According to the costly arbitrage model of Pontiff (2006), idiosyncratic risk increases holding costs that limit arbitrage. Since short sales are actively used for arbitrage, the costly arbitrage model should apply to short sales, which is the case according to the empirical findings of two recent studies: Au, Doukas, and Onayev (2009) on US markets, and Duan, Hu, and McLean (2010) on U. K. markets. Both studies offer evidence that idiosyncratic risk acts as a deterrent to short sales and affects returns subsequent to short sales. This study investigates whether a similar pattern exists in the Korean equity market using short sales data for stocks listed on the Korea Exchange from July 2004 to June 2011. Our study contributes to the literature in three important ways. First, it is the only study ever conducted outside the U.S. and U.K. markets on the relation between idiosyncratic risk and short sales. Second, different from Au et al. (2009) and Duan et al. (2010), we use short sale volume data rather than short interest data in our analysis. Using short sale trading volume is preferable to short interest volume because the former captures short sales activity more accurately than the latter, which often under- or over-estimates short sales activity. Third, we perform an investor-type analysis. Our data enable us to distinguish short sale volume by different investor types: individuals, domestic institutions, and foreigners. An investor-type analysis offers important insights into the effects of idiosyncratic risk on short sales activity. This is because different types of investors have different motives for short sales, an issue closely related to whether a certain type of investor engaging in short sales is more informed than other types. How idiosyncratic risk affects short sales made by different types of investors, and how it is related to the information content of short sales made by certain types of investors, are interesting questions. We measure short sales activity by short volume ratio (SVR), defined as the cumulative daily short volume of a stock in a month divided by the total trading volume of the stock in the same month. Following Ang, Hodrick, Xing, and Zhang (2006), we estimate the idiosyncratic risk of a stock in a given month from the Fama-French three-factor model. Our analysis is performed in two ways: a comparative analysis based on 20 groups formed by levels of idiosyncratic risk and SVR (5 by 4), and Fama-MacBeth regressions of (1) SVR on idiosyncratic volatility and (2) abnormal returns on SVR and idiosyncratic volatility. Both regressions use control variables that are believed to affect short sale volume or returns. Our findings can be summarized as follows. First, we find a negative relation between idiosyncratic risk and SVR, which is consistent with the recognition by investors of idiosyncratic risk as an arbitrage cost that limits short sales activity. Second, short sales made by domestic institutions show the strongest negative effect of idiosyncratic risk on SVR, followed by short sales made by foreigners. We do not find evidence of such a negative relation between idiosyncratic risk and short sales made by individuals. These patterns are consistent with different motives for short sales made by different types of investors. Institutions use short sales primarily for hedging and arbitrage. Hence, idiosyncratic risk is a significant binding factor. It binds short sales made by individuals less because they use short sales mainly for speculative purposes. Third, the greater the SVR, the lower the returns after short sales. This suggests that short sales predict future stock returns and that, on average, short sale traders are well informed. Fourth, the negative relation between SVR and future returns is stronger for firms with greater idiosyncratic risk. This finding is consistent with the model of Diamond and Verrecchia (1987), which states that costly short sales are used by informed traders. Finally, the effect of idiosyncratic risk on the relation between SVR and future returns is stronger for short sales made by foreign investors–a finding that suggests an informational advantage of foreigners over domestic institutions and individuals.

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This study empirically analyzes the relationship between corporate governance and cash holdings in Korea, a representative emerging market, using its data of listed firms with interests in contradictory recent research results concerning corporate governance and cash holdings. The variables used as proxies to represent types of corporate governance are very important. Unlike previous studies, this study uses the independence of boards as a proxy variable for corporate governance level because boards play a crucial role in monitoring management and simultaneously implementing decision-making processes. In addition, a principal decision-making process carried out by a board aims to protect investor profit and enhance firm value by efficiently allocating firm resources, and previous research has emphasized that independence is important to boards’ effective functioning. To measure board independence, we use the ratios of independent and non-independent outside directors used in previous studies, drawing on a very large amount of data gathered on the individual outside directors of Korean listed firms for the 2001-2010 period. Based on these data, the ratios of independent and non-independent directors are extracted after classifying two types of outside directors by setting up more stringent criteria, which include the educational and vocational backgrounds of individual outside directors as well as their legal qualifications. In this way, the study considers the importance of independent outside directors by empirically analyzing the effect of each ratio, and highlights that board independence originates with independent outside directors. More specifically, we provide empirical evidence in relation to the following three main questions. (1) Does the amount of cash holdings differ according to the degree of corporate governance (board independence) in Korean listed firms? (2) Are cash resources efficiently allocated according to the degree of corporate governance (board independence) in Korean listed firms? (3) Does the value of cash holdings differ and consequently affect firm value according to the degree of corporate governance (board independence) in Korean listed firms? The empirical results can be summarized as follows. First, when a board becomes more independent, the firm’s cash holdings decreases, while cash outflow increases. As the board’s independence grows, it is able to more efficiently control managers’ incentives to accumulate cash resources internally. Second, as board independence increases, high-growth opportunity firms may increase their investment options, while low-growth opportunity firms may increase their dividend options. Our analysis of the interaction between board independence and cash holdings in investments and dividends, according to growth opportunity, indicates that its effects on dividends were significant, but its effects on investments were not. In firms with high growth opportunity, as the ratio of non-independent outside directors increases, internally held cash is not spent on investments but on dividends, which confirms that the firms’ growth opportunities are not being used efficiently. In contrast, in firms with low growth opportunity, as the ratio of independent outside directors increases, managers are prohibited by the board from spending internally held cash, which instead is likely to be spent on dividends. Finally, firm value increases in firms with higher levels of board independence and more cash holdings. In other words, as board independence increases, investors value cash holdings more highly. This indicates that the value of cash holdings differs according to the type of corporate governance. Our findings confirm that the relationship between board independence and cash holdings in Korea, an emerging market, is different from that in the U.S., a well-developed market. More importantly, this study enables us to understand how good corporate governance enhances firm value. It shows that in firms with high board independence, the market estimates that the monitoring function of the board works effectively and that cash holdings are not exploited for managers’ private benefit; instead, they are allocated efficiently according to the firm’s characteristics, such as to growth opportunities. This market view is then reflected in the valuation of cash holdings, which in turn increases firm value.

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This paper reports an overall regime shift in asymmetric beta upon liberalization of the Korean stock market. There are various researches for effects of market liberalization. Especially, the global financial crisis in recent triggers great controversy over the capital market liberalization and global financial integration. And after many emerging countries, even developed countries go through unexpected capital flow, such controversy is deepening. It leads for us to consider the liberalization of the Korean stock market discreetly. Previous studies mainly concentrate the impact to the foreign-exchange market and real economy or the effectiveness of foreign investment. However, the structural change of capital market itself has been ignored. We attempt to organize specific arguments and previous discussions upon economic impact of the liberalization. We verify the long-term beta features using the longest data before and after Korean capital market liberalization. And we also attempt to identify the industrial characteristics of asymmetric beta. Hence, our study can be considered as associative study of capital market liberalization issue and asymmetric beta issue. The empirical results are summarized as follows. First, over the sample period, we consistently observe the existence ofasymmetric beta under the diverse categories of bull market (bear market). Our finding is consistent with previous studies such that the investors recognize the upside gain and down loss differently. Second, the sensitivity of beta under a bull market has increased after the liberalization. However, we find only weak evidences of beta expansion in bear market. These results denote that the typical paradigm that the sensitivity to down loss is higher is maintained, however, the investors are more conscious about the upside after the liberalization. In other words, the investors actively start to reflect the upside signal after the liberalization. Third, we find an intensified co-movement of Korean capital market and the foreign capital markets, Additionally, the conditional beta by the foreign market’s direction increases significantly. However, PND, the simplest criteria, shows the opposite results. It denotes that the investment strategy based on PND criteria may make an erroneous decision. Forth, the intensity of asymmetry beta varies in the cross-section of industrial sectors. Based on KSIC, we only observe asymmetric beta in ‘manufacturing’, ‘construction’, ‘financial and insurance business’, and ‘professional and scientific service’ sectors. Specially, in the majority of sectors, downward beta is higher than upside beta, however, the opposite result is derived in ‘financial and insurance business’ sector. It denotes that ‘financial and insurance business’ sector takes the leading role in increasing for the upside beta after the liberalization. Fifth, from the detailed analysis with industrial sub-sectors, we verify the significant differences among sub-sectors despite the significant upper-sectors. As a result, the capital market liberalization affects separate impacts and post changes by the industry sector. A practical implication suggests sector-based differentiation in portfolio management facing global market risks. We ask for careful attention to interpret our results. Korean capital market has experienced a considerable change by complex policies after the liberalization. Therefore, restricted interpretation such that our empirical findings are not derived only from the liberalization, but rather the liberalization becomes a turning point of the structural change and there is a possibility such that the discriminative impacts by industrial sectors after the liberalization is appropriate.

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The information asymmetry between managers and outside investors is a significant cost to firms. The related literature suggests that there is a negative relationship between information quality and cost of equity. The poor information quality represents imprecise information about firms’ future cash flows and is associated with higher information asymmetry, such that it increases the cost of equity capital. Bhattacharya et al. (2012) show that both accounting information quality and information asymmetry are related to the cost of equity. We measure firms’ accounting information quality based on the earnings accruals model in Francis et al. (2005), in which accounting information quality proxied by accruals quality is estimated based on the extended model of Dechow and Dichev (2002). The extended model posits an association between current period working capital accruals and operating cash flows in the prior, current and future periods, controlling for changes in revenues, property, plant and equipment as additional explanatory variables. Francis et al. (2005) show that working capital accruals reflect managerial estimates of cash flows, and the extent to which those accruals do not map into cash flows and, changes in revenues, property, plant and equipment is an inverse measure of accruals quality. They use an accruals measure that does not distinguish between intentionalearnings management and unintentional estimation errors from the model, as both measures imply poor accounting information quality. A cost to firms is measured by the implied cost of equity capital (ICOE) from an extension of the residual income valuation model (Ohlson, 1995). The ability to reliably estimate the cost of equity capital is an important issue for both academics and practitioners. In financial decision making, the ex-ante cost of equity capital is one of the most important factors, as it affects the value of a project or asset. However, as it is not easily observable in the market, we must estimate the ex-ante cost of equity capital. The literature suggests an approach (the residual income valuation model, or RIM) that calculates the internal rate of return by equating the stock prices with the present value of all future cash flows to common shareholders based on contemporaneous earnings forecasts. Gebhardt et al. (2001) estimate the rate of return (ICOE) that the market implicitly uses to discount a firm’s expected future cash flows. They find that the ICOE based on the RIM is a reliable proxy for the ex-ante cost of equity capital. Lee and Masulis (2009) measure a firm’s information asymmetry by its accounting information quality based on the extended earnings accruals model of Dechow and Dichev (2002). Lee and Masulis (2009) investigate whether poor accounting information quality raises uncertainty about a firm’s financial condition among outside investors, resulting in higher flotation costs in seasoned equity offerings. They find a significant and negative relationship between accounting information quality and flotation costs, and thus claim that their measures of accounting information quality are credible proxies for the information asymmetry. In this paper, we investigate the association between accounting information quality and the implied cost of equity capital. Specifically, we examine whether high- quality accounting information proxied by quality of accruals can alleviate information asymmetry among participants in the market, effectively reducing the cost of firms’ equity capital. To test our main hypothesis, we use a sample period from 2003 to 2007 and our alignment of accounting information quality and the implied cost of equity variables is based on the fiscal years used to measure the quality of accruals. Our sample includes only non-financial companies listed on the Korea Exchange. The final sample comprises 474 firm years. Our results reveal a statistically significant and negative relationship between accounting information quality (measured by accruals quality), as estimated by Francis et al. (2005), and the implied cost of equity capital, estimated from the residual income valuation model (Gebhardt et al., 2001), which is consistent with the literature. This finding implies that high-quality accounting information about firms’ future cash flows reduces information asymmetry between insiders and outside investors, thus lowering the cost of equity capital. However, the common proxies for information asymmetry, such as corporate governance indices and analysts’ earnings forecast errors, are not related to the implied costs of equity. We also find a significantly negative association between accounting information quality and the cost of equity capital estimated from Easton’s (2004) model. In conclusion, the results of our analysis suggest that higher- quality accounting information is a more effective way of reducing the cost of equity capital than good corporate governance and low volatility of earnings forecasts.

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The world economy has experienced several historical events in which liquidity dry-ups were accompanied by real economic recessions, including the Asian crisis in the late 1990s and the global financial crisis in the late 2000s. Since then, financial market liquidity has been extensively studied and several recent empirical studies have documented evidence of time variation in liquidity and its relation to the macroeconomy (Fujimoto, 2004; Lu and Glascock, 2010; Næs, Skjeltorp, and Ødegaard, 2011). While there is a consensus about the close link between financial market liquidity and the real economy, previous studies provide conflicting views on the lead-lag relation, or causality between them. In this study, we use Korean stock market data to provide new empirical evidence that financial market liquidity has leading information on the real economy. To this end, we examine the time-series relation between stock market liquidity and the real economy using the daily data of stocks listed on the Korean Stock Exchange and quarterly macroeconomic variables over the 1987 to 2013 period. Specifically, we construct two aggregate liquidity measures at a quarterly frequency following Amihud (2002, Illiquidity and stock returns: cross-section and time-series effects, Journal of Financial Markets 5, 31-56) and Pastor and Stambaugh (2003, Liquidity risk and expected stock returns, Journal of Political Economy 111, 642-685), and we also use real GDP, real consumption, real investment and unemployment rate as proxies for the state of the real economy. Our empirical findings are as follows. First, we find that stock market liquidity varies before a change in real economy, and that liquidity has significantforecasting power for future real economic growth. The estimation results of our predictive models indicate that improved stock market liquidity predicts real economic growth, whereas deteriorating stock market liquidity predicts a slowdown in the real economy. The predictability of stock market liquidity is highly significant even after controlling for various financial market variables known to be important predictors of the real economy, such as monetary liquidity, interest rate, dividend yield, market excess returns and market volatility. This implies that stock market liquidity contains leading information not contained in other asset price predictors for future economic conditions. Second, from Granger causality tests, we find evidence that stock market liquidity causes changes in the real economy, whereas the real economic variables do not have significant forecasting power for future stock market liquidity. This result provides new evidence for conflicting views about the lead-lag relation between liquidity and the macroeconomy in the literature, and further highlights the critical role of stock market liquidity as a predictor of the real economy. Third, we analyze the effects of firm characteristics on the predictability of liquidity, and find that the liquidity of stocks with low market capitalization and low payout ratio contains more significant information about future economic conditions than that of large and high-payout-ratio firms. Given that small and low -payout-ratio stocks are more likely to be affected by a recessionary shock in the real economy than large and high-payout ratio stocks, investors may trade those stocks according to the prediction of future economic conditions, resulting in the market liquidity of those stocks being highly informative. The result implies that the predictability of stock market liquidity comes from investors’ trading activities based on rational expectations of future economic states. Finally, our results are robust for choice of liquidity measures and real economic indicators, and the out- of-sample predictability is also statistically significant. We also document that stock market liquidity can significantly forecast up to two-year-ahead economic conditions. Moreover, the predictability of liquidity is not much affected when the specific periods of the Asian crisis and the global financial crisis are excluded from the sample. Overall, our findings are consistent with flight-to-quality, the phenomenon wherein investors suddenly shift their portfolios from risky assets to safe ones during economic downturns, creating a negative shock in the liquidity of risky assets. This implies that stock market liquidity contains valuable information about future economic states not contained in other asset price variables, and highlights the role of liquidity in financial markets as a predictor of the real economy. Our study contributes to the literature on the time variation of liquidity in emerging markets by taking a closer look at the Korean economy. Although numerous studies have examined the effects of financial market liquidity on asset pricing and the macroeconomy, most of them have focused on major developed markets, including the U.S. stock market. Given that several emerging economies including Korea have suffered from a lack of liquidity during financial crises, they are suitable for investigating the relation between liquidity and economic states. In particular, empirical research on liquidity in the Korean stock market has been mainly confined to market microstructure issues. Our findings provide a new direction for future research on financial market liquidity in Korea.

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Institutional investors have increased their presence in financial markets (Gompers and Metrick, 2011), securing positions as dominant players by becoming actively involved in firms’ operations. Active institutions influence the board of directors and management, thus bringing about changes in corporate policies, influencing governance, and affecting the quality of financial reporting and corporate disclosure. While some studies have found that institutional investors actively monitor firms’ management and mitigate managerial agency problems (e.g., Kaplan and Minton 1994; Chung, Firth, and Kim 2002), other studies have argued that institutional investors seeking to maximize personal benefits influence firm management, prompting managerial opportunism such as earnings management (e.g., Agrawal and Knoeber, 1996; Black, 1998; Parrino, Siasand, and Starks, 2003). Recent papers have focused on the investment horizons of institutional investors, such that long-term institutional ownership improves corporate governance (Lee and Chung, 2012), exhibits less tax avoidance (Khurana and Moser, 2013), and increases investment (Derrien, Kecskés, and Thesmar, 2012). Firms with large portions of transient institutions are more likely to reduce research and development expenditures (Bushee, 1988) and get lower premiums at acquisitions (Gasperet al., 2005). In Korea, domestic institutional investors exhibit short-term trading behavior and fail to contribute to the increase in earnings quality (Cheon, 2003). Likewise, Kwon (2007) classified institutional investors into four types: financial institutions, security companies, insurance companies, and foreign investors. He found that foreign investors and insurance companies improved earnings quality, whereas other local institutional investors tended to focus on short-term profits and did not contribute to the increase in earnings quality. Research has indicated that short-term investors have less incentive to engage in improving a firm’s long-term performance, but use their informational advantage to enjoy the personal benefits of short-term stock trading (Park and Song, 2014). Thus, the monitoring role played by institutional investors is closely related to their investment behavior. In this paper, we study the effect of the investment horizons of institutional investors on the effectiveness of internal control systems over financial reporting. Specifically, we examine how the investment horizons of institutional investors effect the disclosure of material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting under Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley ACT of 2002. We measure institutional investors’ portfolio turnover using churn rate, as introduced by Gasper et al. (2005), which measures how frequently an institution buys and sells its stocks. Our measure of a firm’s investment horizon is the weighted average of the total portfolio churn rates of its institutional investors. We find that institutional investor ownership decreases both the frequency and the number of material weaknesses under the SOX 404. However, this positive relationship is weakened as institutional investors’ investment horizon for each firm is short-term. These findings suggest that institutional investors’ influence over the effectiveness of internal control is closely dependent on their investment horizons. Our results contribute to the literature that the role of institutional investors in enhancing internal control systems is closely related to institutions’ investment horizons.

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Since the seminal work of Irving Fisher, the question of how stocks covary with inflation has been extensively examined because inflation risk erodes purchasing power and threatens invetor’s long-term objectives (Ang et al., 2012). Most studies found that nominal stock market returns and inflation are negatively correlated. However, there are some evidence that some non-cyclical industries tend to covary positively with inflation, even though the inflation beta is not significant. In addition, the previous literature has focused on the hedging ability of aggregate stock market indices. Recently, Ang et al. (2012) found that some stocks have the ability to be good inflation hedges, suggesting that an investor seeking to hedge inflation risk would optimally hold this firm-level constructed portfolio rather than a market-weighted index. Therefore, if equity funds construct their portfolios based on individual stocks whose returns covary strongly with inflation, those funds have the potential to provide a better inflation hedge for investors, especially who want to avoid inflation risk. Based on this conjecture, this paper examines the inflation hedging ability of Korean equity funds during the January 2001 to May 2013 period. To measure the inflation hedging ability of individual equity funds, we compute fund-level inflation betas following Bekaert and Wang (2010), by regressing individual fund returns on inflation. This allows us to conduct an ex-post analysis of which funds provided the strongest realized covariation between fund returns and inflation. As Jiang, Yao, and Yu (2007) noted, evidence of timing ability can result simply from “luck.” For instance, even if no funds have timing ability, when there are a large number of them, some will have significant timing measures based on t-statistics, due to random chance (Jiang et al., 2007)and the sampling variation. To consider this problem and identify whether the inflation hedging ability is genuine, we use the cross-sectional luck distribution, estimated using the bootstrap approach, to distinguish between skill and luck (due to sampling variation), as proposed by Kosowski et al. (2006). The advantage of the cross- sectional bootstrap approach is that it allows researchers to obtain a distribution of the inflation betas for all funds; specifically, it does not consider the luck distribution of a particular fund but, rather, considers that of all funds, which allows us to draw a statistical inference of funds in the extreme tails of the cross-sectional distribution (i.e., extreme positive inflation betas). When using the realized and expected inflation, we find that while some Korean equity funds have inflation hedging ability, it is due more to fund managers’ luck (or sampling variation) than skill. Some previous studies have shown that inflation betas are time-varying. To consider this finding, we divide our sample period into two sub-periods ranging from January 2001 to December 2005 and from January 2006 to May 2013, respectively. This sub-period analysis shows that slightly more funds have returns that covary significantly and positively, in the second sub-period than in the first period. However, the significantly positive inflation betas in both periods are due to luck, consistent with those of the whole- period analysis. The bootstrap procedure used by Kosowski et al. (2006) assumed that the residuals from the regression analysis were independently and identically distributed for funds. However, it is possible that the residuals have serial dependence over time or cross-sectional correlations across funds. To evaluate their effect on the bootstrap results for inflation hedging skill, we adopt the sieve and stationary bootstrap approaches. The empirical results for these two approaches do not differ from those of the previous results. Lee and Jeon (2012) found that most Korean equity funds tend to invest in large and growth stocks relative to the KOSPI 200 index, implying that their inflation hedging ability may influence our results. To examine this effect, we divide our sample funds into their investment styles: large/small and value/growth using the Fama-French three-factor model. The results for their investment styles are consistent with those of whole sample funds. Finally, examining the persistence of Korean equity funds’ inflation hedging ability reveals no persistence, indicating that it is difficult for fund investors to construct portfolios of equity funds that are good inflation hedges. Overall, our results indicate that the good inflation hedging abilities of some Korean equity funds are merely the result of luck (or due to sampling variation) rather than fund managers’ skills.

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This study analyzes the efficiency of internal business transactions by comparing the effect of intra-group sale and purchase transactions on business performance, using listed companies that engaged in transactions between sales-related subsidiaries from 2005 to 2010 as subjects. We classify large and medium business groups based on whether a business group is on the mutual investment restriction list, which the Fair Trade Commission announces annually, and compare the transaction behavior difference and efficiency of the transaction effect. To directly review the change in the transaction performance of companies whose affiliations have changed from large to medium business groups due to changes in the large-size, business-group designation criteria, we perform an additional panel analysis using a business-group affiliation change dummy variable (CHANGE). By analyzing business performance using business-group designations that are related to government regulations, we investigate the effectiveness of the current regulatory policies. The main empirical analysis is based on a model that applies an affiliation dummy variable (GROUP). Our analysis compares the transaction efficiency between subsidiaries for each business-group designation. When the variables included in the regression model are considered to be corporate characteristic variables that can interact as factors to determine the size and behavior of the transactions between subsidiaries, it is possible for the internal transaction ratios (SR, PR, SPR) to become endogenous explanatory variables. Hence, we use the results of the two-stage least squares estimation method to control the endogeneity problem. We use the average value of the internal transaction ratio of industry, the number of business group-affiliated subsidiaries, and industry correlation as the instrumental variables for estimating the internal transaction ratio variables. The results are as follows. First, according to the regression analysis of the effect of sale and purchase transactions between subsidiaries on firm performance, the transactions between subsidiaries of a large business group subject to regulations have a significant, positive impact on business performance, and thus support the efficient-transactions hypothesis. In contrast, we find a significant negative correlation between the intra-group transaction ratio and firm performance in unregulated, medium-sized business groups. This evidence is consistent with the tunneling and inefficiency hypothesis, which supposes that large Korean business groups have used transactions with affiliates to illegally transfer owner’s wealth and management rights. Interestingly, we can confirm that the inefficiency of unfair internal transactions is observed in medium business groups rather than in large business groups. This is contrary to common belief and the findings of previous studies on Korean Chaebol firms. Second, according to the results of the analysis of the intra-group transactions effect before and after the point of regulation change based on using a business-group affiliation change dummy variable, the transactions between subsidiaries of a company for which the affiliation has changed from a large business group to an unregulated medium business group have a significant negative impact on firm performance. We interpret this result as follows. The change in affiliation of a regulated business group to a non-regulated business group has a significant negative impact on the effect of transactions between subsidiaries. This study contributes to the literature on business groups by comparing the firm performance between two groups, before and after regulation change. In summary, differences in the efficiency of transactions between subsidiaries are revealed based on their affiliation with a large business group and the change of affiliation to a medium business group. In other words, the efficiency of internal business transactions depends on whether the firm belongs to large business group or not, and the business group’s regulation designations are very important. The findings of this study thus provide the following suggestion for government policies: rather than the ex-ante, uniform method for regulating transactions between subsidiaries based on the large business group designation system, institutional supplementation is needed in the form of an ex-post regulation method based on the expansion of the target range for regulation and judgment of appropriateness. If restriction is uniformly applied to all transactions between subsidiaries based on the large business group designation system, it may constrict even efficient business management activities. Hence, the appropriateness judgment criteria for evaluating the efficiencies of individual transactions between subsidiaries are needed, and rather than the method of regulating ex-ante internal transactions outright, ex-post regulation based on the actual content of individual internal transaction is desirable. It is necessary to adjust a range of regulated firms and to complement monitoring systems for unfair trade practices, based on ex-post evaluations.

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This study examines the voluntary asset sales that took place in Japan from 2000 to 2007. Asset sales increased rapidly after the introduction of a new stock swap and transfer scheme under the Commercial Code Revision in the late 1990s. The unwinding of cross shareholding also forced managers to sell underperforming divisions to maximize shareholder wealth. The study investigates the effect of asset sales announcements and analyzes the motivation for asset sales. In particular, it verifies that information asymmetry influences asset sales. Based on asymmetric information, management can observe the performance of each division, but markets can only observe the total performance of a diversified firm. Hence, markets are likely to underestimate a firm’s value. When firms are undervalued, they not only resort to selling overvalued assets for funds, but they also receive a proper evaluation by providing clearer financial information on undervalued assets. This suggests that the announcement of asset sales is positively related to the stockholder’s wealth and mitigates the information gap. The results are as follows. This study uses 262 voluntary asset sales and a market model to investigate the announcement effects. We find that the announcement of asset sales is significantly positive for abnormal returns of 1.09% per day (-, +1). This suggests that asset sales convey information on corporate fundamental values if the management has access to complete information and attempts to evaluate the wealth of existing shareholders. In addition, we analyze the relationship between the cumulative abnormal return (CAR) and motivation of asset sales. Hite et al. (1987) suggest that management only operates assets for which they have a comparative advantage and sells inefficient assets. This is the so-called efficient hypothesis of asset sales. John and Ofek (1995) report that returns are higher, and the firm experiences increased operating performance, when asset sales lead to a more focused firm. This is called the focus hypothesis. However, Lang et al. (1995) argue that asset sales are used to raise capital and show that announcement returns depend on the use of the proceeds, and positive returns only occur when proceeds are paid out to creditors or shareholders. They call this the financing hypothesis. The main empirical results are not consistent with the above three hypotheses. First, to test the financing hypothesis, the entire sample is classified into two subsamples: the payout sample (54 asset sales) and there investment sample (146 asset sales). The abnormal returns of payout firms are not significantly different than those of reinvestment firms. This result is not consistent with the financing hypothesis, which asserts that an agency problem, through management’s discretion, affects asset sales return. Second, we find that the sample has 118 focused asset sales and 82 non-focused asset sales. The CAR (-1, 1) of focused firms is 0.17%, which is 1.35% lower than that of the other firms, but the difference is not significant. This result also does not support the focus hypothesis. Third, according to the efficient hypothesis, management who inefficiently operate their assets will transfer it to others who may operate it more efficiently. We use Tobin’s q as a proxy variable representing firm efficiency. Tobin’s q for sellers is not lower than that of buyers. In addition, the median CAR of the buyer is significantly negative. These results are not consistent with the hypothesis that the positive effect of asset sales is due to improved efficiency. Fourth, we find that the degree of information asymmetry of asset sales firms is significantly higher than that of matching firms. We identify matching firms using the methodology developed by Barber and Lyon (1996). The degree of information asymmetry significantly decreases after asset sales. This suggests that information asymmetry is related to asset sales. Furthermore, in cross-sectional regressions of CAR (-3, +3), the coefficient of information asymmetry is significantly positive, whereas the coefficients of the debt-pay dummy and focus dummy are non-significantly negative. This also supports the notion that information asymmetry influences asset sales. The results of the other control variables are as follows. Firm size is not related to the announcement effect. Tobin’s q is significantly positive and market return is significantly negative, suggesting that positive market response is due to the availability of information on which firms are undervalued. The coefficients of ROA and leverage are statistically insignificant, which does not support the findings of Hite et al. (1987) and Lang et al. (1995). Finally, we analyze whether asset sales are associated with investments and find that the sensitivity of investments and the proceeds of asset sales are positive and statistically significant. This is consistent with the view that firms improve their market value using asset sales that reduce information asymmetry.

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Analyst reports, which contain views on whether to buy or sell particular stocks for clients, usually include earnings forecasts, long-term growth forecasts, and /or stock recommendations. In general, analysts’ stock recommendations fall into one of five categories: strong buy, buy, hold, sell, or strong sell. Analysts revise their recommendations by upgrading or downgrading them when needed. The recommendation changes are commonly regarded as useful information and lead to changes in stock prices. Investors expect analysts to provide objective, unbiased, and accurate equity research reports based on the best of their knowledge. However, the literature has accumulated evidence that sell-side analysts’ forecasts are tainted and not objective. Sell-side analysts working for investment bank shave pressure to provide optimistic recommendations on firms that can provide business to the investment banks. Analysts working in brokerage houses also have pressure to provide optimistic recommendations to attract trading revenues because upgrades attract more business than downgrades due to restrictions on short selling. Consistent with this conflict of interest, previous literature has found that analysts affiliated with investment banks and brokers produce more optimistic earnings and are more likely to give buy recommendations. In addition, if some investors have access to the contents of upcoming analysts’ reports in advance, then they can take advantage of the superior information contained in those reports. Irvine, Lipson, and Puckett (2007) test the “tipping hypothesis” based on data on initial recommendations and document that brokerage firms provide the contents of affiliated analyst reports to important clients who generate large trading commissions before the information becomes public. We extend this line of research by examining the daily trading data on Korean stock recommendation changes from 2001 to 2010. The advantage of using Korean data is that we can obtain the daily trading volume by investor types for all stocks traded on the Korean Stock Exchange (KSE) and on the Korea Securities Dealers Automated Quotation (KOSDAQ). Our sample consists of 1,708 upgrades and 2,035 downgrades for 223 unique industrial firms. By analyzing investors’ trading data on the recommendation changes of analysts, we examine whether information asymmetry exists among different groups of investors, individuals, domestic buy-side institutions, and foreign investors. Unlike individual investors, institutions frequently communicate with brokerage firms, investment banks, and asset management firms to acquire information, which makes it possible for them to access analysts’ reports. In addition, institutions are more capable of acquiring and processing information than individuals. We thusconjecture that domestic buy-side institutions are better informed than individuals on upcoming recommendation changes. We also investigate whether foreigners have an informational advantage compared to domestic investors on the upcoming recommendation changes. Previous studies provide inconclusive evidence that foreigners perform better than domestic investors in trading stocks. Using Korean data, Choe, Kho, and Stulz (2005) find no evidence that foreign investors perform better than domestic institutions. Our analysis shows that stock prices increase before analysts’ recommendation upgrades, whereas upcoming downgrades do not cause stock prices to decrease before the information release. We then analyze the standardized trade imbalance (STI) to examine the difference in trading activities by individuals, domestic institutions, and foreigners before recommendation changes. Over the period of days -5 to -1, the STI by domestic buy-side institutions is 0.43 before upgrades and -.35 before downgrades, and the STIs are significantly different from zero at the 1% confidence level. However, the STIs by individuals and foreigners before recommendation changes are not statistically different from zero. These results indicate that domestic buy-side institutions buy (sell) stocks in anticipation of an upgrade (downgrade), whereas individual investors and foreign investors do not trade stocks based on information. We also find that trade imbalances by the institutions are positively related to abnormal returns over days 0 to 5 after the announcements of recommendation changes. This evidence is consistent with our argument that domestic buy-side institutions take advantage of their superior information on analyst recommendation changes over the short-term. Our paper adds to the literature by providing evidence of the short-term informational advantage of domestic buy-side institutions over other investors on analysts’ recommendation changes based on high-frequency data from Korea. The evidence shows that domestic institutions predict the direction of analysts’ recommendation changes and reflect this information in their stock trading, which is indirectly consistent with Irvine, Lipson, and Puckett’s (2007) finding. We also contribute to the growing literature on foreign investors’ trading in emerging markets. We find that foreign institution trading is not characteristic of analysts’ recommendation changes and does not predict stock returns. This shows that foreign institutions do not have an informational advantage compared to local institutions on specific events.

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