It is documented that technical analysis is a highly pervasive activity among stock traders and security analysts in China. This paper uses eight years’ data on daily stock prices and trading volume of thirty-nine companies listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange to examine the usefulness of technical analysis. Very weak evidence in support of return predictability is generated either by considering returns alone or by the use of volume in conjunction with returns. The results not only cast doubt on the ability of technical analysis to predict future price movements in China’s stock markets, but also challenge the views of market inefficiency for China that are based on aggregate market data rather than individual company data.

Researchers have developed a number of theories to explain stock return continuation. Using stock data from 16 emerging markets (1990 to 2002), we conduct an out-of-sample test for the sources of momentum profitability. This paper examines the role of financial analyst in the exhibited stock return continuation among emerging markets. Consistent with the predictions of the gradual information diffusion theory (Hong and Stein, 1999), the evidence indicates that momentum strategies are most profitable in small firms, firms with low analyst coverage. More interestingly, we find that besides the level of analyst following, the change in analyst following, specifically, increasing analyst coverage, and the analyst forecasts with high dispersion can help explain stock return momentum.

China’s stock markets have grown rapidly since their inception and have become an increasingly important emerging market for international investors. However, there are few systematic studies on how asset prices are formed in Chinese domestic equity markets; popular financial media even depict the market as irrational. In this paper, we study the asset pricing mechanism in the nascent Chinese stock markets, with the objective of identifying variables that capture the cross-sectional variation in average stock returns. We focus on the effects of various market imperfections in China. We find that while the market risk (beta) is not priced, there is a significantly negative relationship between firm-specific risk and expected returns. Chinese investors are willing to pay a significant premium for more liquid stocks or for dividend-paying stocks. Furthermore, investors value local A-shares more if there are offshore counterparts (e.g., B- and H-shares) for foreigners, implying that a Chinese firm with a foreign shareholder base has a lower cost of capital, ceteris paribus. Lastly, as with U.S. and other mature markets, firm size and the book-to-market ratio are systematically related to stock returns. Given market imperfections, stocks are priced rather rationally in China, despite the widespread perception to the contrary.

The Chinese stock market has grown very rapidly, but is often distorted by government regulation, and this is especially true for the initial public offering market. The average underpricing of Chinese IPOs is 247 percent, the highest of any major world market. We model this extreme underpricing with a demand-supply analytical framework that captures critical institutional features of China’s primary market, and then empirically test this model using a sample of 1,397 IPOs listed on the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges between 1991 and 2004. The pricing of IPO shares is subject to a cap set by the government, and the supply of IPO shares allowed on the market is also set by the government through the Chinese quota system. The government regulator even controls the timing of flotation of shares onto the stock exchange--after the initial public offering is executed--and there is usually a long time lag between the IPO and the actual listing of shares for trading. A special feature of the Chinese IPO market is that the government is by far the largest issuer. In our sample, 66 percent of the IPOs in our sample are pure share issue privatizations (SIPs), in which the government sells part of its ownership in state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to the public; fully 88 percent would be considered privatizations under a more expansive definition that included state-connected owners. Insider theft of corporate assets is also a big concern of IPO subscribers in China, and IPO shares must also be discounted for significant tunneling risks. We find that insider shareholdings are a negative determinant of initial returns. We suggest that investment risks in China's primary markets are greater than in other new issues markets, and these risks partly explains the extreme levels of Chinese IPO underpricing. However, the principal cause of the this underpricing is government regulation. The supply restricting measures traditionally adopted by the Chinese regulatory authorities turn IPO shares into hot commodities, which are fiercely bid for, and this leads to corruption and a reallocation of wealth from firms and investors to politically connected individuals and groups.

This paper studies sequential portfolio choices by MPS-risk-averse investors in a continuous time jump-diffusion framework. It is shown that the optimal trading strategies for MPS risk averse investors, if they exist, must be located on a so-called `temporal efficient frontier' (t.e.f.). The t.e.f. is found not to coincide with the local instantaneous frontier --- the continuous time analogue of Markowitz's mean-variance frontier. This observation is potentially useful in understanding the existence of documented financial anormally in empirical finance --- MPS risk averse investors may not wish to invest along the local instantaneous Markowitz's mean-variance frontier, but instead hold portfolios on the t.e.f.. The optimal portfolio on the t.e.f. could well fall strictly within the instantaneous local Markowitz's efficient frontier. Our observations on mutual fund separation are also profound and interesting. In contrast to the classical two-fund separation along the line of Black (1972) and Tobin (1958), our study shows that MPS-risk-averse investors' optimal trading strategy is target rate specific. Precisely, investors with different target rates may end up investing into different managed mutual funds, each involving a specific set of separating portfolios. Our theoretic findings are, nevertheless, much in line with the real world phenomena on the existence of various types of mutual funds offered by different financial institutes, each aiming to attract demand from some specific groups of investors --- a picture that is in sharp contrast to the theoretical prediction made by Black (1972) and Tobin (1958). Finally, our study sheds light on the difference between expected utility and MPS-risk-averse investors concerning their trading behavior in sequential time frame. Even though these two groups of investors may end up holding a common risky portfolio in each spot market, the differences between their trading behaviors are most reflected through the portfolio weights assigned to each of the separating portfolios within the time frame and across states. Precisely, the portfolio weights corresponding to investors respectively from the two groups are associated with recognizable different time patterns. We showed that such difference in trading behavior would be also reflected from the time patterns of the instantaneous returns and the volatilities of the funds respectively managed by investors from these two groups.

本文以2000-2006年的面板数据为基础，对333 家制造业上市公司的负债期限结构影响投资的行为进行了实证检验。结果表明：就全样本而言，长短期负债均与企业投资规模显著负相关，按企业投资增长机会和内部现金流进一步分组后发现一方面长短期负债均加剧了高投资增长机会低内部现金流企业的投资不足行为，另一方面短期负债并不能抑制低投资增长机会高内部现金流企业的过度投资行为。

As first noted by Borch (1960), it seems natural to consider allocations of premium among reciprocal reinsurers as a problem in cooperative game theory. In the present paper, we address this problem by defining and studying the characteristic function associated with the reinsurers’ payoffs from concluding a reciprocal treaty. First, we use the characteristic function to describe the core and bargaining set previously identified by Baton and Lemaire (1981a, 1981b). Given that the core and bargaining set may consist of more than one point, it is necessary to develop a framework for selecting a unique premium allocation. However, this effort is greatly complicated by the large number of potentially desirable mathematical properties associated with various premium-allocation methods. To address this difficulty, we consider two specific contexts for reciprocal reinsurance – within-corporate-group and between-corporate-group transactions – and provide a detailed analysis of the mathematical properties most desirable for each context. Using these properties, we are able to compare competing allocation methods to determine which is the most suitable. Our analysis shows that the Shapley value provides the most attractive allocation method for the within-group problems, whereas the nucleolus provides the most compelling outcome for the between-group case.

We study the problem of structuring excess-of-loss catastrophe-reinsurance contracts to minimize the total reinsurance premium paid by primary insurers. Specifically, for a fixed retention level and upper coverage limit, we seek the optimal layering of coverage, both in terms of the number of layers and their respective widths.

本文以社会福利为衡量保险市场效率的标准，分析实施强制保险是否有助于保险市场效率的提高。作者首先证明了在信息不对称的保险市场中存在着市场失灵现象；然后通过比较实施强制保险前后社会福利的差异，得出结论：实施强制保险有助于社会福利的改善，从而可以提高保险市场效率。

本文利用经济内生增长模型，从理论上分析了保险业发展与促进经济增长之间的关系，得出了保险业在促进储蓄转化为投资方面具有更高效率的结论；并利用我国的实际数据对保险业发展和经济增长之间的关系进行了实证分析。结果表明：保险业的发展对我国经济增长起到了推动作用，尽管从目前来看，作用还比较有限。