Price elasticity and bid-ask price spreads in the treasury bond market

Typical analyses of transactions costs in the bond markets explain these costs in terms of yield, term to maturity, coupons, and issue size. However, these analyses do not recognize the price elasticity of bonds to interest rate movements, which provides better measures of market risk and bid-ask price spreads. Elasticity or duration and issue size together display stronger associations with bid-ask price spreads than do the traditional variables. The association is also less subject to multicollinearity of the independent variables. Finally, stepwise regressions show that coupon and yield data add no information about bid-ask price spreads not already impounded in the duration statistic. This casts doubt on the nonduration arguments often used to support these variables as separately meaningful in transactions cost analyses.     

Credit cycle dependent spread determinants in emerging sovereign debt markets

We address credit cycle dependent sovereign credit risk determinants. In our model, the spread determinants' magnitude is conditional on an unobservable endogenous sovereign credit cycle as represented by the underlying state of a Markov regime switching process. Our explanatory variables are motivated in the tradition of structural credit risk models and include changes in asset prices, interest rates, implied market volatility, gold price changes and foreign exchange rates. We examine daily frequency variations of U.S. dollar denominated Eurobond credit spreads of four major Latin American sovereign bond issuers (Brazil, Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela) with liquid bond markets during March 2000 to June 2011. We find that spread determinants are statistically significant and consistent with theory, while their magnitude remarkably varies with the state of the credit cycle. Crisis states are characterized by high spread change uncertainty and high sensitivities with respect to the spread change determinants. We further document that not only changes of local currencies, but also changes of the Euro with respect to the U.S. dollar are significant spread drivers and argue that this is consistent with the sovereigns' ability to pay.     

Adverse selection costs: A study on the Chinese stock market

Employing a bid-ask spread model applicable for order-driven market, this paper decomposes the bid-ask spread of Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) into adverse selection and order processing cost components to investigate the relationship between the components of bid-ask spread and order size. It examines the impacts of firm size, price, trading activeness, and volatility on adverse selection cost, and explores the intraday pattern of adverse selection costs and informative trading. Results show that adverse selection costs increase with trade scale. However, order processing costs do not exhibit the economies of scale. Stocks of large firms, which are high-priced and actively traded, have relatively low adverse selection costs; stocks with large volatility have relatively high adverse selection costs. Moreover, this paper finds that the adverse selection component of bid-ask spread in the Chinese stock market exhibits an L-shaped intraday pattern, which implies that heavy trading around market opening is dominated by informative trading, while heavy trading near market closing is dominated by liquidity trading.     

Redistribution and Government Tactical Behaviour: An Analysis of Local Public Expenditure in China after the 1994 Tax Reform

During the last few decades significant changes have affected Chinese public finance. In 1994, a major tax reform was undertaken and central–local sharing arrangements were deeply modified; the evolutions of regional public expenditure in the years following the reform deserve to be analysed. The issue is relevant for two additional reasons. First, income inequality is becoming a relevant issue and it is therefore important to understand whether the Chinese government is pursuing some kind of redistribution policy. Second, an analysis of the local expenditure dynamics might provide some important information concerning the objectives and the behaviour of the Chinese government. The article considers a set of structural, political and socio‐economic variables to analyse the determinants of local public expenditure in 30 Chinese regions over the period 1995–2007. The results reveal that redistribution seems not to be a priority for the Chinese government: expenditure is higher in richer and more internationally open regions, and the only redistribution evidence that emerges is related to urban–rural disparities.     

An empirical examination of the SIMEX Nikkei 225 futures contract around the Kobé earthquake and the Barings Bank collapse

This study examines the levels and interrelationships of volatility, volume, open interest and effective bid-ask spread on the Nikkei 225 futures contract on SIMEX. The sample chosen is critical; conclusions regarding the effect of the Kobé earthquake of January 1995 and the resulting collapse of Barings Bank in February 1995 can be uncovered. The analysis uses graphs of the levels of the variables and an assessment of the variables using a vector autoregression and impulse response functions. Volume and open interest temporarily increased, whereas the increase in effective bid-ask spread is more permanent. This seems to be due to the sensitivity that each of the variables develops to volatility as a result of these information shocks. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 19: 1–29, 1999     

Factors explaining movements in the implied volatility surface

This article explores the relationship of changes in the S&P 500 index implied volatility surface to economic state variables. Observable variables can explain some of the variation in implied volatility, with the majority of explanatory power from index returns. Although the contemporaneous return is most important for explaining changes in short dated volatility, the path of the index is important for explaining changes in long dated volatility. Other variables also display statistically significant relations to volatility changes. Shocks to the Nikkei 225, short‐term interest rates, and the corporate/government bond yield spread are correlated with small, systematic changes in implied volatility. The results suggest a multifactor model for market volatility, with factors other than index returns adding negligible explanatory ability. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 22:915–937, 2002     

The profitability of index futures arbitrage: Evidence from bid-ask quotes

Previous studies investigated the profitability of stock index futures based on transaction price data, and could overstate the frequency of arbitrage opportunities and size of arbitrage profits. This article obtains a data base for the Hong Kong index futures and index options market that contains both real-time transaction prices and bid-ask quotes; the article further examines the bias of identifying arbitrage opportunities based on transaction prices. The article finds the percentage of observations violating no-arbitrage bounds is significantly reduced when bid-ask quotes are employed instead of transaction prices. This suggests studies that implement arbitrage strategies based on transaction prices employ prices from the wrong side of the spread. This article finds a relationship between the frequency of violations (evaluated from transaction prices) and the size of bid-ask spreads in the futures and options markets. This phenomenon indicates that a larger mispricing, which may arise when the bid-ask spread is wider, does not necessarily imply profitable arbitrage opportunity. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 18:743–763, 1998     

The collection efficiency of the Value Added Tax: Theory and international evidence

This paper evaluates the political economy and structural factors explaining the collection efficiency of the Value Added Tax (VAT), where the collection efficiency is determined by the probability of audit and by the penalty on underpaying, and implementation lags imply that the present policy maker determines the efficiency of the tax system next period. Theory suggests that the collection efficiency is affected by political economy considerations – greater polarization and political instability would reduce the efficiency of the tax collection, and collection is impacted by structural factors affecting the ease of tax evasion (such as urbanization, agriculture share, openness). We evaluate the VAT collection efficiency (VAT revenue over the aggregate consumption divided by the standard VAT rate) in a panel of 44 countries over 1970–99. A one standard deviation increase in durability of political regime, and in the ease and fluidity of political participation, increases the VAT collection efficiency by 3.1% and 3.6%, respectively. A one standard deviation increase in urbanization, trade openness and the share of agriculture, changes the VAT collection efficiency by 12.7%, 3.9% and ?4.8%, respectively. Qualitatively identical results apply for the ratio of VAT revenue to GDP divided by the standard VAT.     

金融冲击、去杠杆与中国宏观经济波动

去杠杆是我国供给侧结构性改革的重要任务之一,而平稳有序地去杠杆是防范化解金融风险的关键:本文通过梳理我国在2016年前后的经济数据,刻画了去杠杆进程中我国宏观经济存在的“扩张—收缩”波动特征。基于此现实,本文在金融加速器理论基础上构建金融经济周期模型,尝试利用违约成本的变化引入金融冲击,从未预期和预期冲击两个视角理解去杠杆背景下中国的宏观经济波动。模型数值模拟结果表明,去杠杆过程前后信贷、杠杆率以及信用利差等重要宏观经济变量的波动不仅源自未预期违约成本的变化。违约成本预期的变化同样也可以很好地解释近年来我国重要宏观经济变量的“扩张—收缩”波动特征,为理解我国去杠杆进程中的宏观经济波动提供了一个新视角。基于本文结果,政府实施去杠杆政策时不仅应充分考虑违约成本的实际变动,还应重视金融机构的预期因素。     

Political and Institutional Factors in Regime Changes in the ERM: An Application of Duration Analysis

This paper analyses the functioning of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). To that end, we apply duration models to estimate an augmented target‐zone model, explicitly incorporating political and institutional factors into the explanation of European exchange rate policies. The estimations are based on quarterly data of eight currencies participating in the ERM, covering the complete history of the European Monetary System. Our results suggest that both economic and political factors are important determinants of ERM currency policies. Concerning economic factors, the money supply, the real exchange rate, the interest rate in Germany and the central parity deviation would have negatively affected the duration of a given central parity, while credibility and the price level in Germany would have positively influenced such duration. Regarding political variables, elections, central bank independence and left‐wing administrations would have increased the probability of maintaining the current regime, while unstable governments would have been associated with more frequent regime changes. Moreover, we show how the political augmented model outperforms the model which just incorporates pure economic determinants, both in terms of explanatory power and goodness of fit.     

House prices and immovable property tax: Evidence from OECD countries

This paper studies the impact of changes in immovable property tax revenues on the growth rate of house prices by analysing a panel of 34 OECD countries over the period 1970–2014. Starting from the annual series of immovable property tax revenues, we isolate years of significant shifts in the property tax regime and study their impact on house prices. We find a strong negative relationship between increases in immovable property tax revenues and house prices. This relationship is robust to the inclusion of cyclical determinants of house prices, country and year fixed effects, and country‐specific linear trends. We also propose an instrumental variable strategy based on countries’ legal origins that confirms a statistically significant negative impact of such taxes in the short run.     

Cross-Country Evidence on the Role of Independent Media in Constraining Corporate Tax Aggressiveness

Using an international sample of firms from 32 countries, we study the relation between media independence and corporate tax aggressiveness. We measure media independence by the extent of private ownership and competition in the media industry. Using an indicator variable for tax aggressiveness when the firm’s corporate tax avoidance measure is within the top quartile of each country-industry combination, we find strong evidence that media independence is associated with a lower likelihood of tax aggressiveness, after controlling for other institutional determinants, including home-country tax system characteristics. We also find that the effect of media independence is more pronounced when the legal environment is weaker, and when the information environment is less transparent. We contribute to the business ethics literature by documenting the role of independent media as an external monitoring mechanism in constraining corporate tax aggressiveness.     

Source Country Characteristics and the Inflow of Foreign Direct Investment into Saudi Arabia

The paper examines the impact of source country characteristics on the inflow of FDI into Saudi Arabia using a gravity‐type model including economic, distance and socio‐political variables. A unique database listing all new investments involving foreign ownership is used to construct a panel of 33 countries in the period 1980–2005. To account for many country–year observations with zero FDI, the negative binomial regression, the Tobit regression and the Heckman selection procedure are used. The conclusions drawn from the analysis employing panel‐based techniques differ from the results obtained from pooled regression models. Also, the determinants of FDI differ depending on whether foreign investment is measured in terms of investment expenditure or the number of individual foreign projects. The Heckman selection results reveal that there are a large number of factors affecting the decision to invest in Saudi Arabia, compared with relatively few determinants of the actual size of investment. Traditional size and distance characteristics hold to a great extent but the relationship between FDI and bilateral trade is unclear and there is some evidence that the countries that export to Saudi Arabia do not invest there. In terms of scope for possible spillovers, there is mixed evidence on whether the investment comes from more technologically advanced economies but volume‐wise important investments originate from countries characterised by high income per capita.     

The role of country-specific fundamentals in sovereign CDS spreads: Eastern European experiences

We investigate the determinants of sovereign CDS spreads on a sample of Eastern European data. A dynamic hierarchical factor model is used to aggregate information in indicators of economic fundamentals. CDS spreads are regressed on forecasts of factors. We find that domestic fundamentals explain more of CDS spread variance than global factors, largely due to their ability to explain differences in sovereign risk across countries. The effects on CDS spreads are found to be time-varying. In terms of economic significance, the factor of institutional-political strength stands out. We apply the model to study CDS spreads of Poland, Russia and Turkey.     

我国税收政策对经济增长的非线性效应研究——基于总量与结构效应双重视角的实证分析

全面分析与科学把握我国税收政策方向与节奏不仅事关政府宏观调控与驾驭经济能力的提升,更是实现有质量、有效益、可持续经济增长的关键。文章首先基于创新驱动经济增长的内生增长模型构建税收对经济增长影响的理论分析框架,然后采用MS-VAR模型与利用中国季度数据,从总量与结构双重视角实证考察我国税收政策对经济增长的影响,结果发现：一是当处于区制1时,无论是税收的总量抑或结构效应,均表现出非凯恩斯主义特征,但并不显著;二是当位于区制2时,税收对经济增长的总量影响表现为凯恩斯效应,而商品税与所得税对经济增长的影响存在显著差异。其中商品税与经济增长正相关,所得税与经济增长负相关。另外无论是税收的总量效应抑或结构效应,在继续维持各自区制内的稳定性方面表现都非常强,从一个区制向另一个区制发生转换的概率非常小。文章研究结论对于创新政府宏观调控方式与增强税收政策调控的前瞻性、针对性与有效性具有非常重要的理论与实际意义。     

订单驱动机制下买卖价差构成分析——兼论以买卖价差度量流动性的可靠性

买卖价差是金融市场微观结构理论研究的重要组成部分。在报价驱动交易机制下,买卖价差由指令处理成本、存货成本和非对称信息成本构成。而在订单驱动交易机制下,若不考虑订单处理成本,买卖价差则主要取决于投资者对资产预期价值的差异、买卖双方投资者间的比例和逆向选择成本。经研究发现,买卖价差随投资者对资产预期与逆向选择成本的增加而增加,当买卖双方力量对比相当时,买卖价差达到最大;而在单边买方或卖方市场,买卖价差则达到最小,这一点与通常对流动性的理解是相矛盾的。由此,在订单驱动机制下,以买卖价差作为流动性度量指标是不可靠的。     

Corporate taxes and the demand for labor and capital in developing countries

This article provides evidence about the impact of corporate taxation on both labor and capital demand by private companies in a developing economy, using firm level data from Chile. Our results show that higher corporate tax rates reduce not only the demand for capital, but also the demand for labor due to complementarities between both inputs. An interesting element of the results presented in this article is the asymmetry between the effects of taxation according to company size. The impact on labor demand is significantly higher in large corporations than in small enterprises, while the demand for capital is more responsive to corporate tax changes in small firms. We can explain these results based on differences in credit constraints according to firm size.     

中国股市扩大买卖盘揭示范围的效应分析——对市场波动性影响的实证研究

2003年 12月沪深股市扩大买卖盘揭示范围,大幅提高了市场的交易前透明度。本文分别用统计假设检验和计量经济学模型,实证分析了该政策实行前后的市场波动性是否有明显变化。结果表明,买卖盘揭示范围的这次调整,对中国股市的波动性没有明显影响;来自中国证券市场交易前透明性改革的实证结果,并不支持透明性在一定程度上影响市场质量的理论观点。     

The cyclical effect of default risk on industrial bond yields

This paper examines the determinants of default-risk premiums and the ways in which they change over the business cycle. Seven default-risk factors are constructed from a large number of financial ratio/accounting variables. Factor scores summarizing these variables for a sample of industrial corporations are regressed with bond risk premiums for all years from 1971 to 1977—a complete business cycle. A second sample covering the years 1975 to 1977 is also examined. The main conclusion is that the cyclical movement of business conditions influences investors' assessments of default risk. Bonds issued in periods of economic normalcy have premiums that are significantly associated with earnings instability in addition to sales and size factors. By contrast, firms issuing bonds during recessionary climates must have relatively greater size and profitability to obtain funding at lower-interest costs. Firms with higher sales turnover ratios and, therefore, greater earnings instability with respect to economic downswings, are less likely to issue debt securities during depressed business conditions.     

Determinants of the Effectiveness of Corporate Codes of Ethics: An Empirical Study

Recent figures reported by KPMG confirm the growing prevalence of corporate codes of ethics globally. Svensson et al. (Bus Ethics 18:389–407, 2009) in surveys of the largest corporations in Australia, Canada, and Sweden found a similar trend. The increased prevalence of corporate codes of ethics has been accompanied by heightened research interest in various aspects of these documents, e.g., the contents and focus of the codes. However, there is a paucity of research examining the effectiveness of these documents and the organizational infrastructure that accompany them. This study, based on a survey of Canada’s largest corporations, sought to empirically assess the determinants of the effectiveness of corporate codes of ethics by regressing managers’ perceptions of code effectiveness against various elements of ethics programs. It was found that, in a statistically significant model, eighteen independent variables explain 58.5% of the variance in the perceived effectiveness of corporate codes of ethics.