• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.59-71
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• 2022

Purpose - We investigate how firms transfer financial risks to employees in a form of flexible employment contracts and layoffs. Design/methodology/approach - Based on the literature on the prevalence of shareholder value ideology and the associated 'risk shift', we examined how stock price volatility is associated with a firm's use and hiring of nonstandard employees, and the number of employees lay-offed. We test our hypotheses using a longitudinal, multi-source, dataset of Korean firms from 2003 to 2011. Findings - We found support for the relationship between stock price volatility and flexible employment contracts and layoffs after controlling for actual risks such as increased debt or decreased sales. However, we found that the relationship is moderated by the power of professional CEOs relative to that of shareholders, in that powerful CEOs are more likely to transfer the external risks, i.e. stock price volatility, to employees. Research implications or Originality - This study contributes the emerging stream of literature that explore the effect of stock market pressures and governance structures on human resource management.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.343-359
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• 2021

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between earnings management and the disclosure effect of share repurchase. In addition, we analyze whether the relationship between earnings management and share repurchase is affected by executive stock options. Design/methodology/approach - We calculate the discretionary accrual amount for the year immediately preceding the share repurchase and the cumulative excess return around the announcement of the share repurchase, and examine the relationship between the two by regression analysis. Findings - We confirmed a negative relationship between discretionary accrual in the year immediately preceding the share repurchase and the market response to the share repurchase disclosure. In particular, it was found that the negative relationship between discretionary accrual and stock price return on share repurchase announcement was found to decrease in companies to which executive stock options were granted. Research implications or Originality - When uncertainties exist in the motives for share repurchase, we find that earnings management and executive stock options can be useful tools for reducing the adverse selection risk inherent in share repurchase announcements.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.135-149
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• 2022

Purpose - The primary objective of this article is to investigate the impact of U.S. monetary policy on institutional / individual / foreign investor reactions in the Korean stock market. Design/methodology/approach - This study employs a high frequency event study methodology to identify U.S. monetary policy shocks and quantify the impact of identified shocks on investor reactions. The dependent variable in the regression model is net stock purchase, while the explanatory variables are U.S. monetary policy shocks. The model is estimated for the period 2000-2019, including 156 FOMC meetings. Findings - Foreign investors immediately sell stocks in response to contractionary U.S. monetary shocks. They do not, however, react to anticipated changes in monetary policy rates, confirming the rationality of foreign investors. Individual investors demonstrate the opposite response, indicating that a non-trivial proportion of individual investors are irrational. Research implications or Originality - This study adds to the current literature on the effect of U.S. monetary policy on the Korean stock market. This study demonstrates a heterogeneous response to U.S. monetary policy shocks, validating the rational investment behavior of foreign investors, while individual investors exhibit a certain degree of irrationality. Methodologically, this study adds to the literature by quantifying the impact of U.S. monetary policy employing a sharper identification method allowing a simple and consistent estimation.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.187-204
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• 2023

Purpose - This study deals with the manager's overconfidence and stock price delay, and verified whether the stock price delay phenomenon changes as the overconfidence increases. Design/methodology/approach - Manager overconfidence means that managers have over confidence in their positions or abilities, and was measured according to Schrand and Zechman (2012). Stock price delay is a phenomenon in which information of company is not immediately reflected in the stock price, but is reflected over time, and was measured by the method suggested in a study by Hou and Moskowitz (2005). The analysis subjects used in this study are companies listed on the KOSPI market between 2011 and 2019, and the final sample is 5,509 company-years. Findings - As a result of the verification, it was shown that the stock price delay decreased as the manager's overconfidence increased, and this effect was amplified as the foreign shareholder's share ratio increased and the number of follow-up financial analysts increased. This means that as the manager's overconfidence increases, he actively provides high-quality information to the capital market. In addition, as a result of subdividing the manager's overconfidence into the investment and capital raising aspects, the capital raising aspect has a significant effect on reducing stock delays. This can be interpreted as the fact that managers with overconfident tendencies have a greater incentive to satisfy investors' information needs. Research implications or Originality - In previous studies, the characteristics of managers with strong overconfidence have both positive and negative aspects. The results of this study are significant in that they clearly demonstrated the positive aspect through the market variable of stock price delay, and it is expected to help capital market stakeholders understand the characteristics of managers with a strong propensity for overconfidence.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.265-279
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• 2023

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to compare and review behavioral economics models that explain stock price changes after large-scale price shocks in the Korean stock market and to find a suitable model. In this paper, among the theories reviewed, it was confirmed that the anchoring heuristics theory has high explanatory power for stock prices after large-scale stock price fluctuations. Design/methodology/approach - This paper conducts an event study on stock price shocks in which the individual stocks that make up the KOSPI200 index show more than 10% fluctuation on a daily basis. In order to materialize the abstract predictions of heuristics theories in a varifiable form, this paper uses the daily stock price index change as a reference point for availability heuristics, and uses the 52-week highest and lowest price as reference point for anchoring heuristics. Research implications or Originality - As a result of the empirical analysis, the stock price reversals did not consistently appear for changes in the daily index. On the other hand, the stock price drifts consistently appeared around the 52-week highest and the 52-week lowest price. And in the multiple regression analysis that controlled for company-specific and event-specific variables, the results that supported the anchoring heuristics were more evident. These results suggest that it is possible to establish an investment strategy using large-scale price change in Korean stock market.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.133-143
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• 2020

Purpose - This study seeks to summarize the tax changes in stock trading and analyze K-OTC stock trading data in 2017 and 2018 to infer the effects of the application of capital gains taxes by individual investors. Design/methodology/approach - This study analyzes the case of the expansion of the 2018 capital gains tax exemption in the K-OTC market, which exempts capital gains tax on the proceeds from the sale of individual investors of certain stocks under the temporary special law. Findings - In the K-OTC market, the amount of transactions has expanded since the capital gains tax exemption in 2018, but the volume of transactions and transaction turnover have decreased. In particular, the result of lower transaction turnover after the expansion is contrary to expectations. To control the macroscopic effects of the stock market, further analyses the transactions of capital gains tax-exempt stocks and non-exempt stocks. The turnover rate of exemption stocks is higher than that of the non-exempt stocks. In the case of transaction turnover, the two results are not consistent. However, the latter result is more meaningful because the comparison of exempt and non-exempt reduces distortion by macro effects. Research implications or Originality - To mitigate the impact of capital gains taxes on stock market, government authorities need to consider the gradual expansion of the scope of taxation, the application of separate taxation in the introduction of capital gains, the reduction tax rate on transfer income of listed shares, and the reduction tax rate on long-term holdings.

• Asia Pacific Journal of Business Review
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.56-66
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• 2016

This paper analyzes the impact of CSR on the capital market in Korea. Using listed firm data, we found that the creation of a sustainability report that indirectly measures the level of CSR can bring the stock rate of return difference of the capital markets representative market index. First, when a firm that publishes a sustainability report was compared in terms of its market rate of return, it showed a return increase of about 2%. We found that higher returns were gained through the competitive advantage of related business when the firm was actively involved in social responsibility. Second, subdivided by industry, firms belonging to the capital goods industry were found to reach a rate of return higher than that of industry. These firms were noticeable in that they were mainly industries that caused environmental pollution. Third, in an additional analysis, foreign investors were given the sustainability report of financial businesses, which was interpreted as a result of industrial properties. A sustainability report is a comprehensive report on the economic, environmental, and social activities of a firm. Firms must learn that they can gain trust through publishing trustworthy reports while achieving the lasting power of growth from the stakeholders.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.559-575
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• 2014

Individual investors are increasingly flocking to message boards to seek, clarify, and exchange information. Businesses like Seekingalpha.com and business magazines like Fortune are evaluating, synthesizing, and reporting the comments made on message boards or blogs. In March of 2012, Yahoo! Finance Message Boards recorded 45 million unique visitors per month followed by AOL Money and Finance (19.8 million), and Google Finance (1.6 million) [McIntyre, 2012]. Previous studies in the finance literature suggest that online communities often provide more accurate information than analyst forecasts [Bagnoli et al., 1999; Clarkson et al., 2006]. Some studies empirically show that the volume of posts in online communities have a positive relationship with market activities (e.g., trading volumes) [Antweiler and Frank, 2004; Bagnoli et al., 1999; Das and Chen, 2007; Tumarkin and Whitelaw, 2001]. The findings indicate that information in online communities does impact investors' investment decisions and trading behaviors. However, research explicating the correlation between information on online communities and stock market activities (e.g., trading volume) is still evolving. Thus, it is important to ask whether a volume of posts on online communities influences trading volumes and whether trading volumes also influence these communities. Online stock message boards offer two different types of information, which can be explained using an economic and a psychological perspective. From a purely economic perspective, one would expect that stock message boards would have a beneficial effect, since they provide timely information at a much lower cost [Bagnoli et al., 1999; Clarkson et al., 2006; Birchler and Butler, 2007]. This indicates that information in stock message boards may provide valuable information investors can use to predict stock market activities and thus may use to make better investment decisions. On the other hand, psychological studies have shown that stock message boards may not necessarily make investors more informed. The related literature argues that confirmation bias causes investors to seek other investors with the same opinions on these stock message boards [Chen and Gu, 2009; Park et al., 2013]. For example, investors may want to share their painful investment experiences with others on stock message boards and are relieved to find they are not alone. In this case, the information on these stock message boards mainly reflects past experience or past information and not valuable and predictable information for market activities. This study thus investigates the two roles of stock message boards-providing valuable information to make future investment decisions or sharing past experiences that reflect mainly investors' painful or boastful stories. If stock message boards do provide valuable information for stock investment decisions, then investors will use this information and thereby influence stock market activities (e.g., trading volume). On the contrary, if investors made investment decisions and visit stock message boards later, they will mainly share their past experiences with others. In this case, past activities in the stock market will influence the stock message boards. These arguments indicate that there is a correlation between information posted on stock message boards and stock market activities. The previous literature has examined the impact of stock sentiments or the number of posts on stock market activities (e.g., trading volume, volatility, stock prices). However, the studies related to stock sentiments found it difficult to obtain significant results. It is not easy to identify useful information among the millions of posts, many of which can be just noise. As a result, the overall sentiments of stock message boards often carry little information for future stock movements [Das and Chen, 2001; Antweiler and Frank, 2004]. This study notes that as a dependent variable, trading volume is more reliable for capturing the effect of stock message board activities. The finance literature argues that trading volume is an indicator of stock price movements [Das et al., 2005; Das and Chen, 2007]. In this regard, this study investigates the correlation between a number of posts (information on stock message boards) and trading volume (stock market activity). We collected about 100,000 messages of 40 companies at KOSPI (Korea Composite Stock Price Index) from Paxnet, the most popular Korean online stock message board. The messages we collected were divided into in-trading and after-trading hours to examine the correlation between the numbers of posts and trading volumes in detail. Also we collected the volume of the stock of the 40 companies. The vector regression analysis and the granger causality test, 3SLS analysis were performed on our panel data sets. We found that the number of posts on online stock message boards is positively related to prior stock trade volume. Also, we found that the impact of the number of posts on stock trading volumes is not statistically significant. Also, we empirically showed the correlation between stock trading volumes and the number of posts on stock message boards. The results of this study contribute to the IS and finance literature in that we identified online stock message board's two roles. Also, this study suggests that stock trading managers should carefully monitor information on stock message boards to understand stock market activities in advance.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.27-41
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• 2019

Following the methodology of Ben-Rephael, Kadan and Wohl (2015), this paper examines whether firm-level liquidity premium exists and whether the premium exhibits a long-term trend in the Korean stock market. The results show that over the whole sample period (1998-2018), a liquidity premium of 0.083% exists in the cross-section of stocks. Interestingly, the pricing of liquidity declines significantly over the sample period. Sub-period analysis indicates that liquidity is priced mainly in the first sub-period (1998-2004) with a significant monthly premium of 0.304%, while the pricing of liquidity becomes weaker or insignificant in the second (2005-2011) and the third (2012-2018) period. I also find that the significance of the liquidity premium in the first period is attributed to small stocks. To explore underlying reasons that might affect the decline in the liquidity premium, I decompose liquidity premium into the product of firm-level liquidity and the sensitivity of expected stock returns on liquidity. The results reveal that the long-term decline is explained by both an increase in firm-level liquidity and a decrease in the sensitivity of expected returns on liquidity.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.183-208
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• 2022

Purpose - The main purpose of this study is to widely investigate the impact of recent pandemic crises on the synchronization of the world capital markets through 25 stock indices from major developed countries. Design/methodology/approach - This study collects 25 stock indices from major developed countries and the time period is between January 5, 2001 and February 24, 2022. The data sets used in the study include finance.yahoo.com and Investing.com.. The Granger causality analysis, unit-root test, VAR analysis, and forecasting error variance decomposition were hired in order to analyze the data. Findings - First, there are significant inter-relations among 25 countries around recent major pandemic crises(such as SARS, A(H1N1), MERS, and COVID19), which is consistent result with previous literature. Second, COVID19 shows much stronger impact on the world-wide synchronization than other pandemics. Third, the return volatility of each stock market varies, unit root tests show that daily stock index data are unstable while daily stock index returns are stable, and VAR(Vector Auto Regression) analyses presents significant inter-relations among 25 capital markets. Fourth, from the impulse response function analyses, we find that each market affects the other markets for short term periods, about 2~4 days, and no long term effect was not found. Fifth, Granger causality tests show one-side or two-sides synchronization between capital markets and we estimate, through forecasting error variance decomposition method, that the explanatory portions of each capital market on other markets vary from 10 to 80%. Research implications or Originality - The above results all together show that pandemic crises have strong effects on the synchronization of world capital markets and imply that these synchronizations should be carefully considered both in the investment decisions by individual investors and in the financial and economic policies by governments.