Xiaoquan Jiang

The Dynamic Relation Between Returns and Idiosyncratic Volatility

We claim that regressing excess returns on one-lagged volatility provides only a limited picture of the dynamic effect of idiosyncratic risk, which tends to be persistent over time. By correcting for the serial correlation in idiosyncratic volatility, we find that idiosyncratic volatility has a significant positive effect. This finding seems robust for various firm size portfolios, sample periods, and measures of idiosyncratic risk. Our findings suggest stock markets mis-price idiosyncratic risk. There may be some measurement problems with idiosyncratic risk that could be related to nondiversifiable risk.

An Empirical Test of the Accounting-Based Residual Income Model and the Traditional Dividend Discount Model

Given the failure of the conventional dividend discount model to explain volatile, dynamic stock price movements, we test the empirical validity of an alternative model, the accounting-based residual income model (RIM), which posits that the current stock price equals the current book value of equity plus the present value of expected future residual income. We test two implications of the two models: volatility of prices relative to fundamentals and the models dynamic implications by cross-equation restrictions. We find that, for stock valuation, book values and accounting earnings in the RIM contain more useful information than dividends alone.

Corporate Bond Returns and Volatility

Recent literature emphasizes the relation of stock volatility to corporate bond yields. We demonstrate that during 1996-2005 corporate bond excess return volatility is directly related to contemporaneous corporate bond excess returns. In fact, the decompositions of aggregate bond volatility have a higher contemporaneous correlation with bond yields in comparison to idiosyncratic stock risk. Additionally, bond volatility and idiosyncratic risk are significant predictors of corporate three-month and six-month ahead bond excess returns. We also find that corporate bond volatility contains both slow moving and time-varying components. Copyright 2008, The Eastern Finance Association.

Do Decomposed Financial Ratios Predict Stock Returns and Fundamentals Better

We investigate the prediction of excess returns and fundamentals by financial ratios – dividend-price ratio, earnings-price ratio, and book-to-market ratio – by decomposing financial ratios into a cyclical component and a stochastic trend component. We find both components predict excess returns and fundamentals. The cyclical components predict increases in future stock returns, while the stochastic trend components predict declines in future stock returns, in particular, in long horizons. This helps explain previous findings that financial ratios in the absence of decomposition find weak predictive power in short horizons and some predictive power in long horizons. We also find both components predict fundamentals, consistent with present value models.

The Dynamic Relations between Market Returns and Two Types of Risk with Business Cycles

We examine the dynamic relations among market returns, market (MV), and idiosyncratic (IV) around business cycles. Compared to the conventional view, which treats MV and IV separately, we first find that excess return on the market anticipates negative MV and IV, suggesting market returns role as an economic indicator, with the relation stronger in recessions. Second, IV helps predict positive MV, mainly in early part of recessions, suggesting a dynamic evolution from IV to MV. Third, MV helps predict negative IV, suggesting MV may substitute IV to some extent.

Equity issues and aggregate market returns under information asymmetry

We propose a simple time-series model based on information asymmetry that allows us to test the predictive power of equity and debt issues with respect to future market returns. Using this method, we find that managers’ new equity and debt issue decisions have predictive power for future market returns, when we take into account potential feedback from past market returns and structural breaks. We also take into account a cointegration relation among stock prices, equity issues and debt issues. This finding is robust with respect to various measures of market returns and consistent with the managerial timing hypothesis.

Cross-Sectional PEG Ratios, Market Equity Premium, and Macroeconomic Activity

This paper exploits information contained in cross-sectional PEG ratios to extract estimates of the markets expectations for aggregate returns and economic fundamentals. By combining the loglinear present-valuation model and the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) logic, we establish a theoretic link between PEG ratios and expected returns of stocks. Using this theoretic link, we construct one proxy for aggregate market equity premium and one proxy for macroeconomic fundamentals. The equity premium proxy outperforms alternative predictors and has considerable power in forecasting future market returns over the period of May 1983 to December 2009. The equity premium proxy is also able to forecast future macroeconomic activity such as nonfarm payroll growth, personal consumption expenditure growth, nondurable consumption growth, inflation, and unemployment rate. The fundamentals proxy is highly correlated with unemployment rates both concurrently and intertemporally. The results are generally robust across subsample and to various econometric methods for standard-error adjustments. Our study suggests that the choice of cross-section data is critical to information extraction and that the CAPM remains a vital theoretic tool to guide empirical work.

An Analysis of Stock Returns and Aggregate Earnings

We reexamine the time-series properties and determinants of the relation between aggregate earnings and returns (earnings response coefficient, ERC) employing return decompositions with longer historical data. We find that aggregate ERC is time-varying, above and beyond the evidence documented in prior literature that aggregate ERC is negative. We also find the aggregate ERC components - expected return ERC, cash flow news ERC, and discount rate news ERC - are time-varying. We reconcile the prior findings and show that both news and expectations of returns contribute to aggregate ERC and the relative importance of each varies over time. We further show that the time-varying aggregate ERC and the relative importance of aggregate ERC components are strongly associated with macroeconomic conditions and the stock market regulation environment.

Debt IPO Waves

We examine aggregate volume of straight debt IPOs issued by nonfinancial firms over an extended period of 1970 to 2010. We find that aggregate debt IPO activities display wave patterns. Similar to equity IPOs, both the number and total proceeds of debt IPOs vary substantially over time. We explore possible explanations for the debt IPO waves with four groups of variables - capital market conditions, investor sentiment, information asymmetry, and interest rates. Our results indicate that debt IPO volume is significantly associated with term spread, stock return volatility and interest rates, suggesting that bond market conditions and information asymmetry play significant roles in explaining time variations in debt IPO volume. However, we do not find a significant role for investor sentiment. We also document that debt IPOs and equity IPOs are mutually Granger caused, suggesting that debt IPOs and equity IPOs tend to move together.