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The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of equity ownership of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) for over 2,000 listed firms in China. The paper examines both the pattern of state ownership and the dynamics of stock returns and volatility. Firms under the control of SOEs dominate the Chinese stock markets and currently account for over three-quarters of total market capitalisation. Central SOEs are focused in strategic industries, while Local SOEs concentrate on pillar industries relating to consumer goods and services.

The authors obtain firm-level data from the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets and using panel estimation techniques examine the dynamics of returns, volatility and their relationship.

The authors report an increase in state control among listed firms compared to earlier reported figures. This is contradictory to the expectation of a lower state influence following China joining of the World Trade Organisation in 2001. In examining the behaviour of stock returns the authors find evidence of daily and monthly autocorrelations that are larger and of a different sign to that reported for western markets. The authors also report evidence of volatility persistence but little evidence of volatility asymmetry, again in contrast to that often reported for other markets. Finally, the authors find evidence of either no or a negative relationship between returns and volatility (risk) that differs from our usual view of risk aversion.

It is hoped, knowledge of these dynamics will increase the understanding of the Chinese equity market, which in turn is important for those engaged in international portfolio management and micro-structure modelling.

We investigate the link between firm volatility and risk-taking (RT) among 4232 institutions across 11 countries during the period of 2000–2017 and find RT is negatively correlated with volatility measures. Second, a decomposition of the primary risk measure, the Z score and Merton distance-to-default, reveals that high RT contributed to lower stock return volatility mainly through better corporate governance, firm size, higher information efficiency, and strong BOD. Third, Australia firms engage in more RT compared to other countries. Finally, majority of the selected countries show the negative impact of RT in firm volatility in the pre-crises period (2002–2006) and during the crises period (2007–2009) but not in the post-crises period (2010–2014).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of predictors of growth (entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and environmental hostility) and growth itself on small-firm volatility. The objective is to find out: first, whether growth and volatility possess a similar nature; second, what are the predictors of small-firm volatility.

Questionnaire data were collected from CEOs of 433 Spanish small firms (<500 employees) who provided qualitative as well as quantitative information.

The authors find that some of the predictors on growth can also be used to predict firm volatility. Specifically, the authors find that firm volatility is influenced by EO and environmental hostility. Growth also influences firm volatility. The authors also find a strong interaction effect of growth and firm size on firm volatility. The authors conclude that although growth and firm volatility are related concepts, they are different.

Growth has concentrated small-firm research during the last 20 years. However, during the last few years, the environment has become very dynamic and small firms need research helping them to deal with such dynamism. There are few studies on firm-level volatility. The research helps understand more the determinants of small-firm volatility.

This paper aims to test the effects that different compensation policies have on managerial discretion with regard to stock options.

Hand-collected data from Securities and Exchange Commission registration statements are used to analyze the effects of chief executive officer (CEO) compensation policies on managerial discretion used in valuing stock options.

This paper provides evidence that during the height of the initial public offering (IPO) bubble, CEO pay was associated with the undervaluation of stock options by IPO firms. The discretion varies with the relative mix of cash vs stock-based compensation. Firms with higher cash compensation tend to undervalue the unobservable market price of pre-IPO shares, leading to lower option values and a lower likelihood of reporting in-the-money options. Firms with greater stock-based compensation understate stock volatility, resulting in lower measures of the time-value component of options.

The results provide evidence that firms attempted to disguise the true value of CEO pay when making IPOs. By disguising the value of options granted to the CEO, outsiders were not aware of the actual cost incurred and the true value of the company.

This paper is the first to document that IPO firms understate the non-observable market price of pre-IPO shares to manipulate the value of stock options. It also documents the effect of discretion in estimates of volatility on stock options and the link between this discretion and CEO compensation.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of two important financing sources, debt and cash, on a firm’s investment decisions and explores the intertemporal impact of this financing on future investment volatility.

This paper first reports our results using ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation and then employ an instrumental variable (IV) strategy which addresses potential endogeneity that arises from future investment volatility on current capital structure and cash levels.

This paper finds firms with low levels of debt or high levels of cash experience higher future investment volatility, and the probability of large future investment increases with high cash levels. This study’s findings are economically important; for example, a one-standard-deviation increase from the mean of debt ratio implies an approximate 7.8% decrease in future investment volatility; and a one-standard-deviation increase from the mean of a firm’s cash level leads to a 47% increase in the probability of a large investment in the next year.

The findings of this study help firms understand the impact of their present financing decisions on the plausibility of their future investments. This paper contributes to the literature by making both novel and confirmatory findings. This paper was structured to include confirmatory findings for two reasons. First, this paper uses different methods to construct investment volatility and the related investment spike. Second, and more importantly, the hypotheses are interrelated and communicate how firms plan for and execute against uncertain future investments. Growth options are ephemeral, and the hypotheses structure provides a guideline for how a firm finances future growth options.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether income smoothing helps to reduce volatility in reported earnings and which firms are more inclined to be engaged in income smoothing.

The authors used negative correlation between pre-managed earnings of a firm and its discretionary accruals (DAs) as proxy for income smoothing and the firms having more negative correlation coefficient are expected to have lower volatility in their reported earnings. The authors used Kothari et al.’s (2005) version of modified-Jones model to estimate DAs and used least squares estimations to investigate the research questions using six-year (2007-2012) sample of non-financial firms listed over Karachi Stock Exchange, Pakistan.

The authors found that firms experiencing more volatility in economic activities and smaller firms are more aggressively involved in income smoothing. Moreover, a predominant majority (72.2 per cent) of firms in the sample are involved in income smoothing through accruals manipulation. Also, the authors found that firms which are more aggressively involved in income smoothing have lesser volatility in reported earnings. Lastly, the level of DAs per se does not have any impact on income smoothing.

The proxy used for income smoothing, though the authors consider it to be better, is not the only one used in literature and the sample is limited to Pakistan.

This study adds to earnings management literature by providing evidence on extensive accrual manipulation for income smoothing in Pakistan.

The purpose of this paper is to add an important new dimension to the earnings management literature by establishing a link between idiosyncratic risk and the degree of accrual management.

Based on a comprehensive sample of 44,599 firm-year observations during the period spanning 1987-2009, the study offers robust empirical evidence of the importance of firm-specific idiosyncratic volatility as a determinant of earnings manipulation. The authors use standard measures of earnings management and idiosyncratic volatility. The authors test the hypotheses with robust econometrics techniques.

The authors document a strong positive relationship between idiosyncratic risk and accruals management. Further, the authors find a positive association between residual volatility and discretionary accruals whether accruals are income inflationary or income deflationary. The findings are robust to alternate idiosyncratic risk proxies and variables associated with earnings management.

Overall, the knowledge derived from this study provides additional tools to assess the degree of earnings management by firms, and hence the quality of the financial reporting. Thus the findings will enable standard setters, financial market regulators, analysts, and investors to make more informed legislative, regulatory, resource allocation, and investment decisions.

This paper aims to examine the Brazilian stock market behavior and volatility term structure of two portfolios that, theoretically, the companies that comprise them have different degrees of idiosyncratic risk: one portfolio consists of firms with good corporate governance and the other comprises firms with poor corporate governance.

The sample comprises corporate firms listed in the Brazilian stock market during the period from January 2008 to December 2017. Generalized autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity models were applied.

The results show that the portfolio of firms with good corporate governance practices presents fluctuations that are more often temporary and reactive, with trends’ persistence of shorter durations, when considering the punctual volatility of the parameters estimated. This opposed expectation that the portfolio comprised of companies with good governance practices are better protected from short-term movements. However, over time and with standard error measures in consideration, both portfolios’ volatilities behave in similar ways. These findings may be related to Brazilian market characteristics, such as ownership concentration, ineffective corporate boards and the ever-developing nature of the stock market in Brazil. Any one of these characteristics present challenges to effective enforcement of the corporate governance practices in the Brazilian context.

The findings are potentially to the interest of researchers and practitioners for several reasons. First, this paper contributes to the growing literature on the relationship between corporate governance and market volatility. Second, it informs that volatility in the Brazilian context is likely only partially, if at all, influenced by corporate governance practices. Third, longitudinally, both indices follow the same pattern and converge to the same place.

We identify a novel concept of discretionary idiosyncratic volatility proxied by the idiosyncratic volatility component not related to the non-systematic industry volatility as a source of agency problems that have implications for firms’ cash holdings and their investment decisions. We find that firms with low discretionary idiosyncratic volatility, which likely captures discretionary effort and risk-taking by managers, have smaller cash reserves. Moreover, while high discretionary idiosyncratic volatility firms spend cash internally (internal capital building), low discretionary idiosyncratic volatility firms use it for external acquisitions, consistent with the “quiet life” hypothesis. Our findings thus indicate a need for reinforcement of existing regulations and corporate laws to control for agency costs, which could in turn reduce firm risk and the probability of financial meltdown at the aggregate level.

Audits are a means of reducing the information asymmetry between managers and investors. If the quality of the audit is in question, outside investors may face a larger informational disadvantage. We test the hypothesis that this informational disadvantage is manifested in the implied volatilities associated with the equity options of the audited firms. We find that volatilities increased for Andersen audited firms relative to firms audited by other Big Five accounting firms. This finding is consistent with the view that auditors help lessen the information asymmetry problem and that some of this reduction is accomplished by auditor reputation.