In this paper, we investigate the agency costs of government ownership and their impact on corporate governance and firm value. China is used as a laboratory because of the prevalent state shareholdings in exchange-listed firms. In this context, we specifically consider the trade-offs involved in the voluntary formation of an audit committee when the controlling shareholder is the state. The decision to improve corporate governance (in this case, introduce an audit committee) is shown to be value relevant and a function of existing agency relationships and non-trivial implementation costs. Our findings are robust to the level of pyramid groups, the ownership-control wedge, and financial leverage. The research adds to the debate regarding the effect of government shareholdings on corporate culture and performance - a topic that has taken on renewed importance in recent times.

Following the economic theory of venture capital financing, a corporate governance framework would be economically efficient for VC investments if it can help to reduce the agency costs resulted from information and incentive problems. As a highly successful model in global VC industry, the standard VC investment contracts in the Silicon Valley practice largely embody such framework. By analyzing the currently effective laws and regulations of China that are relevant to the investments by foreign venture capitalists, this paper paints a practical picture of how can foreign VC investors do business in China. It is shown that, the recent (starting from 2005) outflow of a set of new legal norms can be seen as a dividing point for the VC investing practice in China – the previously prevalent mode “offshore structuring, offshore listing” is challenged, and both the investment and exit are gradually pulled onshore. This being said, the current Chinese laws and institutions still cannot fully entertain the contracting and governance model prevalent in the Silicon Valley VC investment practices, and in this light, this paper goes on to discuss, in particular, various strategies that may be availed by foreign VC firms to tap and/or subvert the Chinese laws and regulations when financing Chinese new ventures. Finally, under the theme of globalization and crossborder corporate governance convergence, this paper provides a general comment on the currently applicable Chinese legal framework, and stresses the importance of converging towards efficient legal rules through contracts in the global competitive village.

从融资约束的角度来研究公司的现金持有行为是当前公司财务学的的重要课题之一。本文根据Almeida et al(2004)提出的现金-现金流敏感性模型，从资产规模、股利支付和控制权性质三个融资约束分组标准角度研究了我国上市公司的现金持有行为。结论表明，融资受约束和不受约束的公司的现金-现金流敏感性都显著为正，没有表现出明显的差异。特别的，国有企业与民营企业的现金-现金流敏感性都非常的正显著，都面临严重的融资约束问题。一方面由于目前我国资本市场的发展仍不够完善，大多数公司仍面临严重的融资约束；另一方面可能说明我国上市公司普遍存在滥用“自由现金流”的现象。因此本文的结论不能有效的支持融资约束影响了我国上市公司现金持有这一假说，现金-现金流敏感性模型并不能有效区分融资约束与非融资约束公司，其作为检验我国上市公司融资约束假说并不合适。

Imposed trading constraints act as an exogenous source of illiquidity, prevent free trading of restricted shares and make them be priced at a discount relative to their freely-traded counterparts with identical dividends and voting rights from the same listed firms. This paper numerically solves the theoretical illiquidity discounts for the case of long constraint horizons and then reconciles the contradictions in the results of various frameworks by identifying the effects of the unlimited and costless borrowings assumed in Longstaff (2001). With control of leveraged positions, illiquidity discounts increase with the volatility, and their size is greatly diminished. We also empirically test the theories within the unique setting of China, which has virtually the largest population of restricted shares worldwide. Large discounts are documented in two forms of transactions in restricted shares: namely auctions and transfers. The results empirically verify the theoretical findings by showing that illiquidity discounts in auctions increase with both the volatility and constraint horizons. The results from transfers, however, are not significant as the transfers are made privately and may be subject to price manipulation when the involved parties are related.

Since the first index fund launched in 1999, the index fund market has been growing steadily in China. In this paper, we seek to measure and understand the tracking error of China based index funds. The results show that sample index funds exhibit an acceptable level of tracking error in general. Furthermore, by means of decomposition of tracking error variance we find that risk structure of sample funds keeps consistency with financial theory about indexing. While there is an exception such as Hua An MSCI China A share e.g., whole performance of the better run index funds suggests that indexing is practicable under China conditions.

This paper considers informed traders’ trading strategies in a bear market. Known as stealth trading, one strategy of informed traders’ is to use medium-size trades, which tend to contain more information than small- and large-size ones and thus to have stronger impact on stock price movement. Using the tick-by-tick data of Shanghai 180 Index Component Stocks, we document the strong pattern of stealth trading in Chinese stock market during the period of June 1, 2004 to May 31, 2005, which is: (1) an order-driven market; (2) a market that has limit orders only; (3) a bear market; (4) a market with no corresponding derivative market; (5) a market with short-selling constraints; (6) an emerging market. The results extend the empirical evidence on the stealth trading by documenting the fact that price movements are mainly due to the medium-size trades. We find that the pattern in a bear market is highly consistent with that in a bull market. First, we observe that the per-transaction stock price changes in different trade-size categories exhibit a clear U-shape and only the price changes induced by medium-size trades are consistent with the market movement direction. We formally test the stealth trading as well as four alternative hypotheses, and conclude that stealth trading hypothesis can correctly explain this phenomenon. Second, the evidence shows that the medium- size trades have stronger impacts on price change s in the stocks whose price movements are highly consistent with the market (in our study, it refers to those stocks with severely low cumulative return in the sample period). Third, we further document that there is strong interaction between stealth trading hypothesis and order imbalance hypothesis. However, after controlling the effect of order imbalance, the stealth trading hypothesis still holds, but the magnitude is much lower. It is suggested that the follow-up researchers take into consideration the effect of order imbalance, when confirming the existence or the magnitude of the stealth trading.

In 2005-2006 China reformed its stock market by eliminating non-tradable shares. The regulator set general guidelines and then assigned responsibility for implementation to each company. We derive relations that should have been followed by the prices of stocks and exploit a company-level data set to compare the actual and the theoretical price reactions. We find evidence for abnormal returns both before the beginning of the reform and during the reform. Cross-sectionally, abnormal returns are associated mainly with turnover and compensation. This shows that in a speculative market, investors do not properly react to unambiguous corporate actions.

This paper studies the links between fundamental value and market price of the companies listed in both mainland A-share and Hong Kong H-share markets. As the valuation model has been inadequately applied in the literature, this study theoretically clarifies that the dividends discount model (DDM) and it derivatives are suitable for firms, but not for general consumers and investors, to evaluate equity fundamental values. Thus, using DDM and its derivatives to determine the market price of equity, which has been done in many other studies, is problematic. This paper also empirically studies how accounting data determines fundamental values of equities using a pooled-data vector autoregressive method. It indicates that although fundamental value can be a benchmark for investors to price equity, prices of equity may deviate from fundamental values substantially for a long time due to differences in preference and the extent of risk aversion between A-shares and H-shares. Correlation between equity price and its fundamental value for H-shares is larger than the correlation for A-shares. This paper also explains why there has been a big price gaps between A-shares and H-shares with exactly the same yields rights. The estimates of fundamental value for each company help investors make rational investment decisions. It suggests that, in the long run, healthy development of Chinese securities markets will depend on the progress of privatisation and marketisation of the Chinese economy. Measures such as the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors (QFII) and Qualified Domestic Institutional Investors (QDII) programmes should be adopted to improve the efficiency of financial resources utilisation in mainland China, despite the short-run pressure that may put on A-share markets.

This paper explores the determinants of B-share discounts in the Chinese stock market based on a unique regulatory change in 2001. We find that the B-share discounts declined substantially after the lifting of restrictions on foreign ownership in China, but the H-share discount remained virtually unchanged. Using the intraday data, we find that information flows from the B-share markets to the A-share markets increase significantly after the event, because domestic investors rush into the B-share markets. Using various cross-sectional analyses, we also find that relative supply and behavior factors such as relative spread (or liquidity) and relative risk affect the discounts throughout the sample period.

This paper explores the determinants of B-share discounts in the Chinese stock market based on a unique regulatory change in 2001. We find that the B-share discounts declined substantially after the lifting of restrictions on foreign ownership in China, but the H-share discount remained virtually unchanged. Using the intraday data, we find that information flows from the B-share markets to the A-share markets increase significantly after the event, because domestic investors rush into the B-share markets. Using various cross-sectional analyses, we also find that relative supply and behavior factors such as relative spread (or liquidity) and relative risk affect the discounts throughout the sample period.