Journal of Multinational Financial Management最新文献

This research investigates the role of industrial munificence and dynamism in foreign ownership of international joint ventures (IJVs) in emerging markets. Based on an investigation of 50,069 observations of IJVs in China, I find that foreign ownership in IJVs increases with industrial munificence and decreases with industrial dynamism in the local market. Moreover, while foreign firms with higher intangible asset intensity tend to hold higher foreign ownership in IJVs, industrial munificence positively moderates this relationship due to its role in enhancing the knowledge leakage risks. Furthermore, the roles of intangible asset intensity, munificence and dynamism on foreign ownership are more observable in industries with medium technology intensities and more liberalized FDI policies. The moderating roles of munificence and dynamism are not significant in IJVs with conventional local partners and foreign partners with Chinese cultural background.

The study employs macro data for 42 African countries to examine the interactive and threshold effects of financial development in the remittances-inclusive growth relationship. First, evidence based on the system GMM estimator shows that remittances are not statistically significant in promoting inclusive growth in Africa. Notably, across the economic growth and income inequality dimensions of inclusive growth, we find that although remittances are ineffective in boosting the former, they deepen the latter. Second, we find that Africa’s underdeveloped financial sector dampens the marginal positive effect of remittances on inclusive growth. Third, our threshold analysis indicates that for financial development to interact with complementary policies to foster inclusive growth in Africa, a minimum threshold of 14.5% is required. We conclude by informing policy on the level of investments needed for financial development to promote fairer income growth and distribution in Africa.

We examine the short-term market impact of the beginning of the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine (February 24, 2022) on the largest European listed banks. Using an event study, for the 100 largest European listed banks, we observe a negative and statistically significant stock price reaction at and around the beginning of the military conflict. These results are consistent with investor sentiment, investment portfolio rebalancing and the asset pricing perspective. Furthermore, we use a cross-sectional analysis against a set of country- and bank-specific variables. The results show a higher negative stock market reaction for Russian listed banks and for foreign banks with a high exposure to Russia. The magnitude of the stock market reaction to the military conflict is reinforced or mitigated by bank-specific determinants such as size, profitability, risk aversion, operational efficiency level, institutional ownership and exposure to Russia.

We investigate the relation between foreign institutional ownership and stock price synchronicity, and whether this relation varies across country-level institutional and information infrastructures. Using a comprehensive dataset for firms across 40 countries over the period between 2000 and 2016, we document the following notable findings. First, foreign institutional ownership is negatively associated with stock price synchronicity. Second, we find that improved information transparency is a possible channel underlying the effect of foreign institutional ownership on stock price synchronicity. In addition, the synchronicity-reducing effect of foreign institutional ownership is more pronounced for firms in countries with weaker institutional infrastructures. Finally, our results reveal different impacts of foreign institutional ownership on stock price synchronicity across various types of foreign institutional ownership, highlighting the importance of foreign investor heterogeneity in improving firm information environment.

This study examines the effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on the performance and stability of the banking sector. Our sample consists of 2073 banks in 106 countries from 2016Q1 to 2021Q2. We employ several alternative bank performance and stability measures for a comprehensive analysis and robustness. The findings show that the COVID-19 outbreak has significantly reduced bank performance and stability. These results are consistently observed across several geographical regions and countries’ income classifications. Additional analysis shows that the adverse impact of COVID-19 depends on the characteristics of the bank and market structure. While a better regulatory environment, institutional quality, and financial development have significantly increased the strength and resilience of banks. These findings provide practical implications for regulators and policymakers in the face of unprecedented uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In this paper, we empirically study the linkages between financial openness and financial development using a sample of 164 countries during 1960–2020. Based on the results of the estimation of systems of equations, we find that the relationship between relative financial openness and relative banking sector development is positive and bidirectional. Likewise, the relationship between relative financial openness and relative stock market development is positive and bidirectional. However, the relationship between relative financial openness and relative bond market development is negative and bidirectional.

Motivated by existing research on the informational and monitoring role of social trust, we examine how social trust affects firms’ choice between bank debt and public debt. Using firm-level data from 33 countries, we document that higher social trust is associated positively (negatively) with the long-term public (bank) debt ratio. The findings are robust when we control for other important country-level and firm-level factors. There are two possible channels of this association. We find that social trust affects debt structure through monitoring and borrowers’ incentive channels. To address potential endogeneity, we use instrumental variables, propensity score and entropy balancing matching, and large change analyses and document that our findings are robust. Examining the effect of debt structure on firm performance, we find that Tobin's Q associates positively with long-term public debt ratios in high-trust countries.

Economic policy uncertainty is an evolving area of research that may affect environmental issues such as the carbon footprint. However, from a global perspective, it is not known whether economic policy uncertainty is significantly related to it. Motivated by this gap in the literature, we investigate the impact of economic policy uncertainty on carbon footprint. Using a sample of 2782 firms from 60 countries, our cross-sectional regression analysis finds that economic policy uncertainty is positively associated with the carbon footprint. This applies to the total, direct, and indirect carbon emissions measurements. However, we find that countries with better institutional governance alleviate the significant association between economic policy uncertainty and carbon footprint.

This paper examines the financial structure and bank relationships of multinational firms in Italy, a large European country strongly reliant on bank debt. We show that multinationals are, on average, more leveraged than non-internationalized companies. Moreover, multinationals have larger shares of both financial debt and bank debt as a percentage of total debt, benefit from lower interest rates, maintain more bank relationships, and are less dependent on the primary bank for the firm. Overall, these findings suggest that globally diversified firms have better access to credit markets than domestic companies. These results are robust to estimation methods that address the potential endogeneity of the choice to go international, such as matching and instrumental variable estimation.

This study examines the effect of foreign institutional investors (FIIs) on executive compensation incentives. Using the quasi-natural experiment of Shanghai (Shenzhen)–Hong Kong Stock Connect, we show that the presence of FIIs has a positive effect on pay-for-performance sensitivity (PPS) and helps to decrease excessive compensation. We also demonstrate that good corporate governance and high accounting information quality would be two possible underlying channels. Our results are more pronounced for firms with fewer state-owned shareholders and powerful managers. Overall, our results indicate that compared with domestic counterparts, FIIs are more effective at improving firms’ executive compensation incentives.