Managerial Response to Macroeconomic Uncertainty: Implications for Firm Profitability

This paper examines how agents’ response to macroeconomic uncertainty affects firms’ revenues, expenses, and profitability in a global sample of firms spanning 1997 to 2018. Consistent with consumers reducing purchases and managers cutting costs, I find that increases in macroeconomic uncertainty lead to both lower revenues and lower expenses. The net short-term effect on profitability is positive as the reduction in expenses exceeds the fall in revenues. This favorable profitability effect is attenuated for firms whose institutional environment restrains cost-cutting, holds for both the cash and accrual components of earnings, and is robust to instrumental variable estimation employing exogenous variation in macroeconomic uncertainty arising from natural disasters, political unrest, revolutions, and terrorist attacks.

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The Effect of Underreaction and Overreaction of Firm Stocks to Firm Valuation: Data from the Indonesian Stock Exchange

10.31124/advance.11374857 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Yohanes Indrayono

Keyword(s):

Behavioral Finance ◽

Firm Value ◽

Intangible Assets ◽

Stock Exchange ◽

Investor Sentiment ◽

Firm Valuation ◽

Good News ◽

Industrial Sectors ◽

Tangible Assets ◽

Firm Profitability

<p>This study contributes to the on-going studies on behavioral finance by providing a case study on underreaction and overreaction of firm stocks to firm valuation. We use the Model of Investor Sentiment (Barberis et al., 2005) to evaluate underreaction and overreaction behavior and reflect on specific findings in the Indonesian market. The result of the study is most of the stocks in the Indonesian Stock Exchange are more overreaction to the news of firm financial statements. Firms on the industry with more intangible assets measure more overreaction than firms on industries with more tangible assets. For stocks with overreaction, the stock firm value is positively affected by a change in the total assets and profitability, but not by change of book value. The result concretized no evidence that firm stocks overreacted to the news more than underreacting. In stock industrial sectors, the financial institutions and wholesale industry stocks demonstrated remarkable overreactions. Nonetheless, automotive, building construction, food and beverage as well as cement evidenced more underreaction. For better return in financial markets, investors may buy stocks of the firm on industry with more tangible assets when there is no good news about the increasing firm profitability and sales; nonetheless, they should buy stocks of the firm on industry with more intangible assets when there is no lousy news about the increasing firm profitability and sales. </p>

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The impact of formality on firm profitability in Bolivia: an heterogeneous assessment

Revista Latinoamericana de Desarrollo Económico ◽

10.35319/lajed.201217138 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 53-74

Author(s):

Darwin Ugarte Ontiveros

Keyword(s):

Empirical Literature ◽

Large Firms ◽

Marginal Effects ◽

Heterogeneous Effects ◽

Firm Profitability ◽

The Impact ◽

Formal Status

Recent evidence suggests that formality improves micro-firms profits in Bolivia. This gain is only for firms with 2 to 5 workers, while smaller and larger firms would lose out by formalizing (McKenzie and Sakho, 2010). However, as much of the empirical literature on this topic, the estimations are based on strong assumptions about unobservables. If the returns to formality vary among firms and these variations influence selection into formality, traditional estimators are biased (Heckman and Vytlacil, 2007). In this paper we considerthese elements to estimate the heterogeneous effects of formality on firm profits in Bolivia. We find remarkable heterogeneity in the returns to formality, from -3% to 6%. The group of firms with positive marginal effects from formality corresponds to those which are most likely to register. We also characterize the firms that likely benefit from having a formal status. These would correspond to large firms which work at big scales.

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