An investigation of the leverage anomaly at Istanbul Securities Exchange

Abstract

This study investigates the presence of ‘leverage effect’ at Istanbul Securities Exchange for the period January 1990 - December 1993. Two leverage variables are used, the ratio of book equity to book assets, BE/A and the ratio of market equity to book assets, ME/A. We interpret BE/A as a measure of book leverage, while ME/A as a measure of market leverage. In portfolio comparison methodology, each year, portfolios are formed according to the previous year’s ratio of book equity to book assets and ratio of market equity to book assets and then the average monthly returns of the current year are compared. In addition, the cross-sectional regression approach of Fama-MacBeth (1973) is applied to determine which of the variables significantly explain the average return of stocks. The results show that a significant ‘leverage effect’ is not encountered at Istanbul Securities Exchange for the period of January 1990 - December 1993 in terms of book leverage and market leverage variables.