We try to explain the severe under-pricing of 523 A-share IPOs in the Chinese markets from 1997 to 2001 using institutional characteristics, absolute value, and relative value of IPO. We find that relative values of IPO are critical determinants of the severe under-pricing of A-share IPOs in China. We also find that relaxing government regulation of offering price increases under-pricing, and thus conclude that the severe under-pricing of A-share IPOs in China is not caused by the government regulation of offering price. We propose a relative value theory to explain why relaxing government regulation of offering price results in higher under-pricing and find some support for the theory.

In this paper we use artificial neural network (ANN) to empirically analyze the liquidity values of the non-floating shares and the influencing factors to China’s stock market in the background of China’s listed companies split share stricture reform. We try to use a proportion which the company’s non-floating shareholders offer compensation to the floating shareholders to test the liquidity values of the non-floating shares and use MATLAP establish a feed-forward BP neural network model to analyze and forecast according to the data of the companies which have announced and actualized their split stricture reform plans. In expansion analysis, we use the perturbation method to measure the influence of these parameters on the liquidity values of the non-floating. As result, the character of the shares, the share structure and the ratio of the shares by the principal shareholder held are the main influencing factors.

Opacity (the converse of transparency) has only recently received attention as it has been considered to be linked to a series of financial crises. This study utilizes Price Waterhouse Cooper’s 2001 opacity indices and capital flow data from the World Bank and Bank for International Settlement. Capital flows are disaggregated into categories of foreign direct investment flows by multinational enterprises, portfolio capital flows and international bank lending. Regression analysis supports the idea that higher opacity leads to a reduction in capital flows, in general. The results have policy-relevant implications as countries wishing to enhance capital inflows need to reduce the level of opacity in decision-making. More interestingly, however, the investigation with opacity sub- indices shows higher capital flows, in general, were associated with higher opacity in corruption and regulatory indices corroborating some existing evidence in the FDI literature that opacity will influence the choice of entry mode rather than the actual level of flows. In addition, the paper supports the notion that Bank Assurance mechanisms are highly desirable with regard to international bank lending, as the nature of these flows means that they are more influenced by general levels of opacity and are less responsive than FDI and portfolio flows.

It is often documented, based on autocorrelation, variance ratio and power spectrum, that exchange rates approximately follow a martingale process. Because autocorrelation, variance ratio and spectrum check serial uncorrelatedness rather than martingale difference, they may deliver misleading conclusions in favor of the martingale hypothesis when the test statistics are insigniÞcant. In this paper, we explore whether there exists a gap between serial uncorrelatedness and martingale difference for exchange rate changes, and if so, whether nonlinear time series models admissible in the gap can outperform the martingale model in out-of-sample forecasts. Applying the generalized spectral tests of Hong (1999) to Þve major currencies, we Þnd that the changes of exchange rates are often serially uncorrelated, but there exists strong nonlinearity in conditional mean, in addition to the well-known volatility clustering. To forecast the conditional mean, we consider the linear autoregressive, autoregressive polynomial, artiÞcial neural network and functional-coefficient models, as well as their combination. The functional coefficient model allows the autoregressive coefficients to depend on investment positions via an moving average technical trading rule. We evaluate out-of-sample forecasts of these models relative to the martingale model, using four criteria– the mean squared forecast error, the mean absolute forecast error, the mean forecast trading return, and the mean correct forecast direction. White’s (2000) reality check method is used to avoid data-snooping bias. It is found that suitable nonlinear models, particularly their combination, do have superior predictive ability over the martingale model for some currencies in terms of certain forecast evaluation criteria.

This paper studies the relationship between corporate leverage and the ultimate corporate ownership structure, particularly the separation of cash flow rights and control rights. We empirically disentangle the three potential effects of the divergence of control rights from cash flow rights on corporate leverage, i.e., the non-dilution entrenchment effect, the bonding role of debt and the fear-of-financial-distress entrenchment effect. Our evidence from the East Asian corporations mainly supports the notion that controlling shareholders with relatively small ownership share tend to increase leverage out of the motive of raising external finance without diluting their shareholding dominance. The separation of cash flow rights and control rights contributes to the risk-taking tendency of the large controlling shareholders in capital structure choice.

We argue that the existing literature, which justifies banking regulation by either market failures or regulation capture, cannot explain why banking is one of the most regulated industries and why banking regulation is a relatively recent institution in market economies. We present a new theory of banking regulation based on government failure. We first explain that banking as a market institution is intrinsically stable and effective, since its unique financial structure, i.e. most funds come from deposits, makes it very difficult for a bank to be refinanced when its investment projects are unsuccessful, thereby hardening their budget constraint and disciplining the bank’s investment decisions. However, the advent of modern governments, who have both the resources and incentive to bail out failing banks, destroys the stabilizing mechanism of banking. We call this government failure. Banking regulation is an institutional resolution to the government failure by restricting banks’ investment decisions before they fail. We provide historical as well as contemporary evidence to support the theory and explore predictions of the theory that are not derived in the existing theories.

We investigate the lags for testing linear Granger causality and obtain a new criterion of the best lags for testing linear Granger causality. Furthermore, we compare the sensitivity between the two A-Stock Markets of Shanghai and Shenzhen Exchange Stocks, and conclude that the A-Stock Market in Shenzhen Exchange Stock is more sensitive than the A-Stock Market in Shanghai Exchange Stock, in the sense of Granger causality.

Much recent work has documented evidence for predictability of asset returns.We show how such predictability can affect the portfolio choice of long-lived investors who value wealth not for its own sake but for the consumption their wealth can support.We develop an approximate solution method for the optimal consumption and portfolio choice problem of an infinitely-lived investor with Epstein-Zin utility who faces a set of asset returns described by a vector autoregression in returns and state variables.Empirical estimates in long-run annual and postwar quarterly US data suggest that the predictability of stock returns greatly inceases the optimal demand for stocks.The role of nominal bonds in long-term portfolios depends on the importance of real interest rate risk relative to other sources of risk.We extend the analysis to consider long-term inflation-indexed bonds and find that these bonds greatly increase the utility of conservative investors,who should hold large positions when they are available.

This paper investigates the correlation between bond and stock returns in UK in daily data. It checks how the correlation between bond and stock returns changes over time and analyses the reasons behind the correlation between them. Through the examination of the UK daily data in the period from July 1996 to May 2003, this paper reports some important findings. Firstly, the correlation between bond and stock returns is not constant over time and the unconditional correlation between bond and stock returns even becomes negative in the sample of this paper. Secondly, there are two factors affecting the correlation between bond and stock returns in the UK: the real interest rate and the stock market volatility. The increasing real interest rate increases the correlation between bond and stock returns. However, the increasing stock market volatility causes a decrease of the correlation between the two returns decrease. Moreover, the stock market volatility plays a main role to understand the correlation between bond and stock returns in the sample of this paper.

This paper considers the extent to which countries or companies can successfully borrow foreign corporate governance elements with a view to improving their own governance system. Companies in particular theoretically can rent other countries’ governance system through cross-listing. At bottom, the question is whether foreign legal elements can be “plugged-in” neatly into an existing corporate governance system, be compatible with it, and produce the expected improvements. Advances in different branches of psychology dealing with cultural orientations and cognitive styles suggest that the greater the cultural distance between the source and target countries the more difficult it would be to implement such a strategy for corporate governance reform. To demonstrate these points in detail, this paper considers South Korea’s corporate governance system and its culture as a reference case.