This paper investigates what drives the price disparity to vary in the “twin” shares (A shares
traded largely by domestic investors while B- and H- shares traded mainly by foreign investors)
in China. Extending the variance decomposition framework of Vuolteenaho (2002), we
decompose the unexpected price disparity into two terms: difference in expected return news and
difference in cash flow news. Our results show that difference in expected return news
overwhelmingly dominates difference in cash flow news in driving the variation of the price
disparity. This suggests that to a large extent, market or macro news, rather than firms’ specific
news, moves the price disparity of the twin shares.
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