IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/ohidic/2009-5.html

Why Do Foreign Firms Have Less Idiosyncratic Risk Than U.S. Firms?

Author

Listed:
  • Bartram, Sohnke M.

    (Lancaster University and SSgA)

  • Brown, Gregory

    (Unviersity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

  • Stulz, Rene M.

    (Ohio State University and ECGI)

Abstract

Using a large panel of firms across the world from 1991-2006, we show that the median foreign firm has lower idiosyncratic risk than a comparable U.S. firm. Country characteristics help explain variation in the level of idiosyncratic risk, but less so than firm characteristics. Idiosyncratic risk falls as government stability and respect for the rule of law improve. Idiosyncratic risk is positively related to stock market development but negatively related to bond market development. Surprisingly, we find that idiosyncratic risk is generally negatively related to corporate disclosure quality. Finally, idiosyncratic risk generally increases with shareholder protection. Though there is evidence that R[superscript 2] increases with creditor rights and falls with the quality of disclosure, these results are driven by the relations between these variables and systematic risk rather than by the impact of these variables on idiosyncratic risk.

Suggested Citation

  • Bartram, Sohnke M. & Brown, Gregory & Stulz, Rene M., 2009. "Why Do Foreign Firms Have Less Idiosyncratic Risk Than U.S. Firms?," Working Paper Series 2009-5, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:ohidic:2009-5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cob.ohio-state.edu/fin/dice/papers/2009/2009-5.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Tiziana La Rocca & Maurizio La Rocca & Francesco Fasano & Alfio Cariola, 2023. "Does a country's environmental policy affect the value of small and medium sized enterprises liquidity in the energy sector?," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(1), pages 277-290, January.
    2. Wilkening, Tom, 2016. "Information and the persistence of private-order contract enforcement institutions: An experimental analysis," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 193-215.
    3. Rajgopal, Shiva & Venkatachalam, Mohan, 2011. "Financial reporting quality and idiosyncratic return volatility," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 1-20.
    4. Fernando Lefort & Fernando Diaz, 2013. "Macroeconomic Stability, Financial Risks and Market Eciency: Evidence for a Small and Open Economy," Working Papers 45, Facultad de Economía y Empresa, Universidad Diego Portales.
    5. Michelacci, Claudio & Schivardi, Fabiano, 2008. "Does Idiosyncratic Business Risk Matter?," CEPR Discussion Papers 6910, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Rossi, Francesco, 2011. "U.K. cross-sectional equity data: do not trust the dataset! The case for robust investability filters," MPRA Paper 38303, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Nov 2011.
    7. Fiorella De Fiore & Harald Uhlig, 2011. "Bank Finance versus Bond Finance," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(7), pages 1399-1421, October.
    8. Bekaert, Geert & Hodrick, Robert J. & Zhang, Xiaoyan, 2012. "Aggregate Idiosyncratic Volatility," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 47(6), pages 1155-1185, December.
    9. Arnold, Marc, 2014. "Managerial cash use, default, and corporate financial policies," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 305-325.
    10. Francesco Rossi, 2012. "UK cross-sectional equity data: The case for robust investability filters," European Economic Letters, European Economics Letters Group, vol. 1(1), pages 6-13.
    11. Rossi, Francesco, 2011. "Risk components in UK cross-sectional equities: evidence of regimes and overstated parametric estimates," MPRA Paper 38682, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 31 Mar 2012.
    12. Geeta Duppati & Frank Scrimgeour & Anoop S. Kumar, 2019. "Country-level Governance and Capital Markets in Asia-Pacific Region," Indian Journal of Corporate Governance, , vol. 12(2), pages 187-212, December.
    13. Cotter, John & Sullivan, Niall O' & Rossi, Francesco, 2015. "The conditional pricing of systematic and idiosyncratic risk in the UK equity market," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 184-193.
    14. Rajgopal, Shiva & Venkatachalam, Mohan, 2011. "Financial reporting quality and idiosyncratic return volatility," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(1-2), pages 1-20, February.
    15. De Moor, Lieven & Sercu, Piet, 2011. "Country versus sector factors in equity returns: The roles of non-unit exposures," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(1), pages 64-77, January.
    16. Kaniel, Ron & Ozoguz, Arzu & Starks, Laura, 2012. "The high volume return premium: Cross-country evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(2), pages 255-279.
    17. Unsal, Omer & Brodmann, Jennifer, 2019. "Workplace environment and payout policy," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    18. Nguyen, Nhut H. & Truong, Cameron, 2013. "The information content of stock markets around the world: A cultural explanation," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 26(C), pages 1-29.
    19. Fiorella De Fiore & Harald Uhlig, 2011. "Bank Finance versus Bond Finance," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(7), pages 1399-1421, October.
    20. GABLER, Alain & POSCHKE, Markus, 2011. "Growth through Experimentation," Cahiers de recherche 11-2011, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    21. Graham, Michael & Peltomäki, Jarkko & Piljak, Vanja, 2016. "Global economic activity as an explicator of emerging market equity returns," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 424-435.
    22. Machokoto, Michael & Chipeta, Chimwemwe & Ibeji, Ngozi, 2021. "The institutional determinants of peer effects on corporate cash holdings," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    23. Figlioli, Bruno & Lima, Fabiano Guasti, 2019. "Stock pricing in Latin America: The synchronicity effect," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 1-17.
    24. Claudio Michelacci & Fabiano Schivardi, 2013. "Does Idiosyncratic Business Risk Matter For Growth?," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 343-368, April.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • G12 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates
    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G15 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - International Financial Markets
    • G32 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Financing Policy; Financial Risk and Risk Management; Capital and Ownership Structure; Value of Firms; Goodwill

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ecl:ohidic:2009-5. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cdohsus.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.