Firm Value, Investment and Monetary Policy

Abstract:     
This paper presents empirical evidence supporting the view that US monetary conditions matter for firms in the global capital market. We show the effects of three risk measures, domestic bank interest rates spreads, US bank interest rates spread, and US market price of interest rate risk on the value of firms and on the cross listing decision of firms destined to three major markets in North America, Asia and Europe. The systematic risk comes from US monetary policy, while the local and US bank interest rates spreads contain their respective financial intermediation risk premiums. We use firm-level data in 29 countries of cross-listing origin over a six year period, from 2000 to 2005. We find consistent and robust evidence that the US federal funds rate signal-to-noise ratio risk measure or market price of interest rate risk in the Sharpe sense provides an important benchmark for firm value across the universe of publicly traded companies.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 34

Keywords: firm value, nominal risk, cross-listing

JEL Classification: G00, E00

working papers series