USING TWO-PART QUANTILE REGRESSION TO ANALYZE HOW EARNINGS SHOCKS AFFECT STOCK REPURCHASES

We examine whether firms tend to buy back their stocks to a greater extent when the managers learn there will be positive earnings impacts. We use a two-part model (Duan et al., 1983) to address this issue. First, we use a Probit model to estimate the decision of stock repurchase. Then we use Koenker and Bassett's (1978) quantile regression to estimate the dollar amount of stock repurchases. We find that when the earnings impacts are in the low quantiles, stock repurchases and earning impact are positively correlated. However, when the impacts are in the high quantiles, the relation becomes reversed.