Dynamic effect of Tobin's Q on price-to-earnings ratio

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the dynamic effect of Tobin's q ratio on price-to-earnings (PE) ratio.

Design/methodology/approach

The objective of this study is to investigate the dynamic effect of Tobin's q on PE ratio. To achieve this objective, a vector autoregressive analysis (Equation (1)) is employed to analyze the quarterly data from 1951Q4 to 2012Q4 to determine the generalized impulse response functions and perform the variance decomposition of Tobin's q ratio on PE ratio. The Granger causality Wald test is performed to determine if Tobin's q ratio causes PE ratio and vice versa.

Findings

Based on the analysis of the quarterly market-level data from 1951Q4 to 2012Q4, the results show that PE ratio significantly drops immediately following the shock to the change in Tobin's q ratio. The results from the Granger-causality test indicate that Tobin's q ratio change causes PE ratio to drop. There is not a reverse causation from PE ratio to Tobin's q ratio change. The variance decomposition results reveal that Tobin's q ratio change forecasts about 67.53 to 67.78 percent of PE ratio at the two-quarter to eight-quarter horizons.

Originality/value

Up to this point, there is not a single study in the literature investigating the relationship between Tobin's q and PE ratios. Consequently, the current study is set up to investigate the dynamic effect of Tobin's q ratio on PE ratio. A major contribution of this study is to provide empirical evidence of the dynamic effect of Tobin's q ratio on PE ratio.

Citation

Sum, V. (2014), "Dynamic effect of Tobin's Q on price-to-earnings ratio", Managerial Finance, Vol. 40 No. 6, pp. 634-643. https://doi.org/10.1108/MF-07-2013-0193