We study financial market contracts and signals in a transitional economy where state-controlled banks may lend to weak firms to avert unemployment and social instability. Our sample of Chinese corporate borrowers reveals that that poorer financial performance and higher managerial expenses increase the likelihood of obtaining a bank loan, and bank loan approval predicts poor subsequent borrower performance. Furthermore, negative event-study responses are observed at bank loan announcements, particularly if the borrower measures poorly on quality and creditworthiness. Our results document the dilemmas that arise in a state-led financial system and the local stock market’s sophistication in interpreting news.

Dynamic allocation of control rights between managers and investors affects policy of the dividend and value of enterprise. The paper studied the relevant factors that affect optimal debt ratio and allocation of control right. We suggest that the enterprise decrease the debt ratio with the increase of moral hazard, liquidity risk and investors' absolute risk aversion. With the increase of shareholder's control right, the relationship between shareholder's control right and managers' moral hazard is reversed from positive to negative. The implication of the paper is moderate debt ratio may achieve the tough constraint on the managers' decision.

Existing literatures indicate that, in Nontradable Shares Reform, institutional investors collude with nontradable shareholders (controlling shareholders) to help them settle a lower compensation ratio. Classifying institutional investors into mutual funds and non-mutual funds, this paper presents a further research upon whether fund governance helps mitigate collusion. Due to the rigorous entry qualifications, and the worldwide reputation as hostage, a foreign background fund is expected to have better governance quality than a domestic fund. Our empirical evidence shows that, relative to those dominated by domestic funds, mutual funds dominated by foreign background funds are less inclined to collude with nontradable shareholders. Introducing foreign institutional investors into domestic markets is Chinese government’s consistent policy. Our evidence indicates that this policy may be beneficial to the sound development of Chinese stock markets. Meanwhile, we find no sufficient evidence that mutual funds dominated by open-end funds are less inclined to collude with nontradable shareholders, although an open-end fund is expected to have better governance quality than a closed-end fund due to the redemption mechanism. As for the effect of ownership structure, it is found that mutual funds with a lower institutional ownership are less inclined to collude with nontradable shareholders. Fund governance seems to deteriorate as institutional ownership increases. Providing an implication for policy making, our evidence suggests that restricting the proportion of fund shares held by institutions may help improve fund governance in China.

This letter applies the endogenous structural break Minimum Lagrange Multiplier unit root test to re-examine the stationarity of Chinese stock market indices. The main result is consistent with Yan and Felminghan (Applied Economics Letters, 13, 605-608, 2006) who use the ADF-type structural break unit test, and the break we found is more in line with the reality.

he paper assesses the vulnerability of China to external shocks via the indirect negative effect of a slow-down in exports on domestic demand for investment. In the last decade China has increased its dependence on external demand, particularly from the advanced countries; at the same time it has become a primary destination market for goods produced in the rest of emerging Asia. Since 2001 investment expenditures have represented a key driver of Chinese GDP growth; as a very large share of activity in the manufacturing sector is export oriented, we expect fixed capital investment in this sector to be highly related to exports. Overcoming serious shortcomings in available data, we estimate an investment equation for the period 1993-2006 and find an elasticity of investment to exports in the manufacturing sector in the range between 0.9 and 1. Taking into account the dominant contribution of capital accumulation to Chinese GDP growth, we conclude that the growth effects of an external demand shock could become significant when taking into account the domestic investment channel.

The Chinese state owned enterprises (SOEs) have become quite profitable recently. As the largest shareholder, the state has not asked SOEs to pay dividends in the past. Therefore, some have suggested that the state should ask SOEs to pay dividends. Indeed, the Chinese government has adopted this policy advice and started to demand dividend payment starting from 2008. While we do not question the soundness of the dividend policy, the point we raise is whether those profits are real if all costs owned by SOEs are properly accounted for. Among other things, we are interested in investigating whether the profits of SOEs would still be as large as they claim if they were to pay a market interest rate. Using a representative sample of corporate China, we find that the costs of financing for SOEs are significantly lower than for other companies after controlling for some fundamental factors for profitability and individual firm characteristics. In addition, our estimates show that if SOEs were to pay a market interest rate, their existing profits would be entirely wiped out. Our findings suggest that SOEs are still benefiting from credit subsidies and they are not yet subject to the market interest rates. In an environment where credit rights are not fully respected, dividend policy, though important, should come second and not first. Keywords:

This paper analyzes empirically what explains the low profitability of Chinese banks for the period 1997-2004. We find that better capitalized banks tend to be more profitable. The same is true for banks with a relatively larger share of deposits and for more X-efficient banks. In addition, a less concentrated banking system increases bank profitability, which basically reflects that the four state-owned commercial banks - China’s largest banks - have been the main drag for system’s profitability. We find the same negative influence for China’s development banks (so called Policy Banks), which are fully state-owned. Instead, more market oriented banks, such as joint-stock commercial banks, tend to be more profitable, which again points to the influence of government intervention in explaining bank performance in China. These findings should not come as a surprise for a banking system which has long been functioning as a mechanism for transferring huge savings to meet public policy goals.

Vertical fragmentation of product value chain across borders is the driving force of growing economic interdependency in East Asia. A common currency, not flexible exchange rates between national currencies, would reduce flexibility in relative prices within East Asia. Its impact would be far greater for exports that have stronger production network linkage. In order to test the hypothesis, the paper estimates the effect of a common currency on China's processing and ordinary exports separately. The distinction is necessary because the processing exports, unlike the ordinary exports, are produced along the regional production networks, with final stages of assembly and exporting being increasingly concentrated in China. The short-run dynamics indicate that the effect on China's processing exports is more than double the corresponding effect on China's ordinary exports. The long-run effect on the processing exports of intra-regional RER flexibility, which is otherwise the lack of a regional currency, is almost nine times as large as the long-run effect of a unilateral RMB appreciation. By contrast, the corresponding long-run effect is statistically insignificant for the case of ordinary exports that are produced primarily by using local inputs. The long-run coefficient of this intra-regional RER flexibility implies that the actual volume of processing exports is 20 percent below the potential. The magnitudes of these effects are consistent with the hypothesis that a common currency would further integrate East Asian production networks and promote regional economic integration.

We investigate the role of managers' country of origin in leverage decisions using data on foreign joint ventures in China. By focusing on foreign joint ventures in a single country, we are able to hold constant the financing environment, eliminate the effects of formal institutions in the foreign managers' home country, and consequently reveal the effects of informal institutions such as national culture on corporate finance decisions. Using cultural values of embeddedness, mastery, and uncertainty avoidance to explain country of origin effects, we find that national culture has significant explanatory power in the financial leverage decisions of foreign joint ventures in China. Country-level variation is evident in capital structure and appears to work through choices of firm characteristics, industry affiliation, ownership structure, and region of investment.

This paper investigates control mechanism and accounting information used for control mechanism, shaped by government incentives for business. Using a sample of China's state-owned enterprises (SOEs) from 2001 to 2005, it finds that the likelihood of top management turnover in China's SOEs, which is an important aspect of corporate control mechanism, is inversely associated with two types of accounting information of firm performance, firm-specific accounting performance and relative accounting performance, which is induced by the interests of Chinese government for the economic performance and political competition. Further, this paper finds that relative accounting performance, especially regional relative accounting performance, receives more weight in turnover decisions if a SOE is a local monopolistic firm or in local monopoly, because relative performance measure could offer a relatively simple benchmark for local government to assess manager's quality and provide stronger incentive scheme in China's political environment. By seeking deeper understanding into government incentives, the findings imply that induced by government incentives, effective corporate governance which is based on distinguished characteristics of accounting information exists in an economy highly involved by government.