IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pacfin/v18y2010i3p306-318.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Financial constraints and stock returns -- Evidence from Australia

Author

Listed:
  • Chan, Howard
  • Chang, Xin
  • Faff, Robert
  • Wong, George

Abstract

Using multiple discriminant analysis, we construct an index that measures firms' external financial constraints in an Australian setting. We form portfolios of firms based on our financial constraints index and find that financially constrained firms earn lower return than their unconstrained counterparts. Moreover, stock returns of financially constrained firms are found to move together, indicating the potential existence of a financial constraints factor. Neither the variation nor the mean return of the constraints factor are well explained by existing asset pricing models, suggesting an independent role for our financial constraints factor in affecting stock returns.

Suggested Citation

  • Chan, Howard & Chang, Xin & Faff, Robert & Wong, George, 2010. "Financial constraints and stock returns -- Evidence from Australia," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 306-318, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:pacfin:v:18:y:2010:i:3:p:306-318
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927-538X(10)00017-X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    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. Malcolm Baker & Jeremy C. Stein & Jeffrey Wurgler, 2003. "When Does the Market Matter? Stock Prices and the Investment of Equity-Dependent Firms," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 969-1005.
    2. Sean Cleary, 1999. "The Relationship between Firm Investment and Financial Status," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 54(2), pages 673-692, April.
    3. Lamont, Owen & Polk, Christopher & Saa-Requejo, Jesus, 2001. "Financial Constraints and Stock Returns," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(2), pages 529-554.
    4. Steven M. Fazzari & R. Glenn Hubbard & Bruce C. Petersen, 1988. "Financing Constraints and Corporate Investment," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 19(1), pages 141-206.
    5. Fama, Eugene F & French, Kenneth R, 1992. "The Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 47(2), pages 427-465, June.
    6. Leamer, Edward E, 1983. "Let's Take the Con Out of Econometrics," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(1), pages 31-43, March.
    7. Toni M. Whited & Guojun Wu, 2006. "Financial Constraints Risk," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 19(2), pages 531-559.
    8. Lo, Andrew W & MacKinlay, A Craig, 1990. "Data-Snooping Biases in Tests of Financial Asset Pricing Models," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 3(3), pages 431-467.
    9. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    10. Demir, Isabelle & Muthuswamy, Jay & Walter, Terry, 2004. "Momentum returns in Australian equities: The influences of size, risk, liquidity and return computation," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 12(2), pages 143-158, April.
    11. Xin Chang & Tek Jun Tan & George Wong & Hongfeng Zhang, 2007. "Effects of financial constraints on corporate policies in Australia," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 47(1), pages 85-108, March.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. Pattenden, Kerry & Twite, Garry, 2008. "Taxes and dividend policy under alternative tax regimes," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 1-16, February.
    15. Chang, Xin & Tam, Lewis H.K. & Tan, Tek Jun & Wong, George, 2007. "The real impact of stock market mispricing -- Evidence from Australia," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 15(4), pages 388-408, September.
    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. Pascal Nguyen & Nahid Rahman, 2015. "Which governance characteristics affect the incidence of divestitures in Australia?," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 40(2), pages 351-374, May.
    2. Malik, Muhammad Farhan & Nowland, John & Buckby, Sherrena, 2021. "Voluntary adoption of board risk committees and financial constraints risk," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    3. Nufazil Altaf & Farooq Ahmad Shah, 2018. "Investment and financial constraints in Indian firms: Does working capital smoothen fixed investment?," DECISION: Official Journal of the Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, Springer;Indian Institute of Management Calcutta, vol. 45(1), pages 43-58, March.
    4. Pankaj Sinha & Priya Sawaliya, 2021. "Financial Constraints, Stock Returns and R&D in Indian Stock Market," Vision, , vol. 25(2), pages 192-200, June.
    5. Pamela Kent & Kim Kercher & James Routledge, 2018. "Remuneration committees, shareholder dissent on CEO pay and the CEO pay–performance link," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 58(2), pages 445-475, June.
    6. Chang, Yanhao & Benson, Karen & Faff, Robert, 2017. "Are excess cash holdings more valuable to firms in times of crisis? Financial constraints and governance matters," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 157-173.
    7. Fatematuz Tamanna Ahamed & Muhammad Nurul Houqe & Tony van Zijl, 2023. "Meta‐analysis of the impact of financial constraints on firm performance," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(2), pages 1671-1707, June.
    8. Chen, Jia & Gao, Ya-Chun & Li, Qiang & Zeng, Yong, 2020. "Cash holdings, M&A decision and risk premium," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 537(C).
    9. Hussain, Tanveer & Tunyi, Abongeh A. & Sufyan, Muhammad & Shahab, Yasir, 2022. "Powerful bidders and value creation in M&As," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    10. Zhang, Dongyang & Lucey, Brian M., 2022. "Sustainable behaviors and firm performance: The role of financial constraints’ alleviation," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 220-233.

    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. Chen, Sheng-Syan & Wang, Yanzhi, 2012. "Financial constraints and share repurchases," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 311-331.
    2. Chan, Konan & Lin, Yueh-Hsiang & Wang, Yanzhi, 2017. "Limits-to-arbitrage, investment frictions, and innovation anomalies," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 1-14.
    3. Kewei Hou & Chen Xue & Lu Zhang, 2017. "Replicating Anomalies," NBER Working Papers 23394, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Lu Zhang, 2017. "The Investment CAPM," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 23(4), pages 545-603, September.
    5. Hau, Harald & Lai, Sandy, 2013. "Real effects of stock underpricing," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(2), pages 392-408.
    6. Schauer, Catharina & Elsas, Ralf & Breitkopf, Nikolas, 2019. "A new measure of financial constraints applicable to private and public firms," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 270-295.
    7. Benard Kipyegon Kirui & Nelson H.W. Wawire, 2018. "Measures of Financial Constraints in Kenya," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 8(1), pages 217-231.
    8. Huang, Dayong & Wang, Fang, 2009. "Cash, investments and asset returns," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 33(12), pages 2301-2311, December.
    9. Xin Qu & Majella Percy & Fang Hu & Jenny Stewart, 2022. "Can CEO equity‐based compensation limit investment‐related agency problems?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(2), pages 2579-2614, June.
    10. Najah Attig & Sean Cleary, 2014. "Organizational Capital and Investment-Cash Flow Sensitivity: The Effect of Management Quality Practices," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 43(3), pages 473-504, September.
    11. Titman, Sheridan & Wei, K. C. John & Xie, Feixue, 2004. "Capital Investments and Stock Returns," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 39(4), pages 677-700, December.
    12. Luo, Mi (Meg), 2011. "A bright side of financial constraints in cash management," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(5), pages 1430-1444.
    13. Vural-Yavaş, Çiğdem, 2020. "Corporate risk-taking in developed countries: The influence of economic policy uncertainty and macroeconomic conditions," Journal of Multinational Financial Management, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    14. Rüdiger Fahlenbrach & Kevin Rageth & René M Stulz, 2021. "How Valuable Is Financial Flexibility when Revenue Stops? Evidence from the COVID-19 Crisis [The risk of being a fallen angel and the corporate dash for cash in the midst of COVID]," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 34(11), pages 5474-5521.
    15. Franzoni, Francesco, 2009. "Underinvestment vs. overinvestment: Evidence from price reactions to pension contributions," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3), pages 491-518, June.
    16. Fatematuz Tamanna Ahamed & Muhammad Nurul Houqe & Tony van Zijl, 2023. "Meta‐analysis of the impact of financial constraints on firm performance," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 63(2), pages 1671-1707, June.
    17. Yang, Junhong & Guariglia, Alessandra & Guo, Jie (Michael), 2019. "To what extent does corporate liquidity affect M&A decisions, method of payment and performance? Evidence from China," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 128-152.
    18. Howard Chan & Robert Faff & Paul Kofman, 2011. "Is default risk priced in Australian equity? Exploring the role of the business cycle," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 36(2), pages 217-246, August.
    19. Carlos Carreira & Filipe Silva, 2010. "No Deep Pockets: Some Stylized Empirical Results On Firms’ Financial Constraints," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(4), pages 731-753, September.
    20. Figen Gunes Dogan, 2016. "Non†cancellable Operating Leases and Operating Leverage," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 22(4), pages 576-612, September.

    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:pacfin:v:18:y:2010:i:3:p:306-318. 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/pacfin .

    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.