Does the stock market affect investment by Chinese firms? Some new evidence

During the 1990s, the Chinese government increasingly relied on the stock market as the major tool for state‐owned enterprise (SOE) reform and for the allocation of investment resources. This paper investigates the impact of stock market development in China on firm‐level capital investment by using a panel data set constructed by the author of all Chinese listed firms for the period 1992 to 1999. The results show that stock market valuation, as measured by Tobin’s q, has a highly independent, significant and positive influence on listed firms’ investment decisions, particularly during the stock market boom from 1996 to 1999. Given the sizable real effects of the stock market, deviations of stock prices from fundamentals can have substantially negative consequences. As a result, this study suggests that sensible regulation of the Chinese stock market is needed in order to enhance the efficiency of stock prices and facilitate an effective channeling of investment funds.     

Comments on the present state and the prospects of the hungarian economic reform

The reform of the Hungarian economic mechanism during 1979 and 1982 is discussed. The new administrative constraints on prices are criticized; the first steps towards disintegration of trusts and large enterprises and towards formation of small enterprises and cooperatives are regarded as promising, as are the measures that give more scope to entrepreneurship and legalization of activities in the “second economy.” The relation between growth policy and the economic mechanism as well as the “investment hunger” and the changes of the intensity of shortage are then examined. The future of the reform process is discussed briefly.     

Analysing the Performance of Firms Using a Decomposable Ideal Index Number to Link Profit, Prices and Productivity

This article reviews an index number framework that links changes in aggregate performance measures (such as profit, revenue, cost and total factor productivity) to changes in both the prices and quantities of key outputs and inputs. The framework provides a way of linking the aggregate performance measures to outcomes for individual customer groups, employees and owners of businesses. This information is useful to policy makers in evaluating the outcomes of economic reform, including the distributional consequences. It is also useful to regulators who need to understand and monitor both the consequences of their regulation and the response to their decisions by those being regulated. The article demonstrates that the logarithmic version of Fisher's Ideal index offers a useful way of integrating changes in profit, productivity and prices into a single analysis. The usefulness of the framework is illustrated by applying it to a data set for Australian National.     

The behaviour of Hong Kong stock prices

The primary function of a stock market is to allocate resources to the most profitable investment opportunities. If stock prices provide accurate signals for resource allocation, firms are able to make correct production–investment decisions, and investors are able to choose the most suitable stocks for investment. These choices are only possible if the market is efficient, that is, if stock prices ‘fully reflect’ all available information.

Hong Kong is now an international financial centre. Although Hong Kong's stock market is ranked as one of the five largest in the world in terms of turnover, little research has been devoted to the behaviour of its stock prices. This is a study of the efficiency of Hong Kong's stock market. It is based upon two widely accepted statistical tests, namely, serial correlation analysis and runs tests. Data used cover the daily prices of 28 major Hong Kong stocks over a period of four years from 1977 to 1980. The evidence is mixed; it does not provide clear support for the efficient market hypothesis.     

An equilibrium analysis of information aggregation and fluctuations in markets with discrete decisions

This paper shows how the interaction between decentralized information gathering and discreteness of investment decisions at the individual level can generate random fluctuations in aggregate investment that involve occasionally large allocation errors. This interaction is illustrated in a model in which private information is costly to acquire and prices reveal information. The unique rational expectations equilibrium outcome of the model is shown to always be noisy and characterized by investment levels which may be high simply because uninformed investors are buying under the impression that the high price is a signal of good investment opportunities.     

Does locational marginal pricing impact generation investment location decisions? An analysis of Texas’s wholesale electricity market

Journal of Regulatory Economics - Using data from Texas’s wholesale electricity market, we investigate the relationship between nodal prices and investment location decisions of utility-scale...     

THE ACCOUNTING PRICES OF THE FACTORS OF PRODUCTION: AN ESTIMATION OF THEIR PARAMETERS IN THE CASE OF GREECE

It is widely acknowledged that when accounting prices are used instead of market prices in project analysis they provide more adequate indicators of the social acceptability of the alternative investment projects. The first objective of this paper is the formulation of the methodology required for the determination of the accounting prices of the factors of production capital and labour in the case of Greece. The second is the estimation of the parameters needed for their valuation and the third is the derivation, under certain assumptions, of the actual accounting prices of capital and labour and their comparison with market prices in the case of Greece.     

Australian Business Investment: A New Look at the Neoclassical Approach*

This paper attempts to reconcile neoclassical theory with Australian investment data. We argue that, by focusing almost exclusively on the demand for capital services, neoclassical investment theory neglects two related decisions: the decision to own the existing capital stock, and the decision to produce new capital goods. We propose a simple model of investment behaviour that integrates production decisions with portfolio decisions. Careful consideration is given to the determination of the price of capital, the rental price of capital, and the return on capital. The model is estimated by FIML, and a number of simulation results are reported.     

A real options reasoning approach to hybrid vehicle investments

Long term increases of petrol prices and the threat of a global climate change have created in the automotive industry a new competitive environment based on the development of more sustainable technologies. Using the real option reasoning lens we provide a theoretical framework to better account for the technological and market uncertainties and irreversibilities that impact the investment and innovation decisions of automotive firms supporting the development of more sustainable vehicle technologies. We investigate the case of hybrid vehicles in a transitional perspective by insisting on their potential to influence the dynamic shaping of investment decisions of firms in the car industry. We consider the hybridization strategy as intra-project and inter-project compound growth options to manage the flexibilities and irreversibilities of investment decisions during the transition process. We provide four different-sometimes conflicting-strategic rationales structuring the investment efforts of firms in hybrid vehicles and illustrate them with numerous examples from the automotive industry.     

什么粘住了中国企业自主创新能力提升的翅膀

中国企业的自主创新能力总体面临着"理论上重要但实践中滞后"的情形.本文指出企业是经济活动的真正主体,企业家是企业自主创新的最终推动者,企业家对企业自主创新的决策取决于对市场的判断和对生产要素价格的权衡.据此,中国的渐进式改革诱发了要素市场发育程度滞后于商品市场,结果土地、资本、劳动等要素价格存在不同程度的"低估"现象,这刺激了企业和企业家密集使用有形要素、而较少有动力和压力投资于自主创新,企业自主创新能力滞后是企业家在现有要素市场和价格下理性进行要素组合的结果.未来提升企业自主创新能力的要害是持续推进要素市场的发育和完善,通过"健全要素市场"和"矫正要素价格"来促进企业自主创新能力的持续提升.     

Platform competition and seller investment incentives

Many products and services are not sold on open platforms but on competing for-profit platforms, which charge buyers and sellers for access. What is the effect of for-profit intermediation on seller investment incentives? Since for-profit intermediaries reduce the available rents in the market, one might naively suspect that sellers have weaker investment incentives with competing for-profit platforms. However, we show that for-profit intermediation may lead to overinvestment when free access would lead to underinvestment because investment decisions affect the strength of indirect network effects and, thus, access prices. We characterize the effect of for-profit intermediation on investment incentives depending on the nature of the investment and on which side of the market singlehomes.     

An investment-function-based measure of capacity utilisation.: Potential output and utilised capacity in the Bank of Italy's quarterly model

Measures of potential output and the output gap are increasingly being developed and used to concisely quantify and monitor the risk of price accelerations stemming from rises in aggregate demand that are not met by a corresponding increase in supply. They often play a prominent role in the price determination mechanisms of macroeconometric models. In this paper we build a measure of potential private-sector value added for the Italian economy that is consistent with the capital accumulation process in the Banca d'Italia's Quarterly Model — and more generally with the rest of the supply-side block of that model. More specifically, we exploit the fact that the investment function can be thought of as a relationship transforming desired gross additions to capacity output into capital accumulation by means of a conversion factor (the optimal capital/output ratio). Thus, if one removes the component of investment decisions that stems from changes in the relative price of the production factors, (i.e. in the optimal capital/output ratio), then a measure of the desired gross addition to capacity may be constructed. The results draw a cyclical picture of the degree of capacity utilisation for the period 1970–1997 that is roughly in line with those produced by the Wharton and Hodrick–Prescott filter approaches, as well as with the pictures resulting from the ISAE, IMF, European Commission and OECD measures of the output gap. Our investment-function-based measure appears to be a promising indicator of the pressure exerted on prices by demand accelerations. Its empirical properties are, on the whole, acceptable and plausible.     

The roles of relative prices,interest rates,and bequests in the consumption function

This paper investigates the roles of relative prices, interest rates, inflation expectations and bequests in the determination of consumer expenditures for four goods in the U.S. The framework employed is a life-cycle extension of the Linear Expenditure System, in which relative prices, wealth, labor income, the nominal interest rate, and anticipated rates of inflation for each good are major arguments. The results provide strong empirical support for the expenditure system employed and suggest a significant role for relative prices and for the bequest motive in shaping saving decisions. We also find that expenditure decisions respond to both interest rates and anticipated inflation in a “Fisherian” fashion, but that the interest elasticity of saving is quite low and of uncertain sign. Our model also provides an estimate of the consumer's “horizon,” defined in the sense of Friedman.     

The Credibility of the PRC Commitment to a Market Economy in Hong Kong: Hypotheses and Evidence

How credible is China's commitment to a market economy in Hong Kong after 1997? Events signaling changes in commitment and the movement of time closer to 1997 should reduce the relative prices of immobile assets if commitment is not fully credible. Several factors may offset these effects: anticipatory adaption, growing dependence on China-related trade, and Chinese investment in Hong Kong. Analysis of data on incorporation and investment decisions, the relative sensitivity of the stock prices of firms with different asset mobility to political events, and the market for office space most strongly support hypotheses about credibility, adaption, and demand augmentation.     

投资者非理性假设下公司金融决策前沿理论评述

随着行为金融理论的逐步发展,市场错误定价的稳定存在已经得到越来越多学者的认可。本文对行为公司金融理论中投资者非理性范式下的前沿理论进行了综述,从投资和融资决策两个方面分析了面对错误时的外部市场定价行为,以及理性的财务决策者如何利用这种市场无效率来为长期股东获利,或迎合非理性投资者预期来实现自己的短期目标。     

The London Business School econometric model of the UK

This paper describes the London Business School econometric model — the first fully computerized model of the UK — which has been used for regular public forecasting since 1966. The model, estimated on quarterly data, is organized around the income expenditure accounts with a fully integrated flow of funds sector which ensures consistency between portfolio decisions and income, savings and investment decisions. Aggregate demand is built up from its individual components so that demand influences are important for the short- and medium-term behaviour of the model. But there are important supply-side effects which work through the real exchange rate and real wages. Monetary conditions have a powerfull effect on the model through the exchange rate, personal sector wealth and interest rates. Wages and employment are determined in a labour market in which employment decisions depend on the level of demand and real wages while real wages depend on the level of unemployment, real benefits and direct and indirect taxes as well as underlying trends in productivity. Asset prices move in any period to clear both the spot and the future market in assets so that current asset prices in the equity, gilt-edged and foreign exchange markets reflect all current information about the expected state of the economy. In contrast, goods prices adjust sluggishly. The combination of continuously clearing asset markets and sluggish wages and prices gives the model many of the theoretical characteristics associated with the open-economy models of Dornbusch and Buiter and Miller.     

Market Valuation and the q Theory of Investment

This study re-evaluates the role of the stock market in Japanese corporate investment decisions based on time-series data. Employing the time-series technique, we examine why the performance of Tobin's average q -type investment function is poor. We construct a series of average q and another of marginal q (a more fundamental profitability measure of investment) and investigate the relationship between the two. A cointegrating relationship is not detected between the two measures, both of which have a unit root. The divergence of average q from marginal q is not narrowed even if the imperfect competition of the output market is taken into consideration. We also examine which q measure is more relevant to Japanese corporate investment decisions by estimating separately the investment function with two measures of q as an explanatory variable. The estimation results show that entrepreneurs place more emphasis on marginal q than on average q in investment decisions.
JEL Classification Number: E22.     

Tax incentives and foreign direct investment in China

The preferential tax policies for foreign direct investment (FDI) in China were terminated by a tax reform in 2008. This article uses the provincial-level panel data for 1998?2008 before the reform in order to study whether the tax incentive had been a significant determinant of foreign investment decisions. We find that market size and geographic location had significant impacts on the FDI inflow into China but the tax incentive policies were not a sufficient determinant of FDI inflow into China over the periods studied, which provides a rationale for the termination of the tax incentives in FDI at 2008 reform in China.     

中国投融资体制改革的回顾与前瞻

文章认为中国的投融资改革严重滞后，其原因不仅因为受到国资国企延误改革的拖累。而且还因为它既秉承了传统计划经济最核心的内容(即政府配置资源)，又在渐进改革过程中衍生出了许多与市场经济不相容的“特色”。投融资体制改革迫在眉睫。其根本措施是完善出资人制度，将投融资管理的重点从项目管理转向资本市场管理，从“投”转向“融”。文章指出，中国投融资改革的总体目标应该是：建立起针对出资人的资信评价体系，以资信等级为依据，实施对出贵人融资能力的宏观调控。放弃项目的行政审批，形成投资决策、资本决策、信贷决策三权鼎立，相互制约各负其责的投融资格局。严格金融监管、放松金融准入，严格市场清除、放松资本管制，培育财务投资者与战略投资者之间良性互动的资金供求机制。厘清企业制度，改善中小企业融资环境。     

Investment dynamics in electricity markets

We investigate the incentives for investments in capacity in a simple strategic dynamic model with random demand growth. We construct non-collusive Markovian equilibria where the firms?? decisions depend on the current capacity stock only. The firms maintain small reserve margins and high market prices, and extract large rents. In some equilibria, rationing occurs with positive probability, so the market mechanism does not ensure ??security of supply??. Usually, the price cap reflects the value of lost energy or lost load (VOLL) that consumers place on severely reducing consumption on short notice. Our analysis identifies a minimum price cap, unrelated to the VOLL, that allows the firms to recoup their investment and production costs in equilibrium. However, raising the price cap above this minimum increases market prices and reduces consumer surplus, without affecting the level of investment.