This study investigates and compares the effects of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME)'s negative price suggestion on prices and trading activities in the crude oil futures market to discuss the cause of negative crude oil futures prices. Through event studies, our results show that the COVID-19 pandemic no longer impacts crude oil futures prices in April after controlled market risk, while the CME’s negative prices suggestion can explain the crude oil futures price changes around and around even after April 8 to some degree. Moreover, our study uncovers anomalies in prices and trading activities by analyzing returns, trading volume, open interest, and illiquidity measures using vector autoregressive (VAR) models. The results imply that CME’s allowing negative prices strengthens the price impact on trading volume and makes illiquidity risk matter. Our results coincide with the following lawsuit evidence of market manipulation.

Using a unique list of 528 fake state-owned enterprises (SOEs) exposed in China, we examine whether and how investors react to the government’s property rights protection actions. Our results show that real SOEs with more subsidiaries, pyramid layers, and popularity are more likely to be targeted by wrongdoers. We find that when fake SOEs were exposed, it caused a significant increase in the stock prices of listed central SOEs controlled by the State Council. Further analysis shows that the stock price rise is driven by both the cash flow and risk effects. We also find that the value impact of the crackdown is more pronounced for listed central SOEs with less media coverage, located in weaker legal protection regions, and facing more competition. Overall, our findings provide empirical support for the effectiveness of exposure, as a non-litigation channel of property rights protection, in enhancing firm value.

In the dollar-denominated corporate bond market, 42% of bonds with an amount outstanding of USD 5.9 Trillion are issued by non-US firms. Despite the increasing importance of cross-border financing, foreign issuers are paying an extra premium of 23 bps, compared with their US counterparts. A similar foreign discount exists in the euro-denominated corporate bond and dollar-denominated sovereign bond market. Contrary to the common view, the standard risk and risk aversion cannot explain the discount. I propose a theoretical explanation based on uncertainty aversion. The model can generate the uncertainty effect in the cross-section and the volatility effect in the time series, both are supported by the data. Taking Covid-19 as an event study, I further document a foreign squeeze effect by showing that foreign dollar bonds suffer higher selling pressure relative to US dollar bonds during market turmoil. Such foreign discount (USA effect) dominates the dollar safety premium (USD effect). My results highlight the foreign discount and foreign squeeze effects in the international cross-border investment and financing.

This paper studies the trading behavior of investors facing a large number of firm-initiated stock trading suspension events during the Chinese stock market crisis in July of 2015. Using account-level trading data from the Shanghai Stock Exchange, we find that investors with a higher fraction of holding value in suspension sell less (or purchase more) of non-suspended stocks. Consequently, non-suspended stocks whose shareholders having high average account level suspension fraction experience a relative price appreciation, which subsequently reverses. These evidences indicate that trading suspension can calm down investors and therefore helps to stabilize the volatile market in crisis time.

This paper assesses the impact of the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) on the stock market of China. Our results indicate that the Chinese stock market reacts rapidly to the SARS epidemic. We provide strong empirical evidence that the epidemic has an immediate impact on the pharmaceutical and tourism industries. In particular, pharmaceutical companies are benefited from the outbreak of SARS, while the tourism sector is adversely affected. Our results imply the existence of a profitable trading rule during an epidemic.

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.