• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.7 no.8
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• pp.25-31
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• 2020

The purpose of this paper is to examine a financial distress premium in the emerging market. A risk-return trade-off of negative book equity (NBE) and distress firms is empirically analyzed using data from the Stock Exchange of Thailand. This research employs Ohlson's (1980) bankruptcy model as a measurement of distress risk. The results indicate that distress firms outperform solvent firms in the Thai market and deny distress anomaly often found in the developed market. Fama-Frech (1993) three-factor model and Carhart (1997) four-factor model verify the existence of a distress premium in the Thai capital market. Risk-seeking investors demand greater compensation for bearing risks of distress firms' going concern. This paper provides fresh evidence that default risk is a significant explanatory factor in pricing stocks in the emerging market. Also, this study sheds light on the role of NBE firms in asset pricing. Most studies eliminate NBE firms from their sample. However, NBE firms yield superior average cross-sectional returns, albeit with higher volatility. Investors are rewarded with distress risks associated with NBE firms. The outperformance of NBE firms is statistically significant when compared to the overall market. The NBE premium disappears when factoring size, value, and momentum in time-series analysis.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.7
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• pp.349-356
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• 2021

This study comprehensively investigates whether there is an impact of risk, size, profitability, earnings per share, dividend yield, and book-to-market equity on the stock prices of Jordanian banks listed on the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE) for the period 2006-2018. To mitigate endogeneity concerns and to control for within-bank dynamics, panel data fixed effects estimations are used. This study shows that size (SIZE), profitability (ROA), dividend yield (DY) and book-to-market equity (BE/ME) ratios are statistically significant determinants of stock prices. The risk (RISK) factor measured by volatility of ROA has a positive and significant effect on the stock prices, while earnings per share has minimum influence on the stock prices. The results show that ROA has a significant and positive effect and provides the largest effect among all variables used in this study, while the RISK factor has a positive and significant effect. In contrast, SIZE, DY, and BE/ME have a significant negative effect on stock prices. The paper presented new evidence showing that ROA is a better determinant of stock prices in Jordanian banks, and RISK significantly affects stock prices. The researcher recommends using a factor of profitability represented by ROA which has a significant positive effect on the stock prices in Jordanian banks and applying the ROA variable to other sectors.