IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/finana/v83y2022ics1057521922002435.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Can local policy uncertainty curtail corporate speculation on financial assets?

Author

Listed:
  • Aibai, Abuduwali
  • Peng, Yuchao
  • Shen, Peiyi
  • Xu, Hongmei

Abstract

Using a hand-collected data set of city-level local official's turnover in China, we find that the average financial investments of listed non-financial firms decrease significantly in the spike of local political uncertainty, i.e., when upon the turnover of city head occurs. The decrease in financial investment still occurs upon the predicted timing of city heads' turnover. The effect is more prominent for firms with high financial distress risk and weaker corporate governance, i.e., those with higher speculative motives. Overall, this paper reveals that local political uncertainty discourages firms' speculative motives of investing in financial securities.

Suggested Citation

  • Aibai, Abuduwali & Peng, Yuchao & Shen, Peiyi & Xu, Hongmei, 2022. "Can local policy uncertainty curtail corporate speculation on financial assets?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:finana:v:83:y:2022:i:c:s1057521922002435
    DOI: 10.1016/j.irfa.2022.102287
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521922002435
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.irfa.2022.102287?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bo Becker & Per Strömberg, 2012. "Fiduciary Duties and Equity-debtholder Conflicts," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(6), pages 1931-1969.
    2. Xu, Nianhang & Chen, Qinyuan & Xu, Yan & Chan, Kam C., 2016. "Political uncertainty and cash holdings: Evidence from China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 276-295.
    3. Christopher C. Géczy & Bernadette A. Minton & Catherine M. Schrand, 2007. "Taking a View: Corporate Speculation, Governance, and Compensation," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 62(5), pages 2405-2443, October.
    4. Demir, FIrat, 2009. "Financial liberalization, private investment and portfolio choice: Financialization of real sectors in emerging markets," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(2), pages 314-324, March.
    5. Adam, Tim R. & Fernando, Chitru S. & Salas, Jesus M., 2017. "Why do firms engage in selective hedging? Evidence from the gold mining industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 269-282.
    6. Ran Duchin, 2010. "Cash Holdings and Corporate Diversification," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(3), pages 955-992, June.
    7. Wang, Yizhong & Chen, Carl R. & Huang, Ying Sophie, 2014. "Economic policy uncertainty and corporate investment: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 227-243.
    8. Çolak, Gönül & Durnev, Art & Qian, Yiming, 2017. "Political Uncertainty and IPO Activity: Evidence from U.S. Gubernatorial Elections," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(6), pages 2523-2564, December.
    9. Huang, Jialin & Luo, Yu & Peng, Yuchao, 2021. "Corporate financial asset holdings under economic policy uncertainty: Precautionary saving or speculating?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 1359-1378.
    10. Stulz, ReneM., 1990. "Managerial discretion and optimal financing policies," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 3-27, July.
    11. Narayan, Paresh Kumar & Narayan, Seema & Tran, Vuong Thao & Thuraisamy, Kannan, 2021. "State-level politics: Do they influence corporate investment decisions?," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    12. Liu, Qigui & Tang, Jinghua & Tian, Gary Gang, 2013. "Does political capital create value in the IPO market? Evidence from China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 23(C), pages 395-413.
    13. Edward I. Altman, 1968. "Financial Ratios, Discriminant Analysis And The Prediction Of Corporate Bankruptcy," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(4), pages 589-609, September.
    14. Edward I. Altman, 1968. "The Prediction Of Corporate Bankruptcy: A Discriminant Analysis," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(1), pages 193-194, March.
    15. Du, Julan & Li, Chang & Wang, Yongqin, 2017. "A comparative study of shadow banking activities of non-financial firms in transition economies," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(S), pages 35-49.
    16. Fan, Joseph P.H. & Rui, Oliver Meng & Zhao, Mengxin, 2008. "Public governance and corporate finance: Evidence from corruption cases," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(3), pages 343-364, September.
    17. Brandon Julio & Youngsuk Yook, 2012. "Political Uncertainty and Corporate Investment Cycles," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(1), pages 45-84, February.
    18. Fauver, Larry & Naranjo, Andy, 2010. "Derivative usage and firm value: The influence of agency costs and monitoring problems," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 719-735, December.
    19. G. David Haushalter, 2000. "Financing Policy, Basis Risk, and Corporate Hedging: Evidence from Oil and Gas Producers," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 55(1), pages 107-152, February.
    20. Myers, Stewart C., 1977. "Determinants of corporate borrowing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 5(2), pages 147-175, November.
    21. Bhattacharya, Utpal & Hsu, Po-Hsuan & Tian, Xuan & Xu, Yan, 2017. "What Affects Innovation More: Policy or Policy Uncertainty?," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(5), pages 1869-1901, October.
    22. Xiaoran Ni, 2019. "Local official turnover, ownership, and firm cash holdings: Insights from an emerging market," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 25(4), pages 1013-1046, September.
    23. Gormley, Todd A. & Matsa, David A., 2016. "Playing it safe? Managerial preferences, risk, and agency conflicts," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(3), pages 431-455.
    24. Ran Duchin & Thomas Gilbert & Jarrad Harford & Christopher Hrdlicka, 2017. "Precautionary Savings with Risky Assets: When Cash Is Not Cash," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 72(2), pages 793-852, April.
    25. Lel, Ugur, 2012. "Currency hedging and corporate governance: A cross-country analysis," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 221-237.
    26. An, Heng & Chen, Yanyan & Luo, Danglun & Zhang, Ting, 2016. "Political uncertainty and corporate investment: Evidence from China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 174-189.
    27. Jiang, Guohua & Lee, Charles M.C. & Yue, Heng, 2010. "Tunneling through intercorporate loans: The China experience," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 1-20, October.
    28. DeMarzo, Peter M & Duffie, Darrell, 1995. "Corporate Incentives for Hedging and Hedge Accounting," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 8(3), pages 743-771.
    29. Gu, Leilei & Liu, Zhongyang & Ma, Sichao & Wang, Hongyu, 2022. "Social trust and corporate financial asset holdings: Evidence from China," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    30. Hong Ru, 2018. "Government Credit, a Double†Edged Sword: Evidence from the China Development Bank," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 73(1), pages 275-316, February.
    31. Jens, Candace E., 2017. "Political uncertainty and investment: Causal evidence from U.S. gubernatorial elections," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(3), pages 563-579.
    32. Tufano, Peter, 1996. "Who Manages Risk? An Empirical Examination of Risk Management Practices in the Gold Mining Industry," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 51(4), pages 1097-1137, September.
    33. Liu, Yu & Miletkov, Mihail K. & Wei, Zuobao & Yang, Tina, 2015. "Board independence and firm performance in China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 223-244.
    34. Mayers, David & Smith, Clifford W, Jr, 1982. "On the Corporate Demand for Insurance," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(2), pages 281-296, April.
    35. Firth, Michael & Rui, Oliver M. & Wu, Wenfeng, 2011. "Cooking the books: Recipes and costs of falsified financial statements in China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 371-390, April.
    36. Gavish, Bezalel & Kalay, Avner, 1983. "On the Asset Substitution Problem," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 21-30, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wu, Kai & Lu, Yufei, 2023. "Corporate digital transformation and financialization: Evidence from Chinese listed firms," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    2. Zhang, Xiaoliang & Zheng, Xiaojia, 2024. "Does carbon emission trading policy induce financialization of non-financial firms? Evidence from China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    3. Alam, Ahmed W. & Farjana, Ashupta & Houston, Reza, 2023. "Firm investment steering through state-level policy uncertainty," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 58(PC).
    4. Zhang, Ziqi & Su, Zhi & Tong, Fang, 2023. "Does digital transformation restrain corporate financialization? Evidence from China," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Huang, Jialin & Luo, Yu & Peng, Yuchao, 2021. "Corporate financial asset holdings under economic policy uncertainty: Precautionary saving or speculating?," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 1359-1378.
    2. Fauver, Larry & Naranjo, Andy, 2010. "Derivative usage and firm value: The influence of agency costs and monitoring problems," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 16(5), pages 719-735, December.
    3. Jerome Geyer-Klingeberg & Markus Hang & Andreas W. Rathgeber & Stefan Stöckl & Matthias Walter, 2018. "What do we really know about corporate hedging? A meta-analytical study," Business Research, Springer;German Academic Association for Business Research, vol. 11(1), pages 1-31, February.
    4. Chen, Yanyan, 2022. "Does political turnover affect corporate investment? Evidence from China," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(PA).
    5. Li, Xiaorong & Luo, Jingbo & Chan, Kam C., 2018. "Political uncertainty and the cost of equity capital," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 215-222.
    6. Swanpitak, Tanapond & Pan, Xiaofei & Suardi, Sandy, 2020. "The value of family control during political uncertainty: Evidence from Thailand's constitutional change in 201411We are grateful for helpful comments and suggestions provided by Shu-Ching Chou, Wooch," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(C).
    7. Ahmad, Muhammad Farooq & Aziz, Saqib & El-Khatib, Rwan & Kowalewski, Oskar, 2023. "Firm-level political risk and dividend payout," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    8. repec:hum:wpaper:sfb649dp2012-019 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Adam, Tim R. & Fernando, Chitru S. & Salas, Jesus M., 2012. "Why do firms engage in selective hedging?," SFB 649 Discussion Papers 2012-019, Humboldt University Berlin, Collaborative Research Center 649: Economic Risk.
    10. Fernando, Chitru S. & Hoelscher, Seth A. & Raman, Vikas, 2020. "The informativeness of derivatives use: Evidence from corporate disclosure through public announcements," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    11. Cai, Weixing & Hu, Feng & Xu, Fangming & Zheng, Liyi, 2022. "Anti-corruption campaign and corporate cash holdings: Evidence from China," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(PA).
    12. Cui, Xin & Wang, Chunfeng & Liao, Jing & Fang, Zhenming & Cheng, Feiyang, 2021. "Economic policy uncertainty exposure and corporate innovation investment: Evidence from China," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 67(C).
    13. Wadhwa, Kavita & Goodell, John W., 2024. "Political uncertainty and stock price crash risk: Insights from state-elections in an emerging market," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 95(PB).
    14. Choi, Seong-jin & Liu, Huilong & Yin, Jun & Qi, Yunfei & Lee, Jeoung Yul, 2021. "The effect of political turnover on firms’ strategic change in the emerging economies: The moderating role of political connections and financial resources," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 255-266.
    15. Adam, Tim R. & Fernando, Chitru S. & Salas, Jesus M., 2017. "Why do firms engage in selective hedging? Evidence from the gold mining industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 269-282.
    16. Ji (George) Wu & Jian Zhang & Yiwen Wu & Dongmin Kong, 2020. "When to go abroad: economic policy uncertainty and Chinese firms’ overseas investment," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(2), pages 1435-1470, June.
    17. Duong, Huu Nhan & Nguyen, Justin Hung & Nguyen, My & Rhee, S. Ghon, 2020. "Navigating through economic policy uncertainty: The role of corporate cash holdings," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    18. El Ghoul, Sadok & Guedhami, Omrane & Mansi, Sattar & Wang, He (Helen), 2023. "Economic policy uncertainty, institutional environments, and corporate cash holdings," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    19. Zhang, Chenyu & Qian, Aimin & Lou, Xu & Zhang, Guiling, 2024. "The politics of corporate social responsibility disclosure: Evidence from China," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 1406-1428.
    20. Xu, Nianhang & Chen, Qinyuan & Xu, Yan & Chan, Kam C., 2016. "Political uncertainty and cash holdings: Evidence from China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 276-295.
    21. Cui, Di & Ding, Mingfa & Han, Yikai & Suardi, Sandy, 2022. "Foreign shareholders, relative foreign policy uncertainty and corporate cash holdings," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Financial investment; Speculative; Precautionary motive; Local political uncertainty; Non-financial firm;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G11 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Portfolio Choice; Investment Decisions
    • G31 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Capital Budgeting; Fixed Investment and Inventory Studies
    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:finana:v:83:y:2022:i:c:s1057521922002435. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/620166 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.