Legal simplification may improve the quality of institutions in industrialised countries that developed over-complex legal systems. In theory, this type of regulatory reform promotes economic efficiency, leading to higher levels of productivity and output. In this paper we use a Panel Factor-Augmented VAR approach to measure the long-run impact of legal-simplification programmes in total factor...

The relation between a firm’s stock return and its intangible investment ratio and asset tangibility is derived under the intangible-asset-augemnted (IAA) q-theory framework. Using firm level data and the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM), we estimate the model and three main results emerge. First, the IAA q-theory captures the value premium and the relation between R&D intensity and stock re...

This paper combines a comprehensive sample of intraday firm-level news arrivals with high-frequency price movements of individual stocks, thereby decomposing daily stock returns into news-driven and non-news driven components. Consistent with prior literature, we find that non-news driven return precedes a reversal. For news-driven return, however, we find strong evidence of return continuation...

Recent research in empirical finance has documented that expected excess returns on bonds and stocks, real interest rates, and risk shift over time in predictable ways. Furthermore, these shifts tend to persist over long periods of time. In this paper we propose an empirical model that is able to capture these complex dynamics, yet is simple to apply in practice, and we explore its implications...

This paper develops and estimates a heteroskedastic variant of Campbell s [Campbell, J., 1993. Intertemporal asset pricing without consumption data. American Economic Review 83, 487–512] ICAPM, in which risk factors include a stock market return and variables forecasting stock market returns or variance. Our main innovation is the use of a new set of predictive variables, which not only have su...

This paper explores the relationship between founding family ownership and stock market returns. Using the entire population of non-financial firms listed on the Swiss stock market for 2003–2013, we find that the stock returns of family firms are significantly higher than those of non-family firms after adjusting the returns for different risk factors and firm characteristics. Family firms gene...

Article history: Received 12 September 2014 Accepted 20 January 2015 Available online 24 January 2015 We investigate the daily short-selling by foreign investors and their impact on stock price, liquidity, and volatility in the Korean stock market. From January 1, 2006, to May 31, 2010, we find that the majority of short-selling is performed by foreign, rather than by domestic, investors and th...

portfolio selection is considered a critically significant decision, firms have to make. as such, much research has been focused on the selection of a portfolio with a controlled level of risk and high expected return. this paper uses a new definition of risk for portfolio selection whereby risk taking is taken as a curve instead of a specific value. in this paper, a genetic algorithm is presen...

Using high-frequency data and a carefully constructed 1-1 matched sample of control (non decimal) stocks, we isolate the effects of decimalization for a sample of NYSE-listed common stocks trading in decimals. We find that both quoted and effective bid-ask spreads and depths have declined significantly following decimalization. Both trades and trading volume have declined significantly in all t...

This paper provides a set of empirical tests of the cross-sectional variation of stock volatility and investablility, where investability is defined as the degree to which a stock is accessible to foreigners. Unlike previous studies, which focus on market volatility and market return, we study the relationship between individual stock return volatility and its investablility. Our findings have ...