Signaling or marketing? The role of discount control mechanisms in closed-end funds
Roman Kräussl,
Joshua Pollet and
Denitsa Stefanova
No 597, CFS Working Paper Series from Center for Financial Studies (CFS)
Abstract:
We study the relevance of signaling and marketing as explanations for the discount control mechanisms that a closed-end fund may choose to adopt in its prospectus. These policies are designed to narrow the potential gap between share price and net asset value, measured by the fund's discount. The two most common discount control mechanisms are explicit discretion to repurchase shares based on the magnitude of the fund discount and mandatory continuation votes that provide shareholders the opportunity to liquidate the fund. We find very limited evidence that a discount control mechanism serves as costly signal of information. Funds with mandatory voting are not more likely to delist than the rest of the CEFs in general or whenever the fund discount is large. Similarly, funds that explicitly discuss share repurchases as a potential response do not subsequently buy back shares more often when discounts do increase. Instead, the existence of these policies is more consistent with marketing explanations because the policies are associated with an increased probability of issuing more equity in subsequent periods.
Keywords: closed-end funds; discount; signaling; repurchases; continuation vote (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G10 G23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/182454/1/1031264795.pdf (application/pdf)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:cfswop:597
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in CFS Working Paper Series from Center for Financial Studies (CFS) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().