This study examines the effect of corporate asset growth on stock returns using data on nine equity markets in Asia. For the period from 1981 to 2007, we find a pervasive negative relation between asset growth and subsequent stock returns. We further examine the determinants of this asset growth effect across markets. The negative relation between asset growth and stock returns is weaker in markets where firms’ assets growth rates are more homogeneous, and in markets where firms rely more on internal financing and bank financing for growth. On the other hand, corporate governance, investor protection, and legal origin do not influence the magnitude of the asset growth effect in the Asian markets.

We analyze return predictability for the Chinese stock market, including the aggregate market portfolio and the components of the aggregate market, such as portfolios sorted on industry, size, book-to-market and ownership concentration. Considering a variety of economic variables as predictors, both in-sample and out-of-sample tests highlight significant predictability in the aggregate market portfolio of the Chinese stock market and substantial differences in return predictability across components. Among industry portfolios, Finance and insurance, Real estate, and Service exhibit the most predictability, while portfolios of small-cap and low ownership concentration firms also display considerable predictability. Two key findings provide economic explanations for component predictability: (i) based on a novel out-of-sample decomposition, time-varying macroeconomic risk premiums captured by the conditional CAPM model largely account for component predictability; (ii) industry concentration and market capitalization significantly explain differences in return predictability across industries, consistent with the information-flow frictions emphasized by Hong, Torous, and Valkanov (2007).

We find that the asymmetric volatility phenomenon is reversed in the Shanghai Stock Exchange during bull markets. That is, volatility increases more with good news than with bad news. This evidence is inconsistent with the US markets (Wu 2001, and Bae, Kim and Nelson 2007). Further examination of this phenomenon reveals that the positive impact of good news on volatility is driven by return chasing behaviour of investors in large stocks during bull markets. We also find that volatility increases after stock price declines in bear markets especially for small stocks. This increase in volatility of small stocks after bad news in bear markets is partly driven by liquidity. After controlling for liquidity shifts, there are no significant patterns in the volatility of small stocks during bear markets. We posit that institutional and behavioural factors are the major driving forces of observed volatility patterns in Chinese stock market.

We compare the effects of futures market margin policy on trading activity and volatility between the China margin system and the U.S. margin system. In China margin levels are set as a fixed percentage of the underlying futures contract value and change daily as futures prices change over time. In contrast, margin is set at a fixed dollar amount for most contracts in the United States and is infrequently adjusted at the discretion of the exchange’s clearinghouse. We provide a theoretic model on how the changing margin cost between market-up days and market-down days would affect the demand and supply of short term speculators and long term hedgers in the Chinese futures market and their different effects on market volatility. The model shows that the futures price shocks should have an asymmetric effect on trading volume and volatility in the Chinese market but symmetric effect in the U.S. market and futures price should have a return dynamics that is more stable in the Chinese market than in the U.S. market. Using Soybean futures data from the Chinese and U.S. markets, we compare price and volatility dynamics between the two markets and find empirical support for our theoretic model and hypothesis.

最近几年伴随着我国房地产市场的迅速发展，很多非房地产类的企业纷纷投 身房地产投资。这一现象引起了政策界和学术界的广泛关注和讨论。本文试图采用 严谨的计量方法回答两个问题：是什么因素促使非房地产企业进入房地产市场？房 地产投资会损害公司绩效吗？本文的研究首先发现，Q值越低、规模越小、短期盈利 越高、杠杆率越高、东部发达地区的企业更可能进入房地产。本文进一步运用倍差 分匹配（difference-in-difference matching estimator）的方法估计房地产投资 对企业绩效的影响。结果显示房地产投资并不损害企业绩效。

Various studies have been done on wealth effects and financial performance of firms in different countries but have yielded mixed results. Data on completed deals of Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions (CBMAs) comprising public listed firms with more than ten percent of share acquisition in five East Asian countries were analysed using event study and key financial ratios. Although the results for average abnormal returns in Indonesia and Korea were inconclusive, the results for Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines suggest that the market had reacted positively adding value to the target firms at merger announcements. There was a significant improvement in targets’ free cash flow after CBMAs when compared to both before CBMAs and also control firms after CBMAs. The results also reveal that that these five East Asian countries have moved towards more efficient markets.

We examine the impact of cross-border mergers and acquisitions on a target firm’s risk and return based on a sample of partially acquired target firms in 18 emerging countries between 1990 and 2007. We find that cross-border acquisitions significantly reduce both the total and downside risk of the target firms and that this reduction is more significant in acquisitions undertaken by bidders from countries that have better protection of investor rights. We also show that this risk reduction improves the risk adjusted performance of these firms. Thus, we conclude that cross-border partial acquisitions benefit an emerging market investors’ risk-return trade off by reducing investment risk and increasing investment returns; policy makers in emerging markets may be well advised to open their markets for partial cross-border acquisitions.

In this paper, we empirically examine the relationship between government ownership, synchronicity and M&A performance in Chinese market. We found strong evidence to support “Helping Hand Hypothesis” that bidders with high government ownership yield better performance in both the short run and the long run. We also document a negative relationship between synchronicity measure and M&A performance. Various explanations have been offered to explain this phenomenon. In addition, we find both political influence and stock market valuation play an important role to forecast M&A outcome in China market. Within hot political period, government-related bidders yield better performance in the short run, while in high valuation period, public bidders receive higher premium.

In this paper, using data for the period January 1995 to May 2009 for the Shanghai stock exchange (SHSE), we show that aggregate illiquidity is a priced risk factor. We develop the relationship between the illiquidity factor, asymmetric information, and market collapse. Our empirical results show that while the illiquidity factor is a source of asymmetric information on the SHSE, asymmetric information does not trigger a market collapse.