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This study aims to examine the effect of sustainability report quality (SRQ) on information risk. This research also aims to examine the effect of SRQ on stock market participation through information risk.

The research sample includes 120 firm-years listed on the Sri Kehati Index period of 2017–2021. The hypothesis test uses firm and industry effect regression analysis. SRQ is measured by the existence of a sustainability committee and external assurance. The information risk is measured by bid-ask spread. Stock market participation is measured by volume of stock trading.

Based on the data analysis, this investigation finds that SRQ reduces information risk. This research also finds that SRQ improves stock market participation by reducing information risk.

First, this examination gives new evidence of SRQ to promote information environment improvement. Second, this examination contributes to providing the role of SRQ in an emerging market, such as Indonesia. Third, this examination contributes to providing the evaluation standard for sustainability reporting quality in Indonesia, since Indonesia has no specific standard for the sustainability report. Fourth, this examination contributes to filling the previous gap.

The purpose of this study is to compare market reactions to the change in the demand by index funds between large and small company stocks by examining the transition of the S&P 500, S&P 400 MidCap and S&P 600 SmallCap indexes from market capitalization to free-float weighting. This unique information-free event allows not only avoiding confounding information signaling and investor awareness effects but also comparing the effect of the decrease in demand on stocks of different sizes.

This study uses the event study methodology to calculate abnormal returns and trading volume around the full-float adjustment day. It also tests for significant changes in institutional ownership and liquidity. Multivariate regressions are used to examine the relation of liquidity changes and price elasticity of demand to the cumulative abnormal returns around the full-float adjustment day.

This study finds significant decreases in stock price accompanied with significant increases in trading volume on the full-float adjustment day, and significant gains in quasi-indexer institutional ownership and liquidity. The main finding is that cumulative abnormal returns around the event period are related to changes in the number of quasi-indexer and transient institutional shareholders, not to changes in liquidity or price elasticity of demand.

This study provides the first comprehensive comparison analysis of stock market reactions to the decline in demand between large and small company stocks. As an important implication for future studies of the index effect, changes in institutional ownership should be considered in the analysis.

We explore the impact of equity liquidity on a firm’s dynamic leverage adjustments and the moderating impacts of leverage deviation and target instability on the link between equity liquidity and dynamic leverage in the UK market.

In applying the two-step system GMM, we estimate our model by exploring suitable instruments for the dynamic variable(s), i.e. lagged values of the dynamic term(s).

Our analyses document that a firm’s equity liquidity has a positive impact on the speed of adjustment (SOA) of its leverage ratio back to the target ratio in the UK market. We also demonstrate that the positive relationship between liquidity and SOA is more pronounced for firms whose current position is relatively close to their target leverage ratio and whose target ratio is relatively stable.

This study provides important implications for both firms’ managers and investors. Particularly, firms’ managers who wish to increase the leverage SOA to enhance firms’ value need to give great attention to their equity liquidity. Investors who want to evaluate firms’ performance could also consider their equity liquidity and leverage SOA.

We are the first to enrich the literature on leverage adjustments by identifying equity liquidity as a new determinant of SOA in a single developed country with many differences in the structure and development of capital markets, ownership concentration and institutional characteristics. We also provide new empirical evidence of the joint effect of equity liquidity, leverage deviation and target instability on leverage SOA.

The primary goal of this paper is to investigate the relationship between stock market liquidity and firm dividend policy within a market implementing the tax imputation system. The main aim is to understand how the tax imputation system influences the relationship between firm dividend policy and stock market liquidity within a cross-sectional framework.

This paper investigates the relationship between stock market liquidity and the dividend payout policy under the full tax imputation system in the Australian market. This study uses the Generalized Least Squares regressions with firm- and year-fixed effects.

In contrast to the negative relationship between the liquidity of common shares and the firms' dividends documented in countries with the double tax system, the study reveals that in Australia, the dividend payout ratios are positively associated with liquidity after controlling for various explanatory variables with both the contemporaneous and lagged time periods. Such a finding is robust to the use of alternative liquidity proxies and to the sub-period tests and remains during the COVID-19 pandemic period.

The insights derived from this study have significant implications for various stakeholders within the economy. The findings provide regulators with valuable insights to conduct a more holistic assessment of how the tax system impacts the economy, especially concerning the dividend choices of firms. Within the context of a full tax imputation system, investors can make investment decisions without factoring in the taxation impact. Simultaneously, firms can be relieved of concerns about losing investors who prioritize liquidity, particularly when a high dividend payout might not align optimally with their financial strategy.

This study contributes to the literature by extending the literature on the tax clientele effects on dividend policy, providing evidence that the tax imputation system can moderate the impact of liquidity on dividend policy. This study examines the impact of the dividend tax imputation system on the substitution effect between dividends and liquidity.

Unlike other types of corporate disclosure, corporate political disclosure (CPD), which is the disclosure of corporate political contributions and the related governing policies and oversight mechanisms, does not provide completely new information to stakeholders. Some of the information disclosed in CPD is available from other public records (e.g. the Federal Election Committee website or OpenSecrets website). Given this unique feature of CPD, it is interesting to investigate the cost and benefit tradeoff for firms of altering their CPD practice in response to policy and political uncertainty.

This study employs recently developed indexes of aggregate economic policy uncertainty (EPU) and a novel dataset of CPD transparency to examine the impact of EPU on CPD transparency and how the proprietary cost of corporate political activities moderates this association. The sample consists of S&P 500 companies from the 2012 to 2019 period.

The authors document that firms mitigate the heightened information asymmetry associated with higher aggregate EPU by increasing CPD transparency. The positive association between EPU and CPD is less pronounced for firms that are more sensitive to EPU, for firms that more actively manage EPU through corporate political contributions or lobbying activities and for firms that are followed by more analysts. The authors also find that more transparent CPD helps to mitigate the information asymmetry caused by heightened EPU. This study’s results hold when the authors control for other types of voluntary corporate disclosure.

This study contributes to the emerging literature on the determinants of CPD transparency by identifying EPU's positive impact on CPD transparency. This study also provides empirical evidence that the proprietary costs arising from the controversial nature of corporate political activities dampen firms' incentives to provide transparent CPD in response to heightened EPU, and that information on corporate political activities gathered and processed by financial analysts seems to lower the marginal benefit to companies of publicizing CPD on their own website.

The dissemination of misleading and false information through media can jeopardize a company’s reputation, thus posing a threat to its stock and performance. Institutional investors are known to influence capital markets. Therefore, this paper investigates whether institutional investors engage in shaping the media sentiment stock nexus, stabilize company stocks and enhance performance.

We first investigate the effect of media sentiment on market reactions by using panel regression models. To examine the role of institutional investors, we design a quasi-experiment by exploiting the Financial Crisis of 2008 and go further by examining the heterogeneity across levels of institutional ownership. Due to risk-averse, investors may respond asymmetrically to pessimistic and positive sentiment. Accordingly, we split the sample into two sub-types, good news and bad news, based on keywords representing positive or negative content.

We find supportive evidence that institutional investors have impacts on how the markets react to media news, and the impacts are heterogeneous in the face of bad and good news. We conjecture that institutional investors act as a stabilizer of stock prices through media sentiment management.

This paper confirms the distinctive effects of institutional investors on capital markets, and uncovers the behind-the-scenes intervention and possible causal link running from institutional investors to media sentiment management. It contributes to the broad field of institutional investors' behavior, media news involvement in capital markets and market efficiency.

The increasing globalization and technological advancements have increased the information spillover on stock markets from various variables. However, there is a dearth of a comprehensive review of how stock market volatility is influenced by macro and firm-level factors. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap by systematically reviewing the major factors impacting stock market volatility.

This study uses a combination of bibliometric and systematic literature review techniques. A data set of 54 articles published in quality journals from the Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) list is gathered from the Scopus database. This data set is used to determine the leading contributors and contributions. The content analysis of these articles sheds light on the factors influencing market volatility and the potential research directions in this subject area.

The findings show that researchers in this sector are becoming more interested in studying the association of stock markets with “cryptocurrencies” and “bitcoin” during “COVID-19.” The outcomes of this study indicate that most studies found oil prices, policy uncertainty and investor sentiments have a significant impact on market volatility. However, there were mixed results on the impact of institutional flows and algorithmic trading on stock volatility, and a consensus cannot be established. This study also identifies the gaps and paves the way for future research in this subject area.

This paper fills the gap in the existing literature by comprehensively reviewing the articles on major factors impacting stock market volatility highlighting the theoretical relationship and empirical results.

This study aims to examine whether the newly available auditor tenure information is associated with non-GAAP earnings, as the recent requirement to disclose the initial year of auditor-client relationship in audit reports may give the impression that longer auditor tenure may be related to lower audit quality.

Using a sample of firm-quarters from 2017 to 2020, the authors conduct both univariate and regression analyses. We use hand-collected data for auditor tenure, SEC comment letters, and non-GAAP variables.

First, the authors find that the likelihood of disclosing non-GAAP earnings monotonically increases with auditor tenure on a univariate basis. Second, auditor tenure is negatively associated with aggressive non-GAAP reporting. Third, the authors document evidence of aggressive reporting in general; that is, items excluded in calculating non-GAAP earnings are associated with future performance. However, the association declines with longer auditor tenure. Finally, the authors report evidence that the likelihood of receiving an SEC comment letter that contains non-GAAP comments decreases with longer auditor tenure.

The results show that regulators need to consider both GAAP and non-GAAP disclosures’ costs and benefits when enacting auditor tenure regulation. Investors can benefit from the findings in evaluating the quality of non-GAAP earnings. The findings are also relevant to the SEC when allocating limited resources in monitoring non-GAAP reporting.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study showing that auditor tenure is associated with the quality of non-GAAP earnings. Given that financial reporting quality should be understood as a comprehensive system comprising both mandatory and voluntary disclosures, this study complements the literature that examines the effect of auditor tenure on financial reporting quality using GAAP reporting.

The purpose of this paper is to bridge the gap between the existing theoretical and empirical studies by examining the asymmetric return–volume relationship. Indeed, the authors aim to shed light on the return–volume linkages for French-listed small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) compared to blue chips across different market regimes.

This study includes both large capitalizations included in the CAC 40 index and listed SMEs included in the Euronext Growth All Share index. The Markov-switching (MS) approach is applied to understand the asymmetric relationship between trading volume and stock returns. The study investigates also the causal impact between stock returns and trading volume using regime-dependent Granger causality tests.

Asymmetric contemporaneous and lagged relationships between stock returns and trading volume are found for both large capitalizations and listed SMEs. However, the causality investigation reveals some differences between large capitalizations and SMEs. Indeed, causal relationships depend on market conditions and the size of the market.

This paper explains the asymmetric return–volume relationship for both large capitalizations and listed SMEs by incorporating several psychological biases, such as the disposition effect, investor overconfidence and self-attribution bias. Future research needs to deepen the analysis especially for SMEs as most of the literature focuses on large capitalizations.

This empirical study has fundamental implications for portfolio management. The findings provide a deeper understanding of how trading activity impact current returns and vice versa. The authors’ results constitute an important input to build and control trading strategies.

This paper fills the literature gap on the asymmetric return–volume relationship across different regimes. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the present study is the first empirical attempt to test the asymmetric return–volume relationship for listed SMEs by using an accurate MS framework.