demand for money in open economies abstract the demand for real cash balances deduced from an underlying portfolio model of the financial market is shown to depend upon domestic variables and foreign monetary developments the model is estimated using quarterly postwar data for canada germany uk and us there is clear evidence that demand for money is affected not only by changes in domestic variables such as permanent income domestic interest rate and price expectations but also by fluctuations in exchange rate expectations and foreign interest rates the conclusion that domestic monetary policy is fairly ineffective and domestic financial markets are highly vulnerable to changes in foreign financial and monetary developments need to be modified in light of the results presented in this paper

international evidence on the demand for money one of the current questions in the literature on the demand for money is whethe r the adjustment of actual to desired money holdings is in nominal or real terms this paper describes a simple procedure that can be used to test the nominal against the real hypothesis the test is carried out for twenty seven countries the paper also tests the structural stability of the demand for money equations and the correctness of th e dynamic specification the results are strongly in favor of the nom inal adjustment hypothesis there is however some evidence of moder ate structural instability before and after 1973 the instability doe s not affect the conclusion that the nominal adjustment hypothesis do minates the real adjustment hypothesis copyright 1987 by mit press

ex day behavior with dividend preference and limitations to short term arbitrage the case of swedish lottery bonds abstract swedish lottery bonds offer a unique opportunity to study ex day effects in an environment where cash distributions are tax advantaged relative to capital gains thus in the lottery bond market we observe a reversal of the preference for capital gains that researchers have cited as an explanation for the ex day behavior of u s equities further in this market there are barriers to short term arbitrage when prices do reflect the tax preferences of individual investors we find the bonds are priced around the ex day to reflect differential tax rates on income and capital gains consistent with the prevailing tax regimes the bonds consistently experience negative returns over the coupon payment period and in fact often sell at negative yields prior to the cash distribution as one would expect given tax motivated trading between high tax investors who buy prior to the distribution and low tax investors who buy after the distribution

new evidence of the impact of dividend taxation and on the identity of the marginal investor this paper examines the impact of a major change in dividend taxation introduced in the united kingdom in july 1997 the reform was structured in such a way that the immediate impact fell almost entirely on the largest investor class in the united kingdom namely pension funds we find significant changes in the valuation of dividend income after the reform in particular for high yielding companies these results provide strong support for the hypothesis that taxation affects the valua tion of companies and that pension funds were the effective marginal investors for high yielding companies

devaluation and the j curve some evidence from ldcs within the international trade literature it is not uncommon to find arguments about whether devaluation will improve the trade balance it is argued that the flows of goods respond only with time lags to changes in the exchange rate the j curve terrn is used to describe the movement over time of the trade balance it may deteriorate at first and improvement may come later this paper presents a method by which one could detect the existence of the j curve the method is applied to four developing countries the empirical evidence supports the pattern of movemnent described by the j curve a major policy option for a country facing a persistent balance of payments deficit is said to be devaluation of its currency within the international trade literature it is not uncommon to find arguments about whether devaluation will improve the trade balance or the balance of payments for example proponents of the elasticities approach describe the necessary and sufficient conditions for an improvement in the trade balance in terms of elasticities of demand and supply referred to as the marshall lerner condition while there is abundant empirical evidence to suggest that these conditions are indeed met at least for industrial countries there have been circumstances under which 2 devaluation has not been successful for example one might wonder why the u s trade balance deteriorated so much in 1972 despite the devaluation of the dollar in 1971 this unfavorable effect of devaluation on the trade balance is termed the j curve phenomenon received for publication august 23 1984 revision accepted for publication november 26 1984 the university of wisconsin milwaukee i would like to thank two anonymous referees for their valuable comments on the initial draft of this paper 1 proponents of the absorption approach e g alexander 1952 describe how devaluation may change the terms of trade increase production and switch expenditures from foreign to domestic goods thus improving the trade balance international monetarists argue that devaluation reduces the real value of cash balances and or changes the relative price of traded and nontraded goods thus improving both the trade balance and the balance of payments 2 for an cstimate of the elasticities see houthakker and magee 1969 and warner and kreinin 1983 the former study provides the elasticities estimates under fixed exchange rates and the latter under floating rates this content downloaded from 157 55 39 17 on wed 31 aug 2016 04 39 37 utc all use subject to http about jstor org terms

how do fiscal and technology shocks affect real exchange rates new evidence for the united states abstract using vector autoregressions on u s time series relative to an aggregate of industrialized countries this paper provides new evidence on the dynamic effects of government spending and technology shocks on the real exchange rate and the terms of trade to achieve identification we derive robust restrictions on the sign of several impulse responses from a two country general equilibrium model we find that both the real exchange rate and the terms of trade whose responses are left unrestricted depreciate in response to expansionary government spending shocks and appreciate in response to positive technology shocks

the ex dividend day behavior of canadian stock prices tax changes and clientele effects with some simple assumptions the ex dividend day price drop and the associated dividend can be used to measure the market s marginal tax rate previous research has estimated the implied tax rate for the u s this paper extends the analysis to canada where the tax treatment of dividends and capital gains is completely different from that in the u s the paper also presents estimates from 1970 80 to include four distinct periods when the tax treatment was different hence we include an implied test of market efficiency as well as those for the relevance of taxes and the existence of tax based dividend clienteles

ex day behavior tax or short term trading effects this study examines the behavior of share prices around the ex dividend dates before and after the introduction of the 1988 income and corporation taxes act that reduced substantially the tax differential between dividends and capital gains in the united kingdom we find that in the pre 1988 period when the differential taxation of dividends and capital gains is high ex day returns are positive and significant in contrast in the post 1988 period ex day returns are in most cases negative and insignificant further analysis reveals that while ex day returns are significantly related to dividend yield and to the length of the settlement period they are not affected by the commonly used measures of transaction costs such as the bid ask spread and trading volume or by the day of week month of the year type of dividend distribution or number of days to the actual receipt of the cash dividend we conclude that taxation affects significantly ex day share prices in the previous studies have documented that the risk adjusted abnormal returns on the ex dividend dates are positive and significantly related to the dividend yield the interpretation of these findings is however controversial the question relates to what category of investors sets ex day prices elton and

the short run demand for money a reconsideration the partial adjustment approach to the specification of the short run demand for money has dominated the literature for more than a decade there are three basic problems with this approach first the same lag structure is imposed on all variables and each independent variable enters only as a current value in contrast a rational individual would respond to different variables income interest rates prices with quite different lags second when the general price levelis subject to gradual adjustment hut can move quickly in response to supply shocks the influence of these supply shocks should enter with a negative sign third the estimated equation for real balances may not be a money demand equation at all but rather its coefficients may represent a shifting mixture of demand and supply responses the empirical work examines several alternative dynamic specifications including a generalized partial adjustment framework and the error correction model both of the latter specifications exhibit greater structural stability after 1973 than the standard partial adjustment specification and the generalized partial adjustment model also yields relatively small errors in post sample dynamic simulations shifts in coefficients as the sample period is extended after 1973 are consistent with the interpretation that the real balance equation no longer traces out structural demand parameters hut rather a mixture of demand and supply responses this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

long run estimates of money demand new evidence from east asian countries and the presence of structural breaks conventionally the money demand function is estimated using a linear regression of the logarithm of money demand on a number of variables in this article we aim to estimate the long run properties of money demand specification for a number of east asian economies and within a panel framework with the presence of structural breaks various country specific coefficients are allowed to capture inter country heterogeneities consistent with theoretical postulates it is found that a the demand for money in the long run positively responds to real income and inversely to the interest rate spread inflation the real effective exchange rate and the us real interest rate b the long run income elasticity is greater than unity and c both the currency substitution and capital mobility hypotheses hold the empirical findings in this article can provide useful policy guidelines to the east asian countries central banks in their quest for price stability if one of the primary objectives of these countries

determinants of international trade flows this paper models and estimates import demand and demand for export functions for 19 industrial countries although primary emphasis is placed on the period of generalized floating exchange rates 1972 through 1980 estimates are also provided for the fixed exchange rate years 1957 1970 thus making possible a comparison between the two eras aside from the conventional income and price variables the paper assesses the effect of variations in the exchange rate and in the expected exchange rate on real trade flows additionally it estimates an unrestricted lag structure of the effect of price and exchange rate variations on imports

taxes and dividends the uk evidence abstract this paper provides empirical evidence on the simultaneous effects of both corporation and personal income taxes on dividend payment adjustments and on the behaviour of share prices on the ex dividend dates the results show that companies set their dividend policies to minimise their tax liability and to maximise the after tax return of their shareholders in particular firms that are unable to deduct the advanced corporation tax from their tax liability are found to pay low dividends in addition consistent with the tax hypothesis we find that the differential taxation of dividends and capital gains results in a decrease in ex day share prices by significantly less than the amount of the dividend there is no evidence of a tax induced dividend clientele

modelling money demand in open economies the case of selected asian countries while early work on money demand estimation focused primarily on the importance of domestic variables many studies in later years have suggested that foreign variables also influence the domestic demand for money in an open economy with the rapid financial market liberalization in some of the asian economies in the last couple of decades open economy factors have become very important in the determination of money demand therefore this paper aims to ascertain the degree to which foreign opportunity cost variables influence money demand in the philippines singapore and south korea cointegration analysis is performed and an error correction model estimated using quarterly time series data the empirical results support the inclusion of foreign opportunity cost variables in the money demand function

ex dividend day stock price behavior the case of the 1986 tax reform act this paper analyzes the behavior of stock prices around ex dividend days after the implementation of the 1986 tax reform act that dramatically reduced the difference between the tax treatment of realized long term capital gains and dividend income in 1987 and completely eliminated the differential in 1988 we show that this tax change had no effect on the ex dividend stock price behavior which is consistent with the hypothesis that long term individual investors have no significant effect on ex day stock prices during this time period the results indicate that the activity of short term traders and corporate traders dominates the price determination on the ex day

new evidence that taxes affect the valuation of dividends this paper uses british data to examine the effects of dividend taxes on investors relative valuation of dividends and capital gains british data offer great potential to illuminate the dividends and taxes question since there have been two radical changes and several minor reforms in british dividend tax policy during the last 30 years studying the relationship between dividends and stock price movements during different tax regimes offers an ideal controlled experiment for assessing the effects of taxes on investors valuation of dividends using daily data on a small sample of firms and monthly data on a much broader sample we find clear evidence that taxes affect the equilibrium relationship between dividend yields and market returns these findings suggest that taxes are important determinants of security market equilibrium and deepen the puzzle of why firms pay dividends financial economists have long been puzzled by corporate dividend behavior many individual investors should value a dollar of corporate dividends less than a dollar of corporate retentions because the former gives rise to greater tax liabilities corporations however face equal costs of paying out dividends and retaining earnings miller and modigliani 31 demonstrated that in the absence of taxes dividend policy should have no effect on share valuation if dividends are tax penalized however a value maximizing firm should pay no dividends widespread dividend payments to taxable investors are therefore surprising in 1981 dividend tax revenues in the united states were estimated to exceed 20 billion dollars indeed some have interpreted the large volume of dividends paid as evidence against the rational behavior postulates typically used by economists the dividend question has stimulated a large theoretical and empirical literature concerned with the qluestion of investors valuation of dividends in particular the question of how taxes affect the market valuation of dividends has generated considerable controversy numerous studies including auerbach 2 litzenberger and ramaswamy 24 26 morgan 34 and rosenberg and marathe

determinants of international trade flows the case of developing countries abstract the question of magnitude and the time path of the trade flows to changes in the exchange rates and to changes in the price level is of emitent practical importance to assess the above proposition a distributed lag structure is imposed on the relative prices and on the effective exchange rate as the determinants of trade flows then import and export demand functions are estimated for a sample of developing countries using the almon procedure the empirical findings appeared to sustain orcutt s early conjecture that trade flows adjust differently to different price stimuli more precisely it was found that imports and exports reactions were quicker and the total response time was shorter when an exchange rate rather than relative prices caused a change in international prices

stability of the money demand function in asian developing countries previous studies that estimated the money demand function in asian developing countries either employed traditional estimation techniques or recently popularized cointegration technique while the first group suffers from spurious regression problems the second group interpreted their finding of cointegration as a sign of stability of estimated parameters this study after incorporating the cusum and cusumsq tests into cointegration analysis shows that in some asian countries even though real m1 or m2 monetary aggregates are cointegrated with their determinants the estimated parameters are unstable

portfolio rebalancing and the effective taxation of dividends and capital gains following the tax reform act of 1986 abstract the tax reform act tra of 1986 among other things equalized the nominal taxation of dividend and capital gains income the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that ordinary investors rebalanced their portfolio holdings in response to the new taxes such rebalancing appears to have concentrated on liquid stocks indicating that transaction costs are an important consideration for ordinary investors involved in restructuring their portfolio holdings the tax clientele relationships that existed prior to the new act were distorted temporarily but have reappeared by 1988 interestingly investors post reform effective tax rates still give a preference to capital gains as they did prior to the tax reform

the effects of discretionary fiscal policy on macroeconomic aggregates a reappraisal fiscal stimuli to recover a cascade of academic and layman articles debate the effectiveness of fiscal policy in stimulating the economy backed up by different economic models and empirical support this essay surveys the theoretical predictions and recent empirical vector autoregression var evidence on the short run effects of discretionary fiscal policy on macroeconomic aggregates

ex dividend returns the mexican puzzle abstract we study ex dividend returns in mexico where an imputation system entitles individual investors to a net dividend tax credit based on taxation we expect ex day abnormal returns to be negative or at most zero in mexico however they are significantly positive because ex day returns are positive even for stocks restricted to mexican nationals they are not attributable to foreign stockholders tax considerations none of the market microstructure based hypothesis in the literature can explain these positive ex day returns ex day returns in mexico are a puzzle

the ex dividend day behavior of stock prices a re examination of the clientele effect a comment in a recent article in this journal kalay 5 has written an extensive comment on our 1970 article 2 concerning marginal stockholder tax rates and the clientele effect while we are flattered that our article is viewed of sufficient importance to gain this attention 12 years after it was written we do have reservations about kalay s comments we are principally concerned with his interpretations of relevant transaction costs and the role they play in setting equilibrium

the ex dividend day behavior of stock prices the case of japan we provide a comprehensive empirical analysis of stock price behavior around the ex dividend day in japan we find that prices rise on the ex day and that dividend related tax effects appear to be secondary returns around ex dividend days are dominated by the proximity of many ex days to the fiscal year end excess returns of 1 percent which are independent of any dividend related considerations are higher than round trip transaction costs on medium sized transactions prices seem to imply selling pressure before and buying pressure at the start of the new fiscal year these trading patterns appear to be motivated by intercorporate manipulative trading around the end of the firms fiscal year which are unrelated to dividends article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

reduction of constraints on arbitrage trading and market efficiency an examination of ex day returns in hong kong after introduction of electronic settlement previous research documents positive ex dividend day returns in excess of one percent in the unique institutional setting of hong kong where neither dividends nor capital gains are taxed short term arbitrage trades around the ex day were hampered by physical settlement procedures after the recent switch to an electronic settlement system which enables such trades ex day abnormal returns have declined to an insignificant 0 17 percent this drop is more pronounced for high yield stocks which are more likely to attract dividend capture trading the evidence points to the crucial role of short term traders in ensuring the pricing efficiency of financial markets the role of short term traders in financial markets is a matter of considerable controversy the debate on this issue has heightened in the wake of the recent asian currency crisis which some governments blamed on the activities of short term traders critics contend that short term traders engage in speculation leading to excessive and debilitating volatility in market prices others argue that short term traders perform a useful role by increasing valuable liquidity berkman and eleswarapu 1998 report that regulatory changes on the bombay stock exchange curbing short term trading had a measurably adverse impact on asset values supporters of short term traders also argue that these traders make a key contribution to the efficiency of financial markets by constantly scouring the markets for arbitrage opportunities this study examines the impact of the

effects of exchange rate variability on inflation variability abstract previous studies have postulated that there exists a positive relationship between the rate of inflation and its variability they have shown that a high inflation rate contributes to inflation variability in this paper we argue that with the current floating exchange rate system exchange rate variability is another factor contributing to inflation variability after incorporating a measure of exchange rate variability into a simple model used by previous authors we estimate our model using cross country data from 20 developed and 76 less developed countries the cross sectional regression results support our conjecture

do exchange rate changes have symmetric or asymmetric effects on the demand for money in turkey as a result of the research conducted by nobel laureate robert mundell 1963 most studies estimating the demand for money today do include the exchange rate in their specification to account for currency substitution previous studies that did this for the turkish demand for money assumed that exchange rate changes do have symmetric effects on the demand for money in turkey in this article we question this assumption by using the nonlinear ardl approach we show that indeed exchange rate changes do have short run and long run asymmetric effects on the m1 demand for money introducing nonlinearity also yields a stable money demand

why do stock prices drop by less than the value of the dividend evidence from a country without taxes abstract it is well documented that stock prices on ex dividend days drop by less than the value of the dividend on average this has commonly been attributed to the effect of tax clienteles we examine data from the hong kong stock market where neither dividends nor capital gains are taxed as in the u s the average stock price drop is less than the value of the dividend specifically the average dividend for the period 1980 1993 is hk 0 12 and the average price drop is hk 0 06 we are able to account for this both theoretically and empirically through market microstructure arguments

the transactions demand for money in the presence of currency substitution evidence from vietnam currency substitution the use of foreign money to finance transactions between domestic residents is widespread in low income and transition economies traditionally however empirical models of the demand for money tend to concentrate on the portfolio motive for holding foreign currency while maintaining the assumption that the income elasticity of demand for domestic money is invariant to the degree of currency substitution a simple re specification of the demand for money is offered which more accurately reflects the process of currency substitution by allowing for a variable income elasticity of demand for domestic money this specification is estimated for vietnam in the 1990s using a standard cointegration framework evidence is found for currency substitution only in the long run but well defined wealth effects operating in the short run

marginal stockholder tax effects and ex dividend day price behavior evidence from taxable versus nontaxable closed end funds almost all research on the movement of stock prices on ex dividend days has found that prices decline by less than the dividend though this is consistent with tax effects several papers have argued that this phenomenon could be caused by market microstructure effects in this paper we make use of a natural experiment that provides support for the tax explanations of ex dividend behavior some closed end funds have taxable and some have nontaxable dividend distributions both types are subject to taxes on capital gains the implication of this for ex dividendday price behavior is very different between these two types of funds if taxes matter this paper demonstrates that the direction of ex dividendday price behavior is consistent with a tax explanation and that ex dividend day price behavior changes as theory would suggest with changes in the tax law

the effects of public spending shocks on trade balances and budget deficits in the european union we investigate the consequences of an increase in public spending for trade balances and budget deficits in the european union using a panel var approach whereas the literature tends to treat the trade balance gdp ratio as a single variable we include exports and imports as separate variables this allows us to track in more detail the sources of trade balance movements further we use annual rather than quarterly data this facilitates the interpretation of the shocks and reduces potential anticipation effects of fiscal policy changes however the identification assumptions become stronger and we extensively check their validity according to our baseline estimate a 1 gdp increase in public spending produces a 1 2 on impact with a 1 6 peak rise in gdp rising imports and falling exports are responsible for a fall of the trade balance by 0 5 of gdp on impact and a peak fall of 0 8 in addition the spending increase produces a 0 7 impact and peak budget deficit thereby pointing to the potential relevance of the twin deficits hypothesis for the european union jel e62 h60

prices and output in the mexican economy emperical testing of alternative hypotheses abstract this paper derives and compares alternative formulations of price and output formation for the mexican economy over the period 1961 1981 a structuralist type model with working capital is found to dominate its monetarist and keynesian counterparts a breakdown of the causes of inflation is offered and some simulations are carried out to highlight some trade offs among real wages the real exchange rate real interest rates and output

tax induced trading of equity securities evidence from the adr market we examine ex dividend date trading of american depositary receipts adrs using a sample of 1 043 dividends over the period 1988 to 1995 adr dividends are often subject to foreign withholding taxes creating incentives for certain investors to avoid the distribution adrs exhibit negative abnormal ex dividend day returns and their prices behave consistently with their related withholding taxes abnormal trading volume for taxable issues exceeds 130 percent and 300 percent of normal volume on the cum and ex dates respectively abnormal volume is an increasing function of foreign withholding tax rates and decreasing function of transactions costs this abnormal exdate trading activity is consistent with tax motivated trading this paper provides empirical evidence from a sample of american depositary receipts adrs that foreign taxes on dividend income are positively associated with abnormal ex dividend day trading activity researchers have long been interested in the question of whether taxes affect investor behavior around ex dividend days such work has implications for corporate financial and distribution policies and for government tax policies adrs provide a unique setting in which to examine the effects of taxes on investor trading behavior because of the unique features of the foreign withholding taxes that apply to them a number of studies have attempted to isolate the determinants of ex dividend day pricing and trading activity of u s equities and there is considerable evidence of tax induced investor behavior around the ex dividend day for common

ex date stock price adjustment to stock dividends a note many recipients of stock dividends look upon them as distributions of corporate earnings and usually in an amount equivalent to the fair value of the additional shares received furthermore it is to be presumed that such views of recipients are materially strengthened in those instances which are by far the most numerous where the issuances are so small in comparison with the shares previously outstanding that they do not have any apparent effect upon the share market price and consequently the market value of the shares previously held remains substantially unchanged

the demand for money the reform effect and the money supply process in hyperinflation the evidence from greece and hungary ii reexamined newly uncovered data on money and prices in greece and hungary duri ng their hyperinflations are used to reestimate the cagan money demand equation and to repeat the sargent and wallace causality tests it is no longer necessary to exclude observations at the end of each episo de on the premise that they represent the response to an anticipated monetary reform the results for each country now conform to the sargent and wallace findings for most other hyperinflation episodes that causality runs from prices to money i e that money is endogenous copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

fiscal policy the real exchange rate and traded goods we estimate the effects of government spending shocks on the cpi real exchange rate the trade balance and their co movements with gdp and private consumption we decompose the variations of the cpi real exchange rate into variations of the traded goods real exchange rate and the relative price of traded to non traded goods we reach three main conclusions a rise in government spending induces a depreciation of the cpi real exchange rate and a trade balance deficit private consumption rises in response to a government spending shock and therefore co moves positively with the real exchange rate both components of the cpi real exchange depreciate we employ vector auto regression var techniques to estimate the effects of fiscal policy and in particular government spending on the cpi real exchange rate and the trade balance in the us and three other oecd countries our empirical analysis delivers two key results first a rise in government spending tends to induce a real exchange rate depreciation and a trade balance deficit although especially in the us the latter effect tends to be small second in all countries private consumption rises in response to a government spending shock and therefore co moves positively with the real exchange rate two important implications follow from these results our evidence provides support for a traditional twin deficit hypothesis in stark contrast with a recent study by kim and roubini 2008 a second implication concerns the consistency of facts and theory both the response of the real exchange rate and its co movement with private consumption and the trade balance are at odds with a benchmark general equilibrium open economy model featuring complete financial markets in fact while the model is successful in replicating the negative response of the trade balance to a government spending shock that we observe in the data and also in linking the magnitude of that response to the degree of openness it has counterfactual predictions on the response of the real exchange rate and of private consumption we argue that the key failure of the model lies in the equilibrium behaviour of private consumption in the model as a result of a typical wealth effect on labour supply private consumption falls in response to a rise in government spending whereas the opposite is true in the data this in turn explains the behaviour of the real exchange rate in the reference model with complete asset markets a risk sharing arbitrage condition ties the ratio of the marginal utilities of consumption across countries to the real exchange rate via this condition and provided that deviations from purchasing power parity are feasible the fall in consumption is accompanied by an equilibrium appreciation of the real exchange rate we proceed by investigating further the sources of the cpi real exchange rate movements in the data a traditional approach decomposes the real exchange rate into two terms

an error correction approach to money demand the case of sudan abstract an empirical analysis of money demand behavior in sudan is presented based on the dynamic error correction model a theoretical basis for the model is offered which allows an explicit parameterized division of effects into long run influences short term adjustments and proportional equilibrium conditions we refute previous claims that income and price effects may be abnormally high in sudan in part by accounting for both foreign exchange and inflationary influences

ex dividend day stock price behavior discreteness or tax induced clienteles abstract since prices are constrained to discrete tick multiples while dividends are essentially continuous ex day price changes will not equal dividends we argue that the expected price drop is strictly less than the dividend but within one tick of the dividend the price drop to dividend ratio will i be less than one ii increase with dividends generally and iii decline between tick multiples giving a sawtooth pattern in the data since dividends and dividend yields are highly correlated discreteness will give the impression of tax induced dividend clienteles even if there are none taxable cash dividends and nontaxable stock dividends exhibit similar ex day behavior

lost in translation delayed ex dividend price adjustments of hong kong adrs abstract previous research documents that hong kong stocks have a full ex dividend price adjustment consistent with dividends and capital gains being tax free we examine ex dividend price behavior of hong kong adrs to assess the impact of differing tax environments in us and hong kong these adrs typically go ex dividend before their underlying stock they experience significant abnormal returns of 1 16 on their ex day the average ex day price drop is only 30 of the dividend however adr prices drop when the underlying stock goes ex dividend subsequently the cumulative adr price drop is equal to the dividend thus the adr ex dividend adjustment resembles that of the underlying stock consistent with home country tax laws governing adr price behavior neither liquidity nor transaction costs can explain the anomalous delayed ex dividend adjustment of adrs

dividends taxes and common stock prices the ex dividend day behavior of common stock prices before the income tax this study examines the ex dividend day behavior of common stock prices before the enactment of the federal income tax on ex dividend days during the pre tax period stock prices fell on average by the full amount of the dividend the data are consistent with the hypothesis that i investors in the pre tax period value dividends and capital gains as perfect substitutes and ii the differential taxation of dividends and capital gains has since caused investors to discount the value of taxable cash dividends in relation to capital gains

tax induced trading around ex dividend days abstract this paper investigates trading volume around ex dividend days for taxable distributions cash dividends it is found that trading volume increases significantly around the ex dividend day this increase is more pronounced for high yield actively traded stocks and after brokerage commissions became negotiable the results are consistent with the hypothesis that short term traders have an impact on ex day price behavior at least for taxable distributions for non taxable distributions stock splits and stock dividends we find negative abnormal volume around ex day

tax reform and ex dividend day behavior this paper investigates the effect of a major canadian tax reform on the ex dividend day behavior of companies on the toronto stock exchange the results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that price changes on ex dividend days reflect the relative taxation of dividends and capital gains for the representative investor but are consistent with the hypothesis that ex dividend day price behavior reflects short term trading activities

what are the effects of fiscal policy shocks we propose and apply a new approach for analyzing the effects of fiscal policy using vector autoregressions specifically we use sign restrictions to identify a government revenue shock as well as a government spending shock while controlling for a generic business cycle shock and a monetary policy shock we explicitly allow for the possibility of announcement effects i e that a current fiscal policy shock changes fiscal policy variables in the future but not at present we construct the impulse responses to three linear combinations of these fiscal shocks corresponding to the three scenarios of deficit spending deficit financed tax cuts and a balanced budget spending expansion we apply the method to us quarterly data from 1955 to 2000 we find that deficit financed tax cuts work best among these three scenarios to improve gdp with a maximal present value multiplier of five dollars of total additional gdp per each dollar of the total cut in government revenue 5 years after the shock copyright 2009 john wiley sons ltd

the spinoff and merger ex date effects this article shows that some of the wealth gains from financial decisions involving changes in security form occur on predictable ex dates for a sample of 113 spinoffs during 1964 to 90 we document an average excess return of 3 0 percent on ex dates roughly the same magnitude as the average announcement date return we conjecture that the spinoff ex date return arises because the parent and subsidiary stocks attract different investors who prefer to buy the separated shares after the ex date we also document that on average the target shareholders in stock for stock mergers earn an excess return of 1 5 percent on merger ex dates recent years have witnessed a large increase in restructuring programs that include divestitures for example kaplan and weisbach 1992 report that 44 percent of a sample of large acquisitions completed in the 1970s and early 1980s had already been divested by the end of the 1980s most divestitures are accomplished by selling an unwanted subsidiary or division to another company or a group of investors for cash based on a casual survey of transactions reported in the mergers and acquisitions magazine this divestiture form is commonly known as a selloff in many cases however the parent company relinquishes control of a subsidiary by simply distributing the subsidiary shares as a nontaxable stock dividend to current stockholders this latter divestiture form is known as a spinoff and has been gaining

tick size nyse rule 118 and ex dividend day stock price behavior abstract bali and hite 1998 and dubofsky 1992 propose models in which market microstructure effects play a role in the ex dividend day price drop anomaly bali and hite suggest that the anomaly is caused solely by price discreteness while dubofsky suggests that nyse rule 118 is also involved we test these models by examining cum to ex day price drops during the one eighth one sixteenth and decimal tick size regimes while the evidence is qualitatively consistent with dubofsky s predictions neither model is satisfactory in a quantitative sense one of our main empirical findings is that no significant decline was evident in the magnitude of the ex day anomaly after the tick size reduction

the effects of government spending shocks on the real exchange rate and trade balance in turkey the aim of this study is to investigate the effects of government spending shocks on the real exchange rate and foreign trade balance in turkey for the period of 2002 01 2012 04 within a structural var framework the analysis shows that a positive shock to the government spending tends to induce real exchange rate appreciation and deterioration in trade balance we also find that the composition of the government spending matters although shocks to the government nonwage consumption generate an appreciation in the real exchange rate and worsening of the trade balance the effects of government investment shocks remain insignificant furthermore the analysis demonstrates that shocks to government spending are associated with a rise in taxes which is indicative of a spending driven tax adjustment process in turkey

a stable demand for money despite financial crisis the case of venezuela the demand for broad money in venezuela is investigated over a period of financial crisis and substantial exchange rate fluctuations the analysis shows that there exist a long run relationship between real money real income inflation the exchange rate and an interest rate differential that remains stable over major policy changes and large shocks the long run properties emphasize that both inflation and exchange rate depreciations have negative effects on real money demand whereas a higher interest rate differential has positive effects the long run relationship is finally embedded in a dynamic equilibrium correction model with constant parameters these results have implications for a policy maker in particular they emphasize that with a high degree of currency substitution in venezuela monetary aggregates will be very sensitive to changes in the economic environment

dividend taxation in firm valuation new evidence in this paper we develop a residual income model showing how taxes on dividends affect the relative valuation of retained earnings versus contributed equity as well as the value of expected future earnings tests of predictions from our model for a sample of compustat firms from 197594 suggest that overall firm value and the relative valuation weights investors assign to retained earnings contributed equity and current earnings all critically depend on dividend taxes the findings also suggest that investors take a proprietary perspective in valuation and impute an unrecorded shareholder level tax liability on retained earnings the u s tax system subjects retained earnings to dividend taxes upon distribution to shareholders while contributed equity is returned to shareholders as a nontaxable return of capital from the shareholder s proprietary perspective therefore retained earnings should be valued on

ex dividend price behavior of common stocks this study examines common stock prices around ex dividend dates such price data usually contain a mixture of observations some with and some without arbitrageurs and or dividend capturers active our theory predicts that such mixing will result in a nonlinear relation between percentage price drop and dividend yield not the commonly assumed linear relation this prediction and another important prediction of theory are supported empirically in a variety of tests marginal price drop is not significantly different from the dividend amount thus over the last several decades one for one marginal price drop has been an excellent average rule of thumb article published by oxford university press on behalf of the society for financial studies in its journal the review of financial studies

are seasonal anomalies real a ninety year perspective in recent years there has been a proliferation of empirical studies documenting unexpected or anomalous regularities in security rates of return in addition to the widely studied relation between firm size and rate of return 1 these include seasonal regularities related to the time of the day harris 1986 the day of the week see ball and bowers 1986 cross 1973 french 1980 gibbons and hess 1981 jaffe and westerfield 1985 keim and stambaugh 1984 and lakonishok and levi 1982 the time of the month ariel 1987 and the turn of the year see haugen and lakonishok 1988 jones pearce and wilson 1987 lakonishok

an examination of ex dividend day stock price movements the case of nontaxable master limited partnership distributions this study examines the unit stock price and volume behavior of master limited partnerships mlp around the ex dividend day since the dividends of mlps are not taxable to the unitholder tax based hypotheses predict no abnormal unit movements around the ex day significant positive excess returns and volume are found before the ex dividend day and significant negative excess returns are found on the ex dividend day the findings which are not significantly impacted by the tax reform act of 1986 suggest ex day stock movements are not solely a function of investor marginal tax rates or corporate trading behavior elton and gruber s 1970 findings that in 1966 67 stock prices fell on average by less than the amount of the dividend on the ex dividend date and that the ratio of the price decrease to the dividend was correlated with the dividend yield have led to the development of a tax clientele hypothesis relating to investor behavior one puzzling result from their study was the finding that the price decreases for the highest yielding securities were significantly greater than the dividends which in their analysis implied an investor clientele with negative tax rates while michaely 1989 using 1986 87 data was unable to find support for the tax clientele hypothesis across different yield groups he also documented the large price drop for the highest yielding securities michaely 1989 suggested that his results may demonstrate a preference of corporations for dividend over capital gains because of favorable tax treatment corporations receive on dividend income corporate trader hypothesis shefrin and statman 1984 however suggest that preferences for dividends over capital gains may exist for nontax reasons such as self control or a desire to segregate gains and losses the purpose of this paper is to examine the ex dividend day stock price behavior of master limited partnership mlp units during the 1985 88 period dividends from these high yielding securities are not taxable therefore support for either the tax clientele hypothesis or the corporate trader hypothesis would be found only if the average ex day price change on mlps equalled the dividend this result would also be consistent with barclay s 1987 finding that before the enactment of an income tax in 1913 even high

dividend capture in nasdaq stocks abstract we examine the importance of dividend capture trading in nasdaq stocks by testing for cross sectional relations between ex day abnormal returns and bid ask spreads throughout we find that ex day returns and spreads are positively related the relation increases across dividend yield quintiles and is strongest in high yield stocks the relation does not appear in a sample of non ex dividend days these findings indicate that dividend capture trading affects the ex day returns of at least some particularly high yield nasdaq stocks and that dividend capture trading is important for understanding ex dividend day returns

exchange rate sensitivity of the demand for money in developing countries there is consensus among researches that under the present floating exchange rate system although developing countries peg their exchange rate to a major currency they cannot avoid fluctuation in their effective exchange rates as long as major currencies fluctuate against one another few authors have investigated the effects of changes in effective exchange rates of developing countries on their imports exports trade balance demand for international reserves inflation etc in this paper we try to inestigate the effects of effective exchange rates of developing countries on their demand for money previous authors who have estimated a money demand function inclusive of an exchange rate variable bilateral or effective have restricted themselves to industrial countries only by using quarterly data over the 1973 85 period it is shown that in most developing countries while the short run effcts of depreciation could be in either direction its long run effects are negative indicating that deprecia

fiscal shocks and their consequences this paper investigates the response of hours worked and real wages to fiscal policy shocks in the post world war ii us we identify these shocks with exogenous changes in military purchases and argue that they lead to a persistent increase in government purchases and tax rates on capital and labor income and a persistent rise in aggregate hours worked as well as declines in real wages the shocks are also associated with short lived rises in aggregate investment and small movements in private consumption we describe and implement a methodology for assessing whether standard neoclassical models can account for the consequences of a fiscal policy shock simple versions of the neoclassical model can account for the qualitative effects of a fiscal shock once we allow for habit formation and investment adjustment costs the model can also account reasonably well for the quantitative effects of a fiscal shock

twin deficit or twin divergence fiscal policy current account and real exchange rate in the u s abstract in spite of concerns about twin deficits fiscal and the current account deficits for the united states economy empirical evidence suggests that twin divergence is a more usual feature of the historical data i e when fiscal accounts worsen the current account improves and vice versa this paper empirically studies the effects of fiscal policy government budget deficit shocks on the current account and the real exchange rate during the flexible exchange rate regime period based on var vector auto regression models we identified exogenous fiscal policy shocks after controlling for business cycle effects on fiscal balances in contrast to the predictions of most theoretical models the u s results suggest that an expansionary fiscal policy shock or a government budget deficit shock improve the current account and depreciate the real exchange rate increases in private savings and declines in investment contribute to the current account improvement while a nominal exchange rate depreciation as opposed to a relative price level change is mainly responsible for the real exchange rate depreciation the twin divergence of fiscal balances and current account balances is also explained by the prevalence of output shocks i e output shocks more than fiscal shocks appear to drive the co movements of the current account and the fiscal balance

exchange rate sensitivity of demand for money and effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policies one of the arguments between proponents and opponents of floating exchange rates centres around the relative effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policy while proponents of floating rates argue that monetary policy is more effective under floating rates its opponents contend that fiscal policy is more effective under fixed rates however economic theory suggests that there is room for both policies under both types of exchange rate system depending upon degree of sterlization concentrating on the floating rates mundell 1963 has argued that the relative effectiveness of monetary and fiscal policies would also depend upon sensitivity of money demand to exchange rate more precisely he has conjectured that the demand for money is likely to depend upon the exchange rate in addition to the interest rate and the level of income this would slightly reduce the effectiveness of a given change in the quantity of money and slightly increase the effectiveness of fiscal policy on income and employment under

cross border investing with tax arbitrage the case of german dividend tax credits german dividends typically carry a tax credit which makes the dividend worth 42 86 more to a taxable german shareholder than to a tax exempt or foreign shareholder this results in a penalty for foreign investors who buy and hold german dividend paying stocks i document that as a result of the credit the ex day drop exceeds the dividend by more than one half of the tax credit and show that futures and option prices embed more than one half of the tax credit the existence of the credit creates opportunities for cross border tax arbitrage in which foreign holders of german stock transfer the dividend to german shareholders and implies that it is tax efficient for foreign investors to hold derivatives rather than investing directly in german stocks the empirical findings are consistent with costly tax arbitrage activity by german investors who face tax risk due to antiarbitrage rules since dividend tax credits exist in many other countries the findings are potentially of broad interest

personal income taxes and the january effect small firm stock returns before the war revenue act of 1917 a note this paper tests the tax explanation of the january effect by examining small firm stock returns before the war revenue act of 1917 no evidence of a turn of the year effect is found this paper also extends previous authors work on the subject to 191829 a january effect is found during that period the large abnormal returns earned by small firm stocks during the first few days of january is attracting considerable attention from financial economists specifically keim 10 shows that over the entire 1963 79 period the average difference between risk adjusted returns of small and large firms is about 0 7 per day during january even more striking is the finding of keim 9 that over the entire 1931 78 period the relation between daily abnormal returns and size is always negative and more pronounced in january than in any other month similarly ibbotson and sinquefield 8 note that the average return on the quintile of nyse stocks with the lowest market values exceeds the return on the standard and poor s corporate index for 50 of the 56 januarys from 1926 81 there is no accepted theory linking the excess returns of small firms in january with the change of the tax year nevertheless the plausibility of a relation between taxes and stock return seasonality has led roll 17 brown et al 6 berges mcconnell and schlarbaum 2 and reinganum 16 among others to investigate personal income taxes as an explanation for the january effect this paper uses a different methodology and reaches stronger conclusions than any of the above papers specifically i examine the returns of small firms for the period from 1900 to 1929 prior to the revenue act of 1917 marginal income tax rates for investors were very low or zero the major finding of this paper is that there is no evidence that small firms earned abnormal returns in january prior to the 1917 tax act i also show that a january effect does appear during the years 1918 29 therefore i cannot reject a tax explanation for the january effect

the composition of government spending and the real exchange rate we show that the composition of government spending influences the long run behavior of the real exchange rate we develop a two sector small open economy model in which an increase in government consumption is associated with real appreciation while an increase in government investment may generate real depreciation our empirical work confirms that government consumption and government investment have differential effects on the real exchange rate and the relative price of nontradables

twin deficits squaring theory evidence and common sense in this paper we reconsider the twin deficit hypothesis that fiscal shocks generating budget deficits also worsen external trade both from a theoretical point of view and by analyzing data for australia canada the uk and the us first we assess the joint dynamics of budget and trade deficits along the business cycle uncovering a strikingly recurrent s shaped relation between the two the correlation is actually negative suggesting twin divergence this observation however cannot rule out the possibility that government spending expansions and or tax cuts may cause trade deficits as the overall correlation is likely to be dominated by cyclical factors second we reconsider the transmission of government spending in a standard two country two good model we find that openness and the persistence of fiscal shocks are major determinants of the magnitude or even sign of the response of the trade balance to fiscal shocks for a given persistence of the fiscal shock the closer an economy the larger the crowding out effect on investment the lower the deterioration of the trade balance third we take this insight to the data investigating the transmission of fiscal shocks in a var framework in the four countries in our sample our empirical findings tend to support our view in the us and australia which are relatively less open than canada and the uk and where government spending shocks are less persistent we find that the external impact of fiscal policy is rather limited instead private investment responds substantially the reverse is true for canada and the uk these findings confirm and put into perspective earlier results whereas fiscal expansions in the us are found to have on average a negligible effect on the country s trade balance however we emphasize that these results are consistent with a call for a us fiscal retrenchment to address global imbalances the impact of budget cuts on the us external trade is muted by their positive effect on domestic investment strengthening the us ability to generate resources against future interest and debt repayment