinen, Matti Suominen, Sara Ferreira Filipe","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3795484","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3795484","url":null,"abstract":"We measure funding constraints in international currency markets by deviations in the covered interest rate parity. Our measure of funding risk is the standard deviation of the magnitude of the funding constraints. This funding risk measure appears to be driven by conditions in the financial sector in the low interest rate, so called carry trade short countries, oil price volatility, as well as by the actions of the main central banks. Although funding risk has been present throughout our sample, it becomes only relevant in currency carry trading after 2008, suggesting that investors’ funding constraints start binding at that time. We document evidence that since 2008 funding risk has affected the magnitude of currency carry trading activity, carry trade returns, correlation between carry long and short currencies, relative equity returns in carry trade long vs. short countries, and the economies of carry trade long countries measured through changes in industrial production. We develop a theory of currency markets under funding constraints that has several testable implications. For instance, as funding constraints start to bind, our theory predicts that both the investment and funding currencies drop relative to a safe asset. This result is observable also in our empirical analysis, when we proxy for the safe asset with gold. In line with theory, funding risk forecasts currency crashes in the carry trade long and short countries.","PeriodicalId":13701,"journal":{"name":"International Corporate Finance eJournal","volume":"94 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80650883","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}