This paper examines whether China’s switch back and forth from fixed to floating exchange rates in 2005 and 2008 changed the contribution to stock price discovery by foreign and domestic investors. During that time, mainland investors could only trade the RMB-denominated A-shares in the domestic Shanghai and Shenzhen markets, while the dual-listed HKD-denominated H-shares were available only to overseas investors. Using intraday data on overlapping trading hours, we find that the switch from a fixed rate to managed floating in July 2005 increased the H-shares’ contribution to price discovery; while the exchange rate regime reversal in July 2008 allowed the domestic stocks to regain their dominance in information shares. These results imply that, in a market subject to restrictions on capital flows, a flexible exchange rate regime increases the propensity of investors to trade foreign-issued stocks to speculate on the RMB exchange rate, which raises overseas investors’ contribution to price discovery.

China repos trade in the over-the-counter interbank market as well as the stock exchange. This paper examines the behaviours, sources, and drivers of the spread between China’s exchange and interbank reporates from December 2006 to June 2018. After adjusting for different day-count quoting methods, I dissect the exchange to interbank repo spread into two components: cross-market segmentation between exchange and interbank markets for non-depository institutions (NDIs), and within-market counterparty segmentation between NDIs and depository institutions (DIs) in the interbank market. The 1-day repo markets are found to be more segmented, with the spread mainly driven by the cross-market segmentation for NDIs, reflecting the two different market mechanisms and trading frictions that prevent NDIs from effectively arbitraging across the two markets in the shorter tenor. On the other hand, the 7-day repo markets are found to be less segmented, with the spread mainly driven by the counterparty segmentation between NDIs and DIs within the interbank market, reflecting greater counterparty credit and liquidity risks for NDIs relative to DIs. Further analysis uncovers the impacts of quarter-end effect, monetary policies, and shadow banking activities on the cross-market and within-market segmentations in China’s repo markets.

With a sample of 504 IPO issuers over a period of 2002-2008 in China, this paper studies a previously ignored issue by examining the relationship between pre-IPO earnings management and underwriter reputation for issuers with different level of marketization. We document that underwriter reputation is negatively related to pre-IPO earnings management only if the issuer is highly marketized. Specifically, we find a significantly negative relationship between pre-IPO earnings management and underwriter reputation if the issuer is a non-state-owned enterprise (NSOE) issuer, a small-size issuer, or is listed on the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) Board. No significant association is found for the state-owned enterprise (SOE) issuers, the large issuers, or Main Board issuers. We argue that the results are driven by the fact that issuers in the NSOE, small-sized, or SME market segment have more incentives to signal their earnings quality to avoid adverse selection by the investors, and/or reputable underwriters are more influential over their clients in mitigating earnings management.

This study adopts the Markov-switching ARCH (hereafter SWARCH) model to examine the volatility nature and volatility linkages of four segmented Chinese stock indices (SHA, SZA, SHB, and SZB). Our empirical findings are consistent with the following notions. First, we find strong evidence of regime shift in the volatility of four segmented markets and SWARCH model appears to outperform standard GARCH family models. Second, although there are some common features of volatility switch in segmented markets, there exist a few difference: (i)compared with the A-share markets, B-share markets are more volatile and shift more frequently between high- and low-volatility states; (ii) B-share markets have longer stays at high volatility state than the A-share markets; (iii) the relative magnitude of the high volatility compared with that of the low volatility is much greater than the case in two A-share markets. Third, B-share markets are found to be more sensitive to international shocks, while the A-share markets seem immune to international spillovers of volatility. Finally, analyses of volatility spillover effect among the four stock markets indicate that the A-share markets play a dominant role in volatility in Chinese stock markets.

We document the changes in dynamic stochastic structure of the various industrial sectors of the Chinese A, B share markets and the Hong Kong share markets. We utilize a robustly estimated VECM-MV-GARCH model to test for possible co-integrating vectors between the market segmentations pre and post deregulation of the Chinese B share market. Our results suggest that before deregulation there is weak evidence of co-integration between the A and B share markets however, post deregulation the situation changes and the segments appear to be significantly co-integrated. MV-GARCH results suggest that the conditional correlations of market/sector shocks also increase significantly over the sample period.

Using the daily data of Chinese 7-day repo rates from January 1, 1997 to December 31, 2008, this paper tests a variety of popular spot rate models, including single-factor diffusion, GARCH, Markov regime-switching and jump-diffusion models. We document that Chinese spot rates are subject to both market forces and administrative forces. GARCH, regime-switching and jump-diffusion models capture some important features of the dynamics of Chinese spot rates, but all models under study are overwhelmingly rejected. We further explore possible sources of model misspecification using diagnostic tests.

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 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.

Until recently, trading in Chinese markets was fully segmented―B-shares for foreign investors and A-shares for domestic investors. The fact that B-shares trade at a discount is a puzzle, since comparable markets overwhelmingly show premiums that are easily explained by international asset pricing models. The two most common explanations for this puzzle are that domestic investors are (i) better-informed and (ii) face lower costs of liquidity. The evidence, however, is inconclusive and relies on poor proxies. Based on as of yet unused trade and quote data, we explore direct measures of both information and liquidity using a spread decomposition model. We reject the liquidity-based explanation and find considerable support for betterinformed domestic investors. This creates an empirical basis for recent equilibrium models that rely on asymmetric information to explain China’s strong growth in spite of poor property rights.