10 1108 - IJoEM 08 2017 0307
10 1108 - IJoEM 08 2017 0307
www.emeraldinsight.com/1746-8809.htm
Indian telecom
Impact of regulatory sector
announcements on systemic risk
in the Indian telecom sector
Sushma Priyadarsini Yalla 1395
National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, India
Received 24 August 2017
Som Sekhar Bhattacharyya Revised 15 December 2017
25 February 2018
Strategic Management, National Institute of Industrial Engineering, 19 April 2018
Mumbai, India, and Accepted 29 April 2018
Karuna Jain
National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, India
Abstract
Purpose – Post 1991, given the advent of liberalization and economic reforms, the Indian telecom sector
witnessed a remarkable growth in terms of subscriber base and reduced competitive tariff among the service
providers. The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of regulatory announcements on systemic risk
among the Indian telecom firms.
Design/methodology/approach – This study employed a two-step methodology to measure the impact of
regulatory announcements on systemic risk. In the first step, CAPM along with the Kalman filter was used to
estimate the daily β (systemic risk). In the second step, event study methodology was used to assess the
impact of regulatory announcements on daily β derived from the first step.
Findings – The results of this study indicate that regulatory announcements did impact systemic risk
among telecom firms. The study also found that regulatory announcements either increased or decreased
systemic risk, depending upon the type of regulatory announcements. Further, this study estimated the
market-perceived regulatory risk premiums for individual telecom firms.
Research limitations/implications – The regulatory risk premium was either positive or negative,
depending upon the different types of regulatory announcements for the telecom sector firms. Thus, this
study contributes to the theory of literature by testing the buffering hypothesis in the context of Indian
telecom firms.
Practical implications – The study findings will be useful for investors and policy-makers to estimate the
regulatory risk premium as and when there is an anticipated regulatory announcement in the Indian
telecom sector.
Originality/value – This is one of the first research studies in exploring regulatory risk among the Indian
telecom firms. The research findings indicate that regulatory risk does exist in the telecom firms of India.
Keywords India, Systemic risk
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Regulation is defined as the imposition of rules by governments (Posner, 1974), which are
intended to maximize social welfare (Posner, 1974). According to Brito and Dudley (2012),
regulation is a set of administrative laws or rules and is the primary vehicle by which
governments implement laws and objectives. Regulations are specific standards concerning
what businesses, individuals and organizations can or cannot do (Brito and Dudley, 2012).
As a part of economic reforms, policy liberalization and privatization with the intent of
fueling growth in investments and capital flows, the Government Of India (GOI) had
International Journal of Emerging
permitted private players to become a part of the telecom sector since the year 1992. In the Markets
early 90s during the time of economic reforms, there was an enormous gap in the demand Vol. 13 No. 5, 2018
pp. 1395-1416
and supply of telecom services in India. This motivated many private telecom service © Emerald Publishing Limited
1746-8809
providers to enter into the sector, expecting substantial growth and higher returns. By the DOI 10.1108/IJoEM-08-2017-0307
IJOEM year 2000, the telecom sector consisted both private and public-sector firms. The two major
13,5 public-sector firms were Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) and Bharat
Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL). These public-sector companies have continued to be
market leaders in wired services and also have substantial presence in the wireless market
with a share of 0.35 and 8.26 percent, respectively (TRAI, 2016a, b). In addition to them,
there are five major private firms contributing to 70 percent of the market share of wireless
1396 services in India (TRAI, 2016a, b). These firms are Bharati Airtel (read Airtel), Vodafone
India, Idea Cellular (read Idea), Reliance Communications, and Tata Communications
Limited (read Tata) with market shares of 24, 18, 16, 7 and 5 percent, respectively (TRAI,
2016a, b). Of the above public sector and private firms, BSNL and Vodafone are not listed in
the Indian stock market.
The GOI established the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) in the year 1997
to regulate telecom services (TRAI, 2015). The primary objective of TRAI was to setup tariff,
license auctioning, spectrum management, setting up of benchmark standards for the
quality of service and creating a favorable environment for investments into the Indian
telecom sector (TRAI, 2015). TRAI makes necessary policy and regulatory amendments
time to time, ensuring the welfare of consumers and protecting the interest of investors.
Further, TRAI is also responsible for maintaining fair competition among telecom firms by
developing policies to encourage private participation in the Indian telecom services. It has
been argued that without the presence of regulatory bodies like TRAI, the sustainability of
telecom firms in India would be challenging (TRAI, 2015).
The telecom sector is capital intensive and requires substantial investments for the
development of basic infrastructure (Chalmeau, 2012). The major portion of investment is
sunk cost (once invested in infrastructure, cannot be recovered easily as salvage value is less)
in nature (Haucap, 2003). Telecom firms are primarily technology driven, wherein the
economic feasibility of the project cannot be deterministically ascertained (Haucap, 2003).
Thus, it has been advocated that telecom firms have to be judicious while making
investments, and might fail to earn the minimum required rate of return otherwise (Chalmeau,
2012). Elton and Gruber (1971) advocated that regulated firms operate with more constraints
due to the discretionary behavior of the regulator. Hence, there could be uncertainty in
regulated firms with respect to performance as compared to non-regulated firms. This
uncertainty could be modeled as regulatory risk (Ergas and Small 2001; Knieps and Weiß,
2007). Therefore, the estimation of cost of capital for the regulated firms is likely to be different
from that of non-regulated firms due to the existence of regulatory risk (Elton and Gruber,
1971). The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) theory (Sharpe, 1964; Lintner, 1965; Mossin,
1966) defines risk as the co-variability of a security’s return with the market’s return or
systemic risk. Systemic risk or market risk is the risk that cannot be eliminated through the
diversification of portfolio (Sharpe, 1964). The CAPM theory assumes that all investors hold
perfectly diversified portfolios, they are presumed to be exposed only to systemic risk and the
market (according to the model) will not reward them with a risk premium for unsystematic or
non-market risk (Sharpe, 1964; Lintner, 1965; Mossin, 1966).
Risk drivers are the primary factors while estimating the cost of capital, which is a
further key input in the regulatory rate base and price setting managed by regulators
(Pedell, 2006). The prices set by the regulator have an influence on the expected future cash
flows, which, in turn, influences regulatory rate base setting; this ultimately affects the
firm’s cash flows (Wright et al., 2003; Pedell, 2006). Firm’s cash flows further impact its
profitability and sustainability. Thus, there is a need to ascertain the level of regulatory risk.
This determination of regulatory risk would be useful for the regulator as the risk-adjusted
cost of capital is a key input for setting regulated prices (Pedell, 2006). There are arguments
that investors could also adjust their funds if they know how regulatory risk would impact
systemic risk, thereby impacting the cost of equity capital (Antoniou and Pescetto, 1997).
Cost of equity capital is defined as the minimum rate of return acquired on fund investment Indian telecom
for a given level of risk, below which investors would prefer to invest in other investments sector
that offer higher return with the same level of risk (Ross, 1976).
In regulated firms, regulatory interventions might impact the valuation of the firm and
the cost of capital in a more complex fashion unlike the case of non-regulated firms (Elton
and Gruber, 1971). Understanding the impact of regulation on systemic risk and cost of
capital would enable the telecom firms to estimate revenue requirements at the firm level 1397
(Chalmeau, 2012). Hence, it is important to understand the impact of regulation (regulatory
announcements) on systemic risk and their further effect on the cost of equity capital
(Gaggero, 2007). Theoretically, the impact of regulation on systemic risk has not been very
clear, whether it increases or decreases systemic risk (Robinson and Taylor, 1998).
Therefore, the objective of the present study is to understand the impact of regulatory
announcements on systemic risk and their further bearing on the cost of equity capital
among the Indian telecom firms. The regulatory announcements considered in this study
are primarily focused on “Price” or “Tariff,” “Service Quality” and “Competition among
telecom operators” in the Indian telecom sector.
Post a detailed literature review as a part of this study, it could be concluded that the
existing body of literature mostly explored the impact of regulatory announcements on
systemic risk and cost of equity capital in developed countries like the USA and UK (Wright
et al., 2003; Pedell, 2006). In some of the developed countries, the extent of regulation was not
too strong as regulatory announcements impacted systemic risk, i.e., regulatory risk existed
(Tapia, 2012). If regulatory announcements impact the systemic risk, then the extent of
regulation is not strong and vice versa (Tapia, 2012). It is, therefore, necessary to ascertain
the extent of regulation in developing countries, especially in India, in contrast with
developed counties. Hence, this study aims to analyze the existence of regulatory risk in
India, targeting the telecom firms. Moreover, there is a paucity of empirical research
evidence of this nature in developing countries, like India. Given the background, the
primary objective of this paper is to analyze the impact of regulatory announcements on
systemic risk and cost of equity capital for listed Indian telecom firms. In this study, the
Kalman filter algorithm has been applied to the CAPM to estimate the dynamic daily β of
telecom firms. Further, the event study methodology has been used to estimate the impact of
regulatory announcements on systemic risk.
The paper is organized into six sections: the introduction has been outlined in Section 1.
In Section 2, review of literature, identified gaps in collective knowledge and objectives of
the study have been enlisted. Data and methods have been detailed in Section 3. In Section 4,
analysis and results have been described, whereas in Section 5, the discussion of the results
has been carried out. In Section 6, research and practice implications, limitations of the study
and future research options have been provided.
2. Review of literature
To conduct the literature review, EBSCO and ProQuest databases were searched. The
keywords used for the search were “regulation and cost of capital,” “regulatory risk,”
“impact of regulation on cost of capital” and such others. Around 60 articles were collated,
which further narrowed down to 30 on the basis of relevance. During the literature review, it
was observed that there were several studies exploring the effect of regulation and
valuation of firms. Elton and Gruber (1971) advocated that in the case of regulated firms,
regulatory interventions impacted the valuation of the firm and the cost of capital.
Therefore, the valuation and measurement of cost of capital of regulatory firms was
different from that of non-regulated firms. Pedell (2006) noted that the measurement of the
effect of regulation on the cost of capital was challenging. Pedell (2006) segregated
regulatory factors that affect systemic risk and cost of capital, some of which are “time
IJOEM elapsed since last regulatory review,” “actual value of rate of return in the past,” “elections”
13,5 (since the issue of election notification to the period till results are declared) and such others.
Literature on regulation reflected that regulators address the concerns of both consumers
and firms (Stigler, 1971). This has often led to a trade-off between the consumer’s interest
(high consumer surplus with low firm price realization) and the firm’s interest (high firm
profit realization – low consumer price). Stigler (1971) wrote that if a demand and cost shock
1398 affected the firm’s profit negatively, the regulator paid off this effect by increasing the price
of service and vice versa. There is redistribution because the regulator is balancing
consumer surplus and firm profit through regulation (Stigler, 1971).
Peltzman (1976) and Riddick (1992) argued that regulated firms faced less of a risk than
their unregulated counterparts because regulation buffers the demand and cost shocks. On
the contrary, Joskow and MacAvoy (1975) argued that regulated firms could also face more
risk than unregulated firms due to “regulatory lag effect (also known as reinforcing effect),”
which reinforces the risk.
A significant number of studies were found to have adopted the event study
methodology ( Joskow and Rose, 1989; Johanning and Ruhle, 2004) and CAPM along with
the Kalman filter algorithm (Buckland and Fraser, 2000; Paleari and Redondi, 2005;
Barcelos and da Silveira Bueno, 2010; Chalmeau, 2012) for ascertaining the impact of
regulatory announcements on systemic risk and cost of equity. In the event study
methodology, the business, political and economic events are considered as discrete
dummy variables in the model.
For instance, Binder (1985, 1998) conducted an event study methodology with monthly
and daily stock returns and found significant stock price changes owing to the chance of a
regulatory announcement. Antoniou and Pescetto (1997) measured the effect of regulation
on the cost of equity capital for British telecom. They evaluated time-varying β using CAPM
along with the Kalman filter algorithm and regressed the evaluated time-varying β against
daily dummy variables of regulatory announcements to analyze the impact of regulatory
announcements on systemic risk. Their analysis reported that there was a significant
impact of regulatory announcements on systemic risk. Trillig (2012) investigated whether
political decisions in Europe influence the risk/return profile of technology-based companies
from the clean tech industry. The author calculated time-varying β and applied the event
study methodology to examine the impact of regulatory announcements on the company’s
market value. Results deliberated that capital markets showed significant reactions to
regulatory announcements in Europe.
On the other hand, other methodologies have also been adopted for finding the impact of
regulation on systemic risk, and thereby cost of equity capital. One such methodology is the
EGARCH model adopted by Schiereck and Trillig (2014). In their study, they examined the
impact of political risk on the German solar energy industry and found that the volatility
response varied with the exposure to political risk. Companies with higher exposure to
political risk showed significant volatility response.
Also, a good many studies have attempted to test the buffering hypothesis propounded
by Peltzman (1976). One of the interesting studies by Davidson et al. (1997) stated that a
more light-handed regulation increased systemic risk, and consequently, the risk-adjusted
cost of capital, thereby opposing the buffering hypothesis. On the other hand, Nwaeze (2000)
and Johanning and Ruhle (2004) explicitly supported the buffering hypothesis that
regulation decreased the risk but did not reduce it to zero, which was observed from the
β factors of most utilities. Hence, it could be concluded that stronger regulation has a
buffering effect on risk-adjusted cost of capital. However, Boubakri et al. (2012) examined
the cost of equity capital of politically connected firms using multivariate regression,
yielding strong evidence that politically connected firms were less at risk than
non-connected ones. Hence, this study strongly supported the Peltzmen hypothesis.
In a recent study, Angeles (2017) stated that regulatory risk increased the return on Indian telecom
investment and caused underinvestment in industries with high sunk costs in the context of sector
Philippines. Furthermore, Pham et al. (2017) tested the effect of financial regulatory
announcements on risk and return in the Vietnamese equity market and found evidentiary
support for both positive and negative market reactions to bank regulatory announcements
across financial and non-financial sectors.
Certain studies communicated about the type of regulatory regime and how it impacted 1399
the level of risk in those regulated industries; one such study was by Gaggero (2012) who
tested empirically that whether regulation characterized by high incentives (price cap
regulation) implies more risk to firms than regulation characterized by low incentives (rate
of return regulation). The author found that different regulatory regimes did not result in
different levels of risk to the regulated firms and stated that these findings could be driven
by a higher level of development of financial markets combined with a sophisticated
diversifying behavior of regulated firms. On the contrary, the study of Camacho and
Menezes (2013) reported a higher cost of capital under price cap regulation and a lower cost
of capital under rate of return regulation.
Several other research attempts have targeted the uncertainty caused by the
discretionary behavior of the regulator in terms of firm’s other performance parameters
like indirect costs with respect to regulatory risk and the level of debt with respect to the
extent of regulation. For instance, Maegli and Jaag (2009) studied the construct of indirect
costs of regulatory governance with respect to regulatory risk and uncertainty and stated
that there exist regulatory risk and uncertainty on how the regulators behave as well as on
how the regulatory framework evolved and what the effects on their business were. Also,
Moore et al. (2014) examined the capital structure of regulated infrastructure firms. They
developed a model showing that the ratio of liabilities to assets, and leverage was lower
under high-powered regulation and that firms operating under high-powered regulation
made proportionally more reduction in leverage when the cost of the debt increased. They
tested the model using a panel data set of 124 transport concessions in Brazil, Chile,
Colombia and Peru from 1992 to 2011. Findings from the results of panel data have
supported the model predictions.
Several authors have used the Kalman filter and event study methodology for finding the
impact of regulation (regulatory announcements) on systemic risk (Antoniou and Pescetto,
1997; Buckland and Fraser, 2000; Barcelos and da Silveira Bueno, 2010; Chalmeau, 2012) in
the context of both developed and developing countries. Hence, the Kalman filter and event
study methodology were deemed suitable techniques to determine the impact of regulation
on systemic risk in this study.
As stated earlier, only a handful of studies have addressed the impact of regulatory risk
on equity capital in developing countries, though a few authors have attempted so. For
instance, Ghosh and Kathuria (2016) investigated the impact of regulatory governance on
the performance of thermal power plants in India. They hypothesized that greater the
quality of regulation in a federal Indian state, greater was the efficiency of electric
generation utilities. Importantly, the present study did not find any literature that talked
about the impact of regulation on systemic risk and thereby, the cost of equity capital in the
Indian context. Hence, the present study aims to assess the impact of regulation on systemic
risk in the context of India.
Table I depicts the most relevant studies pertaining to the impact of regulation on systemic
risk and thereby, the cost of equity capital. Literature review reveals that the impact of
regulation is highly variable, being positive, negative or neutral (no impact) in different
contexts around the world. However, the most prevalent regulatory effect (buffering or
reinforcing risk) appeared to be dependent on the design of the regulatory system and process;
ultimately, this could only be answered empirically (Pedell, 2006). Hence, there is compelling
IJOEM Author Direction of
13,5 S. No. and year Findings Methodology significance Context
1 Price Price positive (PRICE POSt) Expected to increase the price of telecom services
Price negative (PRICR NEGt) Expected to decrease the price of telecom services
2 Service Service positive (SERVICE POSt) Expected to increase quality of service and range
of services
Service negative (SERVICE NEGt) Expected to decrease quality of service and range
of services
3 Competition Competition positive (COMP POSt) Expected to increase competition among telecom Table II.
operators Classification of
Competition negative (COMP POSt) Expected to decrease competition among telecom regulatory
operators announcements
IJOEM The third data required for this study were risk-free rate return. The risk-free rate considered
13,5 was the 91-day Treasury bill (T-bill) rate, which was collected from the Reserve Bank of India
website (RBI, 2015). The fourth data required for this study were that related to the Indian
general elections during our studied sample period from January 1999 to June 2015. This was
collected from the Election Commission of India website (ECI, 2015).
¼ Y i;t Z i;t Gd
i;t1 ;
M 2i ¼ 1 and M 1i ¼ 1; (3)
where s2e is the variance of CAPM regression equation; s2ot the variance of αi,t and s2vt the
variance of βi,t; M1i the coefficient of βi,t−1 and M2i the coefficient of αi,t−1. For each of the
stock, the Kalman filter model is optimized to estimate daily β for studied sample period.
IJOEM 3.2.2 Research method second step: effect of regulatory announcements on systemic risk
13,5 (β). In this section, authors have demonstrated event study methodology which was used to
find the effect of regulatory announcements on systemic risk of telecom firms. SUR
regression method is used to regress daily β against dummy variables of regulatory
announcements for an event window period.
During the early 1980s, event studies used expected accounting data, especially earnings
1404 data to test the impact of regulation (Beaver, 1968). The use of financial data for measuring
the effect of regulatory announcements has explanatory power as the frequency of data was
more (Schwert, 1981; Binder, 1985, 1998). Therefore, a well-accepted approach to test the
impact of regulatory announcement is by analyzing the stock price data, as the stock price
data are available at more frequencies. Stock returns are used to estimate β value using
CAPM. This is considered as more appropriate compared to examining the impact using
accounting information. The following are the reasons (Binder, 1985):
• Stock price data are more accurate than accounting data in event study analysis.
• Stock data can provide more number of observations than accounting data in a given
period of time.
• Accounting data communicate only current earnings, whereas stock data relate to
future earnings.
Thus, measuring the effect of regulation on systemic risk was found to be effective with
stock price data (Schwert, 1981; Binder, 1985; Antoniou and Pescetto, 1997). This study
applied event study methodology on stock price data to analyze the effect of changes in
regulation (regulatory announcements) on systemic risk of telecom firms.
Event study methodology was adopted to capture the qualitative nature of regulatory
announcements (Brown and Warner, 1985). To capture the qualitative nature of regulatory
announcements, dummy variables of an event window of 7 days (the day of the event, three
days after the event and three days before the event) were used (Binder, 1985; Paleari and
Redondi, 2005; Barcelos and da Silveira Bueno, 2010). Its value was equal to “1” during event
window period, and otherwise “0.” The event window was not extended beyond this period,
since it may increase the risk of overlapping with other unknown events which may have
occurred during the time period covered by a larger window (Antoniou and Pescetto, 1997;
Chalmeau, 2012).
The daily β were regressed against dummy variables of regulatory announcements for an
event window of 7 days by SUR regression method. This study also included dummies which
captured the effect of 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014 Indian general elections. General elections
dummy variable value was “1” over the period from when the election notification was issued
until the day after election results have been declared, and “0” otherwise. The estimation of β
is as follows (Antoniou and Pescetto, 1997; Barcelos and da Silveira Bueno, 2010);
b^ i;t ¼ g0 þg1 COM P POS t þg2 PRI CE NEGt þg3 PRI CE POS t þg4 SERV I CE POS t
þ d1 GEN 1999 þd2 GEN 2004 þd3 GEN 2009 þd4 GEN 2014 þci;t ; (4)
where b^ i;t is the β corresponding to each stock i in time t, estimated in the first step by the
Kalman filter. g0 is a constant coefficient for all firms, g1 ; . . .g4 are the coefficients
corresponding to the respective regulatory announcement groups. δ1, …., δ4 are the
coefficients corresponding to the general elections and gi;t is the error term.
To form a meaningful interpretation of the analysis, referring to Equation (4), this
study has tested the following hypotheses to examine the impact of each category of
regulatory announcements on systemic risk under the assumption that the primary
concern of the regulators was to protect the customers and there is no regulatory capture. Indian telecom
This information may be useful for making policy conclusions on the effect of different sector
announcement groups on systemic risk and the cost of equity capital (Antoniou and
Pescetto, 1997).
H1. Announcements that capture an increase of competition (COPM POS) are also
expected to increase β, and thus increase the cost of equity capital.
1405
H 0 : g1 ¼ 0;
H 1 : g1 40:
H2. Announcements that capture decrease in price of service (PRICE NEG) are also
expected to increase β, and subsequently, the cost of equity capital.
H 0 : g2 ¼ 0;
H 1 : g2 40:
H3. Announcements that capture the increase the price of service (PRICE POS) are also
expected to decrease β, and subsequently, the cost of equity capital.
H 0 : g3 ¼ 0;
H 1 : g3 o0:
H4. Announcements which capture increase in the range of services and quality of
service (SER POS) are also expected to decrease β, and subsequently, the cost of
equity capital.
H 0 : g4 ¼ 0;
H 1 : g4 o0:
4.1 Time-varying β
This section deliberates the findings of daily β. For this study, researchers have used
Kalman filter to obtain the daily β. The values of standard deviation of systemic risk (β) of
Tata, MTNL and Airtel are 0.119, 0.090 and 0.171, respectively. As the value standard
deviation of Airtel is higher than Tata and MTNL, one can conclude that Airtel stock is
IJOEM more volatile than the stocks of Tata and MTNL. The descriptive statistics of the obtained
13,5 daily β has been presented in Table AII. The authors also found that β of all stocks are
volatile and non-stationary in nature which was confirmed by stationary test. This
phenomenon is captured and presented in Figure 1.
From Figure 1, it is evident that systemic risk (β) of all firms is time-varying in nature and
would be impacted by regulatory announcements. As variation in systemic risk with respect
1406 to time is not same for all firms, regulatory impact may not be uniform for all the firms.
To check the robustness of the non-stationary β, ADF test (stationary test) has been
performed on daily β of the stocks. The results and findings of the ADF test have been
presented in Table IV. The finding column of the Table IV depicts that time series under test
is non-stationary.
Time series
1.4
MTNL
1.3 TATA
Airtel
1.2
1.1
Daily
0.9
0.8
0.7
Figure 1.
Plot of daily β for 0.6
1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016
telecom stocks
Time Period
Intercept 1.038 0.002 0.000*** 1.032 0.003 0.000*** 1.013 0.002 0.000***
(PRICE POSt) −0.034 0.015 0.001** −0.056 0.014 0.000*** −0.022 0.008 0.004**
(PRICE NEGt) 0.017 0.010 0.092 −0.102 0.013 0.000*** 0.019 0.008 0.01*
(SERVICE POSt) −0.044 0.008 0.000*** 0.125 0.010 0.000*** 0.067 0.006 0.000***
(COMP POSt) 0.068 0.010 0.000*** −0.077 0.013 0.000*** −0.001 0.007 0.925
GEN1999 −0.073 0.019 0.000*** Data not available 0.014 0.014 0.300
GEN2004 −0.237 0.021 0.000*** −0.183 0.028 0.000*** −0.059 0.016 0.000***
GEN2009 0.066 0.021 0.002** −0.092 0.026 0.000*** −0.311 0.0157 0.000***
GEN2014 −0.10 0.020 0.000*** 0.104 0.026 0.000*** 0.040 0.015 0.005**
Notes: Significance codes of P-Critical: 0 ‘***’ 0.001 ‘**’ 0.01 ‘*’ 0.05 ‘.’ 0.1 ‘ ’
sector
Indian telecom
1407
Table V.
Results of SUR –
seven-day window
IJOEM 4.3 Regulatory risk premiums of telecom firms
13,5 This section deliberates the regulatory risk premiums of individual telecom firm. From the
results of regression analysis of this study, it has been found that regulatory risk exists in Indian
telecom firms. It was also found that different categories of regulatory announcements impacted
systemic risk differently, that impact was either increased systemic risk or decreased systemic
risk based on the kind of regulatory announcement. The impact of regulatory announcement
1408 was not always uniform. It is dependent on the type of regulatory announcement and also
varied from firm to firm that demonstrated inter-firm variations. The firm-wise regulatory
premiums are tabulated in Table VI–VIII.
Coefficient
Aggregate
Regulatory Increased Decreased Neutral to Regulatory regulatory
S. No. announcements systemic risk systemic risk systemic risk premium premium
Coefficient
Aggregate
Regulatory Increased Decreased Neutral to Regulatory regulatory
S. No. announcements systemic risk systemic risk systemic risk premium premium
Coefficient
Aggregate
Regulatory Increased Decreased Neutral to Regulatory regulatory
S. No. announcements systemic risk systemic risk systemic risk premium premium
5. Discussion
In this section, the authors have deliberated on the findings of the study with extant
literature. This study found that systemic risk (β) is not constant over the studied sample
period as it is time varying in nature, which indicated that developing countries stock
markets are volatile and dynamic in nature. This was in line with the study finding of Das
and Barai (2015) that Indian stock markets are volatile in nature.
It was reflected from the study that price-positive regulatory announcements against
systemic risk (β) were found to be significant for all the three telecom firms in an event
window of 7 days, with decreased β and decreased cost of equity capital. Clearly, such
regulations supported Peltzman (1976) buffer hypothesis (regulation buffers demand and
cost shocks and reduces risk). On the other hand, price-negative regulatory announcements
IJOEM against systemic risk were found to be significant for all the three telecom firms; however,
13,5 these announcements increased systemic risk, thereby increased the cost of equity capital
for Tata and MTNL stocks, which were supporting reinforcing effect ( Joskow and
MacAvoy, 1975) (regulation increases systemic risk due to regulatory lag). On the contrary,
these announcements decreased systemic risk thereby decreased the cost of equity for Airtel
stock, which were supporting Peltzman (1976) buffer hypothesis.
1410 Competitive-positive regulatory announcements against systemic risk were found to be
significant for Tata and Airtel. For Tata, the β value and hence, the cost of equity capital
increased. On the contrary, for Airtel, the β value decreased, thereby decreasing the cost of
equity capital. In the case of MTNL, significance levels were not attained for
competition-positive regulatory announcements; this may be explained by the prevalent
faith in the market that MTNL being a PSU would be immune to the impact of
competition-positive regulatory announcements. Hence, such regulatory announcements
were also found to support the buffering hypothesis (Peltzman, 1976) as well as the
reinforcing effect proposed by Joskow and MacAvoy (1975), depending upon factors such
as internal strategies and stakeholder structure of individual firms.
The study also reported that service-positive regulatory announcements against
systemic risk were found to be significant for all the three telecom firms. In the case of Tata,
these announcements decreased systemic risk and thereby decreased the cost of equity,
which were supporting Peltzman (1976) buffer hypothesis. On the contrary, these
announcements increased systemic risk thereby increased the cost of equity for Airtel &
MTNL, which were supporting reinforcing effect ( Joskow and MacAvoy, 1975).
Therefore, one can argue that regulatory announcements of all three categories have
either supported Peltzman’s (1976) buffering hypothesis (regulation buffers demand and
cost shocks and reduces systemic risk) or supported reinforcing effect (increases systemic
risk due to regulatory lag) ( Joskow and MacAvoy, 1975), depending on pertinent issues like
internal strategies such as defensive, reactive, anticipatory or proactive strategies (Oliver
and Holzinger, 2008), firm’s other circumstances and stakeholder structure.
It was also indicated from the study that general elections of 2004, 2009 and 2014 have
shown a significant impact for all the three telecom firms (Tata, Airtel and MTNL). This is in
line with the study finding of Antoniou and Pescetto (1997) and Strausz (2017) that elections
have induced regulatory risk through impacting systemic risk. This indicates that Indian
telecom stocks are sensitive to the political scenario of the nation.
This study findings suggested that firm’s regulatory risk (regulatory premium) level is
not same for all telecom firms even though the category of regulatory announcements is
same. This finding is in line with the finding of Buckland and Fraser (2000). One of the
reasons for the varying level of regulatory risk among the same sector’ firms could be that
the risk absorbing capacity and risk mitigating strategies are different from firm to firm
though they operate in the same sector due to their firm-level strategies such as defensive
strategy, reactive strategy, anticipatory strategy and proactive strategy (Oliver and
Holzinger, 2008).
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Appendix Indian telecom
sector
Tata β 1.000
Airtel β −0.374 1.000
1416 MTNL β −0.050 0.149 1.000
Price Pos Reg −0.041 −0.064 −0.032 1.000
Price Neg Reg 0.043 −0.121 0.060 −0.043 1.000
Service Pos Reg −0.097 0.183 0.195 0.043 0.056 1.000
Comp Pos Reg 0.111 −0.103 0.016 0.118 0.102 0.079 1.000
Table AIII. Gen Ele 1999 −0.048 0.000 0.006 0.139 −0.023 −0.027 0.127 1.000
Correlation matrix Gen Ele 2004 −0.192 −0.094 −0.045 −0.027 −0.023 0.044 −0.024 0.000 1.000
of β and regulatory Gen Ele 2009 0.057 −0.055 −0.323 −0.022 −0.023 −0.031 −0.011 0.000 −0.110 1.000
announcements Gen Ele 2014 −0.089 0.084 0.056 −0.025 −0.025 0.036 −0.026 0.000 −0.012 −0.012 1.000
Corresponding author
Sushma Priyadarsini Yalla can be contacted at: priyadarsini.sushma@gmail.com
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