주식증여에 영향을 미치는 요인

This study analyses influencing factors on stock gifts in Korea. Examining stock gifts from 2003 to 2022, we document significantly positive buy-and-hold abnormal returns around stock gifts. Corporate insiders tend to transfer their stocks to their related parties before the stock price rises rather than when their shares are undervalued, which suggests that the firm's inside information may be used for stock gifts. In addition, we find that the information asymmetry of companies is positively related to buy-and-hold abnormal returns following stock gifts. This implies that corporate insiders are more likely to exploit inside information for stock gifts as information asymmetry becomes higher. As a result, we observe stronger positive buy-and-hold abnormal returns following stock gifts of firms with higher information asymmetry. We also confirm that these findings still hold when using cumulative abnormal returns instead of buy-and-hold abnormal returns and after removing small stock gifts less than one hundred million won from the sample. Both KOSPI and KOSDAQ firms experience significantly positive abnormal returns before and after stock gifts. However, abnormal equity returns of KOSPI companies turn out to be lower than those of KOSDAQ companies. Moreover, the positive relationship between information asymmetry and future stock returns is mitigated for KOSPI firms. By analyzing the factors affecting stock gifts in the context of increasing social interest in wealth succession, this research is expected to provide new implications for stock gifts and related gift tax policies and improve overall understanding of insider trading. Finally, it is suggested as a limitation that analysis taking into account characteristics of the beneficiary should be conducted.