IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/finrev/v57y2022i1p155-178.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The cross‐sectional return predictability of employment growth: A liquidity risk explanation

Author

Listed:
  • Weimin Liu
  • Di Luo
  • Seyoung Park
  • Huainan Zhao

Abstract

Employment growth (EG) is related to liquidity fundamentals of investment opportunities, firm health, and information environment and quality. This, in turn, implies that liquidity risk may play a role in explaining the relation between EG and stock returns. We find strong empirical evidence supporting the link between EG and liquidity risk. Stocks of high‐EG firms are more liquid and exposed to lower liquidity risk than stocks of low‐EG firms. After adjusting for liquidity risk, EG loses its power to predict returns.

Suggested Citation

  • Weimin Liu & Di Luo & Seyoung Park & Huainan Zhao, 2022. "The cross‐sectional return predictability of employment growth: A liquidity risk explanation," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 57(1), pages 155-178, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:finrev:v:57:y:2022:i:1:p:155-178
    DOI: 10.1111/fire.12279
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/fire.12279
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/fire.12279?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joel Peress, 2010. "Product Market Competition, Insider Trading, and Stock Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 65(1), pages 1-43, February.
    2. Frederico Belo & Xiaoji Lin & Santiago Bazdresch, 2014. "Labor Hiring, Investment, and Stock Return Predictability in the Cross Section," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(1), pages 129-177.
    3. Harald Uhlig, 2007. "Explaining Asset Prices with External Habits and Wage Rigidities in a DSGE Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 239-243, May.
    4. Brogaard, Jonathan & Li, Dan & Xia, Ying, 2017. "Stock liquidity and default risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(3), pages 486-502.
    5. Alex Edmans & Vivian W. Fang & Emanuel Zur, 2013. "The Effect of Liquidity on Governance," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 26(6), pages 1443-1482.
    6. Antonio Falato & Nellie Liang, 2016. "Do Creditor Rights Increase Employment Risk? Evidence from Loan Covenants," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 71(6), pages 2545-2590, December.
    7. Ma, Xiuli & Zhang, Xindong & Liu, Weimin, 2021. "Further tests of asset pricing models: Liquidity risk matters," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 255-273.
    8. Levine, Ross & Zervos, Sara, 1998. "Stock Markets, Banks, and Economic Growth," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 537-558, June.
    9. Jennifer Francis & Dhananjay Nanda & Per Olsson, 2008. "Voluntary Disclosure, Earnings Quality, and Cost of Capital," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(1), pages 53-99, March.
    10. Ng, Jeffrey, 2011. "The effect of information quality on liquidity risk," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 126-143.
    11. Frederico Belo & Jun Li & Xiaoji Lin & Xiaofei Zhao, 2017. "Labor-Force Heterogeneity and Asset Prices: The Importance of Skilled Labor," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 30(10), pages 3669-3709.
    12. Richard Whitaker, 1999. "The early stages of financial distress," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 23(2), pages 123-132, June.
    13. Purnanandam, Amiyatosh, 2008. "Financial distress and corporate risk management: Theory and evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3), pages 706-739, March.
    14. Weimin Liu & Di Luo & Huainan Zhao, 2016. "The Epstein–Zin Model with Liquidity Extension," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 51(1), pages 113-146, February.
    15. Pedro Gomis‐Porqueras, 2020. "Fiscal Requirements for Dynamic and Real Determinacies in Economies with Private Provision of Liquidity: A Monetarist Assessment," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(1), pages 229-267, February.
    16. Ping Cheng & Zhenguo Lin & Yingchun Liu, 2013. "Liquidity Risk of Private Assets: Evidence from Real Estate Markets," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 48(4), pages 671-696, November.
    17. Weimin Liu & Norman Strong, 2008. "Biases in Decomposing Holding-Period Portfolio Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 21(5), pages 2243-2274, September.
    18. Jon Kerr & Gil Sadka & Ronnie Sadka, 2020. "Illiquidity and Price Informativeness," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(1), pages 334-351, January.
    19. Toni M. Whited & Guojun Wu, 2006. "Financial Constraints Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(2), pages 531-559.
    20. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    21. Pastor, Lubos & Stambaugh, Robert F., 2003. "Liquidity Risk and Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(3), pages 642-685, June.
    22. Robert E. Hall, 2017. "High Discounts and High Unemployment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(2), pages 305-330, February.
    23. Fang, Vivian W. & Noe, Thomas H. & Tice, Sheri, 2009. "Stock market liquidity and firm value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 150-169, October.
    24. Sreedhar T. Bharath & Sudarshan Jayaraman & Venky Nagar, 2013. "Exit as Governance: An Empirical Analysis," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(6), pages 2515-2547, December.
    25. Donangelo, Andres & Gourio, François & Kehrig, Matthias & Palacios, Miguel, 2019. "The cross-section of labor leverage and equity returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 132(2), pages 497-518.
    26. Sadka, Ronnie, 2011. "Liquidity risk and accounting information," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 144-152.
    27. Federico Cingano & Francesco Manaresi & Enrico Sette, 2016. "Does Credit Crunch Investment Down? New Evidence on the Real Effects of the Bank-Lending Channel," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 29(10), pages 2737-2773.
    28. Kale, Jayant R. & Loon, Yee Cheng, 2011. "Product market power and stock market liquidity," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 14(2), pages 376-410, May.
    29. Sadka, Ronnie, 2006. "Momentum and post-earnings-announcement drift anomalies: The role of liquidity risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 309-349, May.
    30. Sharpe, Steven A, 1994. "Financial Market Imperfections, Firm Leverage, and the Cyclicality of Employment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 1060-1074, September.
    31. Kewei Hou & Chen Xue & Lu Zhang, 2015. "Editor's Choice Digesting Anomalies: An Investment Approach," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 28(3), pages 650-705.
    32. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 2015. "A five-factor asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 116(1), pages 1-22.
    33. Shane A. Corwin & Paul Schultz, 2012. "A Simple Way to Estimate Bid‐Ask Spreads from Daily High and Low Prices," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 67(2), pages 719-760, April.
    34. Martin Lettau & Sydney Ludvigson, 2001. "Resurrecting the (C)CAPM: A Cross-Sectional Test When Risk Premia Are Time-Varying," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(6), pages 1238-1287, December.
    35. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    36. Howard W. Chan & Robert W. Faff, 2005. "Asset Pricing and the Illiquidity Premium," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 40(4), pages 429-458, November.
    37. Favilukis, Jack & Lin, Xiaoji, 2013. "Long run productivity risk and aggregate investment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(6), pages 737-751.
    38. Tyler Shumway & Vincent A. Warther, 1999. "The Delisting Bias in CRSP's Nasdaq Data and Its Implications for the Size Effect," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(6), pages 2361-2379, December.
    39. Andrew Y. Chen & Mihail Velikov, 2020. "Zeroing in on the Expected Returns of Anomalies," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2020-039, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    40. Liu, Weimin, 2006. "A liquidity-augmented capital asset pricing model," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(3), pages 631-671, December.
    41. Randi Næs & Johannes A. Skjeltorp & Bernt Arne Ødegaard, 2011. "Stock Market Liquidity and the Business Cycle," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(1), pages 139-176, February.
    42. Das, Sanjiv R. & Hanouna, Paul, 2009. "Hedging credit: Equity liquidity matters," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 112-123, January.
    43. Art Durnev & Vihang Errunza & Alexander Molchanov, 2009. "Property rights protection, corporate transparency, and growth," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 40(9), pages 1533-1562, December.
    44. Shumway, Tyler, 1997. "The Delisting Bias in CRSP Data," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 327-340, March.
    45. Brennan, Michael J. & Chordia, Tarun & Subrahmanyam, Avanidhar, 1998. "Alternative factor specifications, security characteristics, and the cross-section of expected stock returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 345-373, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Luo, Di, 2022. "ESG, liquidity, and stock returns," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    2. Kewei Hou & Chen Xue & Lu Zhang, 2017. "Replicating Anomalies," NBER Working Papers 23394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Cynthia M. Gong & Di Luo & Huainan Zhao, 2021. "Liquidity risk and the beta premium," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 44(4), pages 789-814, December.
    4. Pham, Mia Hang, 2020. "In law we trust: Lawyer CEOs and stock liquidity," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 50(C).
    5. Andrew Y. Chen & Tom Zimmermann, 2022. "Open Source Cross-Sectional Asset Pricing," Critical Finance Review, now publishers, vol. 11(2), pages 207-264, May.
    6. Bilinski, Pawel & Liu, Weimin & Strong, Norman, 2012. "Does liquidity risk explain low firm performance following seasoned equity offerings?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 2770-2785.
    7. Ma, Xiuli & Zhang, Xindong & Liu, Weimin, 2021. "Further tests of asset pricing models: Liquidity risk matters," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 255-273.
    8. Amihud, Yakov & Noh, Joonki, 2021. "The pricing of the illiquidity factor’s conditional risk with time-varying premium," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 56(C).
    9. Winston Wei Dou & Yan Ji & David Reibstein & Wei Wu, 2021. "Inalienable Customer Capital, Corporate Liquidity, and Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 76(1), pages 211-265, February.
    10. Asad Kausar, 2018. "Post-Earnings-Announcement Drift and the Return Predictability of Earnings Levels: One Effect or Two?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(10), pages 4877-4892, October.
    11. Karstanje, Dennis & Sojli, Elvira & Tham, Wing Wah & van der Wel, Michel, 2013. "Economic valuation of liquidity timing," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(12), pages 5073-5087.
    12. Geertsema, Paul & Lu, Helen, 2020. "The correlation structure of anomaly strategies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    13. Liu, Weimin & Luo, Di & Zhao, Huainan, 2016. "Transaction costs, liquidity risk, and the CCAPM," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 126-145.
    14. Nguyen, Hung T. & Pham, Mia Hang & Truong, Cameron, 2023. "Leadership in a pandemic: Do more able managers keep firms out of trouble?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C).
    15. Guanhao Feng & Stefano Giglio & Dacheng Xiu, 2020. "Taming the Factor Zoo: A Test of New Factors," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(3), pages 1327-1370, June.
    16. Stereńczak, Szymon & Zaremba, Adam & Umar, Zaghum, 2020. "Is there an illiquidity premium in frontier markets?," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(C).
    17. Hoang, Khoa & Cannavan, Damien & Gaunt, Clive & Huang, Ronghong, 2019. "Is that factor just lucky? Australian evidence," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    18. Florackis, Chris & Gregoriou, Andros & Kostakis, Alexandros, 2011. "Trading frequency and asset pricing on the London Stock Exchange: Evidence from a new price impact ratio," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 3335-3350.
    19. Craig W. Holden & Stacey Jacobsen & Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, 2014. "The Empirical Analysis of Liquidity," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 8(4), pages 263-365, December.
    20. Ince, Baris, 2022. "Liquidity components: Commonality in liquidity, underreaction, and equity returns," Journal of Financial Markets, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).

    More about this item

    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:bla:finrev:v:57:y:2022:i:1:p:155-178. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/efaaaea.html .

    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.