Does domestic institutional ownership increase return volatility? The French context

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of domestic ownership on the stock return volatility. The authors use a detailed panel data set of 89 French companies listed on the SBF 120 over the period 2006-2013. The empirical results show that the domestic institutional investors have low stock price volatility in the French stock market. This result implies the stabilizing factor of domestic investors in France stock markets, which can be considered as one of the potential favor of growing the exhibition of domestic stock markets to institutional investors. This study employs a variety of econometric models, including feedbacks, to test the robustness of our empirical results. Design/methodology/approach To explain the relation between stock return volatility and domestic institutional investors (DIIs), the authors used two complementary methods: two-step generalized method of moments analysis as well as panel vector autoregressive framework and two-stage least squares (2SLS) method. Findings The authors’ empirical results show that the proportion of DIIs with advanced local degrees stabilizes the stock price volatility. However, firm’s size and the turnover have a positive effect on the volatility of the stock returns. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that the firm’s size and the turnover will increase price volatility during a financial crisis as a result of the deterioration of the monitoring mechanism and the reduction of the investors’ confidence in firms. Originality/value This result also indicates that the variables (the firm’s size, total sales and debt ratio) are poor corporate governance and have a role in the increased the stock return volatility.