This study examines the price discovery patterns in the three BRICS countries’ stock index futures markets that were launched after 2000 – China, India, and Russia. We detect two structural breaks in these three futures price series and their underlying spot price series, and use them to form subsamples. Employing a Vector Error Correction Model (VECM) and the Hasbrouck (1995) test, we find the price discovery function of stock index futures markets generally improves over time in China and India, but declines in Russia. A closer examination not only confirms the findings of Yang et al. (2012) and Hou and Li (2013) regarding price discovery in China’s stock index markets, but also reveals the inconsistency of futures’ leading role in the price discovery process. Further, we find some evidence of day-of-the-week effects in earlier part of the sample in China, but not in India or Russia. And our GARCH model results show bidirectional volatility spillover between futures and spot in China and India, but only unidirectional in Russia.

Although China has the largest trading volume of commodity futures, limited studies have been devoted to the term structure of Chinese commodity futures. This paper takes the tools in functional data analysis to understand the term structure of commodity futures and forecast its dynamic changes at both short and long horizons. Functional ANOVA has been applied to examine the calendar e_ect of term structure in level and _nd the seasonality in the commodity futures of coking coal and polypropylene. We use an h-step functional autoregressive (1) model to forecast the dynamic change of term structure. Comparing with native predictor, in-sample and out-of-sample forecasting performance indicate that additional forecasting power is gained by using the functional autoregressive structure. Although the dynamic change at short horizons is not predictable, the forecasts appear much accurate at long horizons due to the stronger temporal dependence. The predictive factor method has a better in-sample _tting, but it cannot outperform the estimated kernel method for out-of-sample testing, except for 1-quarter-ahead forecasting.

By testing properties implied by one-dimensional diffusion option pricing models, we find that call (put) prices in the Chinese 50ETF option market move in opposite (same) direction with the underlying between 13.39% and 27.89% (between 12.45% and 33.98%) of the time for 5-minute and 1-day sampling intervals respectively. Given fundamental different investor structures in U.S. and China option markets, we also observe some important unique features in the 50ETF option price dynamics. More importantly, we demonstrate that these striking violations reduce substantially in 2016 compared with those in 2015, indicating that Chinese stock option market becomes more efficient.

本文发现，股票回报与公司的气候变化暴露水平之间存在可预测的关系。投资者并没有充分利用公司的气候变化暴露信息；那些暴露水平更高的公司，未来的回报更低。基于此构建的多空组合，能产生0.5%的因子调整后回报。本文排除了对冲气候变化风险、碳风险定价以及对ESG风险的担心等一系列替代解释。本文发现，公众的气候变化意识在近期的提高，削弱了这种可预测关系的幅度。

数字支付技术能像现金和国债那样，产生流动性溢价吗？对此，我们利用全球最大的数字支付平台（支付宝）进行估算。我们利用了以下事实：不同的货币市场基金进入该平台（因此可被用户持有和交易）的时间有先后。我们发现，一旦基金能被用于交易，它的规模平均增长了42倍。在此基础上，利用一个把基金视为不完全替代品的模型，数字支付技术的流动性溢价为年均1.0%-1.7%。

We document that firms' strategic reactions could hamper the effectiveness of RegTech. Our paper focuses on one RegTech innovation in China—online platforms launched by stock exchanges for investors to communicate with listed companies. We find that firms provide a number of no-answer replies—answers without clear, specific, or useful information—to investors' questions. Consistent with strategic information hoarding, no-answers are shown to be associated with subsequent unfavorable news. Moreover, firms with higher no-answer rates tend to have lower price efficiency, higher return volatility, and higher stock price crash risk. The evidence suggests regulators' objective of enhancing investor protection is not fully fulfilled.

More than one in five listed firms in China initiate dividend payments during the year right before their initial public offerings (IPOs). This tendency, which seems to contradict the purpose of raising capital, constitutes the pre-IPO dividend puzzle. This paper examines this puzzle using manually collected Chinese data from 2006 to 2019. We find that firms initiating pre-IPO dividends tend to have lower IPO underpricing than non-initiating firms. We also find that the effect of pre-IPO dividend initiation on IPO underpricing is more pronounced for firms with stronger pre-IPO growth and profitability. Additional analyses indicate that initiating firms have better pre- and post-IPO operating performance and post-IPO stock performance. Moreover, initiating firms pay more dividends and have significantly higher investor attention after the IPOs. Collectively, the pre-IPO dividend initiation is not a short-term strategic behavior of low-quality firms but is intended to send positive signals and improve investors’ stock valuation.

We examine the effects of the world’s first comply-or-explain dividend regulation in China’s Shanghai Stock Exchange, which requires firms to either pay at least 30% of profits as dividends or explain the use of funds. We find that many firms increased their payout ratio to comply, by increasing dividends or decreasing earnings. Firms with high profitability, state ownership, and fewer agency conflicts were more likely to comply. However, complying firms subsequently issued more debt and had a decline in accounting performance and firm valuation. The evidence suggests that the comply-or-explain regulation increased firms’ dividends at substantial costs.

By analyzing a hand-collected transaction-level dataset on the finance leases of China’s public firms for the period 2007-2019, this paper sheds light on China’s financial leasing industry. We find that banks use their affiliated leasing firms to provide credit to constrained clients in order to circumvent the government’s targeted monetary tightening policy. Finance Lease offsets the expected decline in traditional bank loans in affected industries, and therefore hampers the effectiveness of the monetary policy. Although this regulatory arbitrage may accumulate systemic risk at the macro level, bank-affiliated leasing firms charge lower leasing rate and exert tighter risk control than non-bank-affiliated leasing firms at the micro level. This finding indicates that banks use finance leases as a channel to keep low-risk clients rather than to make excessive profit.

International debt financing is important for the development of emerging economies, as it allows firms from emerging markets (EMs) to have access to greater liquidity, a wider investor base, and more effective laws and regulations. However, the financial crisis in the late 1990s, coupled with recent rapid growth in corporate leverage in emerging markets, have forced policy makers to re-evaluate the risk of offshore financing and its role in EMs’ development. In this paper, we investigate the bonding/signaling effect of offshore financing to those firms in subsequent domestic market financing through the improvement of information disclosure and creditability. With a comprehensive database covering bond issuances by Chinese firms both in domestic and offshore markets over the period of 2010 to 2015, we find that: 1) The offshore bond issuance has a positive bonding/signaling effect on firm’s subsequent debt-raising in the domestic market in terms of longer maturity of corporate issuance and lower funding cost. 2) If the offshore issuance occurs in a stricter jurisdiction providing more effective investor protection and stringent disclosure, or with an international investment-grade rating, it will have a positive influence on firm’s subsequent debt-raising domestically. 3) Offshore debt financing improves the long-term firm performance, especially for financially-constrained companies. Our study presents new evidence for the role of the offshore market in promoting both the domestic institutional environment as well as firm growth, and provides policy implications for developing a broad offshore corporate bond market in emerging economies.