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This paper finds empirical support for a Taylor (1993) type interest rate determination rule. The model is solved analytically, estimated and used for simulation, impulse response analyses and forecasting with quarterly time series data for the UK and annual time series data for Germany, France, Japan, the UK and the US. The results confirm that such rules implicitly exists during the period of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses upon cross-border acquisitions. A three-way comparison is made between the post-takeover performance of UK acquirers of domestic UK, US, and Continental European targets between 1991 and 1996. This study examines if UK firms acquiring large takeover targets experience cumulative abnormal returns significantly different from zero up to two years after the acquisition. This study finds that UK firms acquiring large takeover targets experience negative cumulative abnormal returns over the period examined, at various significance levels. Furthermore, the study finds that the post-takeover performance of UK firms acquiring UK targets is superior to that of UK firms acquiring US targets. In turn, the performance of UK firms acquiring US targets is better than that of UK firms acquiring Continental European targets. If this trend continues, the consequences for institutional investors and pension funds, which respond to a major takeover by increasing their holdings in the acquirer, could be serious. The shares they are buying are the very companies we show to be underperforming. And the particularly poor performance of UK companies acquiring in Europe suggests that this anomaly may become even more significant as European cross-border activity gathers pace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the intraday behaviour of five-minute FTSE-100, Short Sterling and Long Gilt LIFFE futures returns volatility and volume. The intraday patterns identified exhibit a U-shape, significantly affected by UK and US macroeconomic news releases. Evidence from estimation of a GMM system for volatility and volume supports a significant positive and contemporaneous correlation between volatility and volume, although lagged volume is also significant in the volatility equation. Further, there is strong evidence of bi-directional causality on the basis of Granger-causality testing. These results are found to be robust to the adjustment of volatility and volume for macroeconomic news effects, and in the case of the Granger-causality tests to a variety of temporal horizons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines the estimation of alternative interest rate processes describing the dynamics of UK interest rates. The methodology concentrates on selecting non-parametrically the number of autocovariances to use in calculating a heteroscedasticity and autocorrelation consistent covariance matrix. This is important for drawing correct statistical inferences. It is found that the dependence of volatility on the level of interest rates is not as high in the UK market as has been documented in earlier studies of the US market. Further results reveal that there was a structural change in the parameters of the interest rate process during the period of the participation of Britain in the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) of the European Monetary System. However, by utilizing the proposed non-parametric schemes, it is shown that statistical inference is sensitive to the correct choice of the number of autocovariances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the evidence on whether banks obtain inside information about borrowers and reports event study results on announcements concerning syndicated loans for quoted UK companies. Previous evidence on the response to loan announcements is from the USA and inclusion of announcements during and after syndication expands the range of loan-related news items. There is little response to loan announcements in the UK, even for small quoted companies, which differs in part from the US evidence and provides little support for the view that banks obtain inside information about quoted companies they lend to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores whether conditional expected excess returns on UK shares and long-term government bonds are predictable and whether they have a common source of variation. Using monthly data for 1976-91 the results suggest that the same information helps predict expected excess returns in both the UK government bond market and the stock market. Contrary to US evidence, support is also found for the hypothesis that government bonds and shares have a single common source of risk which is unobservable but can be proxied by financial spreads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse the differences in the financial debt level of firms both in market-oriented systems (the US, the UK) and bank-oriented systems (Germany, France and Italy) on a sample of 3360 listed companies between the period 2006 and 2010. Results indicate that the debt level is significantly higher in market-oriented systems when compared to the book value of equity. We find confirmation that Book-to-Market (BTM) cannot explain the debt level in bank-oriented systems but, contrary to reference literature, we observe that the BTM ratio has a negative influence on the debt level in market-oriented systems, especially in the United States. We claim different reasons to explain the evidence: (i) the financing standards of market-oriented countries, with an inflationary effect of market values on debt; (ii) an underlying activity for ownership protection and (iii) the unfavourable conditions of stock market over the years of the financial crisis that reduced the convenience of equity issuance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses volatility transmission across the swap markets of the US, Japan and the UK. The two-step procedure developed by Cheung and Ng (1996) is used to examine causality-in-mean and causality-in-variance among the three countries. The empirical findings indicate the existence of more causality-in-variance patterns during the time of financial crisis than in the normal period that preceded it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the issue of stock returns forecasting and in particular extends the analysis of the recently introduced sum of the parts modelling technique. The sum of the parts technique undertakes a first-stage regression analysis where the predictor variables themselves are estimated and the fitted values from these equations are then used in the forecast model. We conduct a series of one-step ahead recursive forecasts using the above methodology and compare that to the usual predictive regression approach for 11 markets, and a variety of forecast metrics and tests. Across the full range of markets and forecast measures, our results suggest that no single model dominates. Notably, while the sum of the parts approach often reports a lower Mean Absolute Error (MAE) and Root Mean-Squared Error (RMSE), it is rarely significantly lower than competing forecasts. Similar results are found on the basis of both regression and sign based tests. Thus, across the range of markets the new approach meets with only limited success in providing better forecasts, although it rarely performs significantly worse. Furthermore, in specific markets, the sum of the parts approach does perform well. Notably for Italy, the UK, US and Korea, this approach outperforms the alternate models on all or nearly all measures. Thus, in terms of guiding researchers on the appropriate forecast model, the sum of the parts approach is interesting and does suggest some forecast improvement. However, that is only for specific markets. Hence, in choosing which forecast method to adopt there remains the trade-off between the simplicity of the predictive regression approach and the sum of the parts approach, which is more involved but on occasion more accurate, although not universally so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we investigate the hypothesis of efficiency of central bank intervention policies within the current global financial crisis. We firstly discuss the major existing interventions of central banks around the world to improve liquidity, restore investor confidence and avoid a global credit crunch. We then evaluate the short-term efficiency of these policies in the context of the UK, the US and the French financial markets using different modelling techniques. On the one hand, the impulse response functions in a Structural Vector Autoregressive (SVAR) model are used to apprehend stock market reactions to central bank policies. On the other hand, since these reactions are likely to be of an asymmetric and nonlinear nature, a two-regime Smooth Transition Regression-Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (STR-GARCH) model is estimated to explore the complexity and nonlinear responses of stock markets to exogenous shifts in monetary policy shocks. As expected, our findings show strong repercussions from interest rate changes on stock markets, indicating that investors keep a close eye on central bank intervention policies to make their trading decisions. The stock markets lead monetary markets, however, when central banks are slow to adjust their benchmark interest rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we empirically investigate the motivations for share repurchase decisions by a sample of 267 large UK listed companies covering the 4-year period 2001 to 2004. Though the UK constitutes the second largest market for share repurchases after the US, relatively little is known of the motivations of UK firms to repurchase their shares. Moreover, due to differences in the corporate governance and share repurchase regulations of the two countries, the extant US literature and evidence appear to be of relatively little relevance in explaining UK share repurchase decisions. Our results, using both two-way fixed effects regression models and multinominal Logit estimates, indicate that most repurchasing firms tend to be large and to already have high dividend payout ratios. Moreover, the most important determinant of share repurchase decisions appears to be corporate earnings, particularly expected earnings, which suggest that a degree of dividend substitution may lie behind many UK share repurchase decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using panel unit root and cointegration analyses, we estimate the equity duration for banks covering the countries of Australia, US, Canada and the UK for the period 1986 to 2003. Our results show that banks in the UK had the highest duration followed by those in Australia, Canada and then the US. These results have important implications for policymakers particularly because banks, among others, act as conduit of monetary policy. Since duration is a measure of sensitivity to interest rates, these results imply that banks in the UK would be the most affected by monetary policy changes while those in the US would be the least affected. These results are also of importance to investors. Since duration also measures the speed by which cash flows come back, these results indicate that investors in US banks recover their investment faster than the investors in banks of Australia, Canada and the UK. This contention is supported by the fact that among the four countries, banks in the US are the most profitable while those in the UK are the least. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the extreme tails of the distributions of equity returns tend to exhibit more negative than positive returns, very few studies have analysed how pervasive is skewness across entire distributions. We use daily returns on 6 international stock market indices from Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States over 24 years from January 1978 to February 2002 to search for skewness in the tails, in different intervals, and in the entire distributions using binomial distribution tests and two distribution free tests, the Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test and the Siegel-Tukey test. We find limited evidence of asymmetry in the tails, with more asymmetry close to the means. However, we find that the asymmetries closer to the means are statistically significant and consistent in a way that the asymmetry in the tails is not. We show via a Monte Carlo study that the Wilcoxon Rank Sum and Binomial Distribution test have good power inferring that the data are independent and identically distributed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study employs cointegration analysis to examine the long-run relationships in Prime and CD rates across the US, Canada, Japan, Germany, France and the UK. The nature and strength of the results are found to be contingent on the time periods investigated. While we are unable to reject the null hypothesis of noncointegration for the January 1972-December 1979 interval, there is substantial evidence of cointegration for the more recent January 1980-October 1989 interval. These results are indicative of a pattern of increasing integration among the international bank lending and borrowing markets, coinciding with the trend towards the globalization of banking activity. The evidence from the error correction model suggests that the US and Germany are the dominant countries in the bank lending and borrowing markets. The Prime and CD rates for these countries are seen to cause (in the Granger sense) the rates of other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]