If liquidity or illiquidity shocks reduce returns, then such risks need to be priced. The goal of this paper is to examine whether liquidity or illiquidity shocks increase or decrease returns on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges. Our measure of illiquidity is the widely used Amihud’s (2002) ILLQ measure, and we proxy liquidity with the trading volume (TV), the turnover rate (TR), and the trading probability (TP). Using daily data for the period 1993 to 2003, we find weak evidence of the illiquidity shock having a negative effect on returns on both exchanges, and while greater cases of a positive effect of liquidity factors on returns is documented, very few of these are statistically significant. Hence, contrary to the extant literature, we find weak evidence in favour of pricing liquidity on the Chinese stock market.

Using block trades data on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) from 2003 – 2009, we study the pricing mechanisms of block buys and sells. We show that block trades are priced at discount (premium) for sells (buys). The discount/ premium varies depending on the characteristics of the stocks traded, the complexity of the trades, and also on whether the trades are internalized. We also study permanent and temporary price impact of the trades. As expected, seller-initiated trades do not seem to be information related as there is no significant information content. On the contrary, the prices decline after buyer-initiated trades, suggesting that buyers do not possess private information which leads to a permanent shift in prices. Temporary price impacts of all trades are large in magnitude and statistically significant, reflecting compensation for locating counterparties and the cost of negotiating terms. This suggests that the information platform on SSE for locating counterparties is yet to be fully developed to help reduce the transaction cost of block trades.

We hypothesize and test an inverse relationship between liquidity and price volatility derived from microstructure theory. Two important facets of liquidity trading are examined: thickness and noisiness. As represented by expected volume (thickness) and realized average commission cost per share (noisiness) of NYSE equity trading, both facets are found negatively associated with ex post and ex ante price volatilities of the NYSE stock portfolios and the NYSE composite index futures. Furthermore, the inverse association between volatility and noisiness is amplified in times of market crisis. The overall results demonstrate that volatility increases as noise trading declines. All findings retain statistical significance and materiality after controlling for a number of specifications. This inverse liquidity-volatility relationship reflects a microstructure interpretation of the liquidity risk premium documented in the asset pricing literature.

A decline in the relative price of imported goods compared to that of domestically produced goods may have different effects on domestic consumption. Such effects may not be accurately detected and measured in a classical permanent-income model without considering consumption habit formation as pointed out by Nishiyama (2005). To resolve this problem, this paper employs an extended permanent-income model which encompasses consumption habit formation. Both cointegration analysis and GMM are used to estimate the (modified) intratemporal elasticities of substitution (AES) between imports and domestic consumption and the parameters of habit formation as well as the (modified) intertemporal elasticities of substitution (IES). We find that import and domestic consumptions are complements in China, but substitutes in Japan and Korea. Different per capita incomes and consumer behaviors between China and the other two countries are two possible reasons for different relationships between import and domestic consumptions. The research findings have important implications on policies such as exchange rate adjustments in China. （2011中国金融国际年会博士论文征文）

This article examines the liquidity-investment relation of Chinese SMEs in comparison to large firms, and specifically focuses on the exogenous IPO event to observe how the responses of firm investment to cash flow change subsequent to the IPO. We find that the sensitivity of fixed investment to cash flow varies with firm size, and the over-reliance on internal funds by SMEs has reduced more prominently after the IPO than their larger counterparts, providing new evidence that liquidity constraints of investment are not constant in the same firm but shift along the life cycle. Our results strongly suggest that other financial resources to cover the cash flow shortfalls resulting from timing differences between the operating and investment cycles need to be considered in the examined relation and previous studies may have underestimated the impact of liquidity constraints on firm investment.

Based on a sample of financial holding companies listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, we examine the impact of media coverage of corporate social performance on corporate financial performance. Our findings are as follows. First, information about a firm’s social actions provided by the media is more relevant than provided by the financial holding company (FHC) itself, and the quantity of news articles about positive social activities of FHCs is positively correlated with financial performance; however, strikingly, that of news articles about FHCs’ negative social activities is also positively correlated with financial performance. In addition, we find that news articles about FHCs’ positive social activities for shareholders will trigger a positive evaluation by shareholders; however, rather interestingly, news articles about FHCs’ positive (negative) social activities for employees will trigger a negative (positive) evaluation by shareholders. But if the news articles about FHCs’ positive social activities for employees are initiated by the media, rather than by the company itself, they will trigger a positive evaluation by shareholders. Therefore, the evidence suggests that “doing good” can be expected to be “doing well” if the positive CSP information is provided by the media, rather than by the company itself.

Using a sample of Chinese family firms from 2000 to 2007, we investigate whether the political connection of the family firms will help them to reduce the frictions they face in external financing in a relationship-based economy. We find that political connectedness of family firms could reduce their investment-cash flow sensitivity. More interestingly, this political connectedness effect exists only in financially constrained family firms. However, from governance dimension, we cannot find any significant variation of the political connection effect on the sensitivity of investment to cash flow. We argue that these evidences are consistent with the firm’s underinvestment arising from the asymmetric information problems, and are inconsistent with the firm’s overinvestment arising from the free-cash-flow problems.

The credit collusion is the main form of internal fraud and will lead to the wrong decision on loan-issue and further worsen the operation risk as well as the default risk. At present, the loan initiated by commercial banks in China is surging and challenges the loan management. Based on the literature and the situation of risk management in Chinese banking industry, this paper adopts the P-S-A model to study the collusion between loan officers and lending firms. Finally, it derives the collusion-free conditions and proposes some measures to reduce the collusions, which includes: (1) to impose harsher penalty on bribes to deter any collusion for increasing individual welfare; (2) to launch more sophisticated remuneration for loan officers to develop long relationship with commercial banks; (3) to spend more efforts on monitoring the larger sized loans.

The Dangerous Return to Keynesian Economics. http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/qed/2009/02/the-dangerous-return-to-keynesian-economics

Using Chinese data, we offer new evidence on industry clusters as a mechanism that may promote relational contracting and facilitate inter-firm financing when legal and financial systems are weak. In particular, we find that industry clusters lower firms’ dependence on courts and bank loans, and financing costs, and in turn improve firms’ profitability. While firms’ propensity of joining clusters increases with less efficient courts and less developed financial markets, industry clusters cannot completely mitigate the negative impact of deteriorated institutions. The impacts of industry clusters are significant even after controlling for the existence of other substitutive mechanisms such as business associations.