Hong Kong housing markets: Overview,tenure choice,and housing demand

This paper presents an overview of housing markets and a cross-sectional analysis of housing demand in Hong Kong. Disturbances from political events have produced price upheavals in property prices; long-term inflation and low interest rates provide a strong stimulus for a sustained price surge in the housing market. Household income seems to have relatively little bearing on recent development in the market, especially when demand for housing has become more investment-oriented.With the data from the 1991 Population Census of Hong Kong, we find in the cross-section study that permanent and transitory incomes, rather than current income, provide better estimates in the tenure choice equation. The results also indicate that family size and the number of elderly persons affects ownership. Renter expenditure and tenure choice decisions are linked by using the two-stage estimation procedure of Lee and Trost (1978). No correlation was found between renter expenditure and tenure choice. Further, the two-stage approach does not seem to be superior to the OLS approach in the estimation of the rental expenditure equations.     

The impact of the Japanese market on the intraday Hong Kong stock returns

This paper examines the impact of the price movement of the Japanese market on the Hong Kong market. We find that the Hong Kong stock prices react rapidly to the return information of the Japanese market. The evidence also indicates that the large price movement of the Japanese market can be used as an indicator for the Hong Kong market. The price reaction of the Hong Kong market is instantaneous and takes place in the opening minutes of the afternoon session. However, there is no excess profits when the transactions costs are included. Finally, the Hong Kong market has a significantly higher turnover when the Japanese market is open.     

Causality and cointegration of stock markets among the United States,Japan and the South China Growth Triangle

This paper explores the causality and cointegration relationships among the stock markets of the United States, Japan and the South China Growth Triangle (SCGT) region. Applying the recently advanced unit root and cointegration techniques that allow for structural breaks over the sample period (October 2, 1992 to June 30, 1997), we find that there exists no cointegration among these markets except for that between Shanghai and Shenzhen. By invoking the Granger causality test and considering the non-synchronous trading problem, we will show that stock price changes in the US have more impact on SCGT markets than do those of Japan. More specifically, price changes in the US can be used to predict those of the Hong Kong and Taiwan markets on next day. Similarly, price changes on the Hong Kong stock market lead the Taiwan market by 1 day. Furthermore, the stock returns of the US and Hong Kong markets are found to be contemporaneous. Finally, there is a significant feedback relationship between the Shanghai and the Shenzhen Stock Exchanges.     

Housing Quality in the Forward Contracts Market

Developers often conduct forward sales (or presales) before building completion to relieve financial risk and burden. However, there are worries that housing units sold in this way will turn out to be substandard because developers, who have been paid for the unfinished units, may have incentives to cut costs by lowering the quality. This is a typical moral hazard problem. Nonetheless, forward sales have been very popular in some Asian cities such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. A plausible explanation is that the market has efficiently adjusted the forward price for this potential quality problem according to developers’ reputations. This paper aims to theoretically explain and empirically test (1) whether reputation is reflected in forward prices and (2) whether the expected quality level matches with the actual quality level. Using the forward and spot sales data of the Hong Kong real estate market, we found that even though housing quality was not observable during presales, the market was able to capitalize developers’ reputations into forward prices accurately. This suggests that the optimal strategy for developers is to stick to the quality level implied by their reputations. A paper submitted to Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. A Special Issue for the 2005 NUS-HKU Symposium on Real Estate Research.     

上海和香港两地股市联动性研究--基于GARCH模型的分析

本文基于经济基础假说和市场传染假说两大基础理论,将股票收益率分解为开盘收益率和收盘收益率,运用GARCH．M模型研究了上海股市和香港股市之间的联动关系。结果显示,两大股市存在相互影响的联动关系,但是上海对香港股市的影响要强于香港对上海股市的影响,反映出两地之间的紧密经济关系及大陆对香港地区经济影响日益增强的现实。     

中国房地产市场价格泡沫与空间传染效应

本文使用对数周期性幂律(Log Period Power Law, LPPL)模型对房地产市场价格泡沫进行测度,运用空间计量模型对我国房地产市场价格泡沫和空间传染效应进行研究。LPPL模型认为由价格泡沫产生并最终破裂的金融市场与地震系统具有很多相似之处,即金融资产的价格呈周期性变化规律,价格持续上涨到临界状态直至反转。本文采用2010年6月至2017年11月间我国100个城市的房地产市场数据对各城市房地产价格泡沫进行测度和物理/经济空间传染效应研究。研究发现,LPPL模型能够对我国100个城市房地产价格泡沫进行甄别且主要存在两种泡沫状态:正向泡沫(房价持续上升)和反转泡沫(房价整体下降却存在反转点)。各个城市(地区)房地产价格具有较强的空间传染性;存在正向泡沫区域的空间传染性相较反转泡沫区域更为明显,在考虑经济空间测度而不是物理空间测度的情况下,各城市间的空间传染性更强。与现有文献不同,我们发现反转泡沫区域的新房价格指数特别是二手房价格指数的上升对周边城市的房地产价格指数存在强烈的正向推高影响。最后,本文发现城市的房地产调控政策在一定程度上抑制了房价传统影响(比如信贷、新房、二手房价等)因素的推高影响,但各城市房地产价格之间的联动变化特征应该引起监管部门的注意。     

Pricing mortgage insurance contracts under housing price cycles with jump risk: evidence from the U.K. housing market

Previous studies have investigated the determinants of housing price cycles in the housing market; however, we observed the phenomenon of housing price jumps in the 2007 subprime crisis. This paper presents a discussion on the housing price cycle and abnormal price jumps to describe the behavior of housing prices in the United Kingdom. The empirical results show that the impact factors of housing cycles are market risk and the switching factor. Furthermore, the impact factors of jump risks include the bursting of the housing bubble and financial crises. Therefore, in this paper, we employ the Markov switching model with jump risks to value the MI contracts and analyze the influences of housing price cycles, jump risks, risks of market interest rate, and the prepayment risks on MI premiums. The results of sensitivity analysis show that more volatile housing price index returns, as well as longer periods of higher volatility in housing prices, raise MI premiums. Moreover, the MI premium is positively related to the absolute value of the average jump amplitude and the shock frequency of abnormal events. There is the tradeoff between the market interest rate and the prepayment risk. The influences of market interest rate are different on MI premium with/without prepayment risks.     

Bank lending and property prices in Hong Kong

This paper studies the relationship between residential property prices and bank lending in Hong Kong. This is an interesting topic for three reasons. First, swings in property prices have been extremely large and frequent in Hong Kong. Second, under the currency board regime, monetary policy cannot be used to guard against asset price swings. Third, despite the collapse in property prices since 1998, the banking sector remains sound. While the contemporaneous correlation between lending and property prices is large, our results suggest that the direction of influence goes from property prices to bank credit rather than conversely.     

银行业市净率问题研究——兼论国有商业银行股权转让价格问题

近一个时期,中国银行业改革出现重大突破,以交通银行和建设银行为代表的中国银行业掀起了一轮引进战略投资者和境外上市的高潮。本文以市净率这一价格指标为切入点,对境外银行业股权转让价格的一般规律进行了研究,并在此基础上对交通银行和建设银行引进战略投资者和上市的价格进行分析。     

Lost in translation: Delayed ex-dividend price adjustments of Hong Kong ADRs

Previous research documents that Hong Kong stocks have a full ex-dividend price adjustment consistent with dividends and capital gains being tax free. We examine ex-dividend price behavior of Hong Kong ADRs to assess the impact of differing tax environments in US and Hong Kong. These ADRs typically go ex-dividend before their underlying stock. They experience significant abnormal returns of 1.16% on their ex-day; the average ex-day price drop is only 30% of the dividend. However, ADR prices drop when the underlying stock goes ex-dividend subsequently. The cumulative ADR price drop is equal to the dividend. Thus, the ADR ex-dividend adjustment resembles that of the underlying stock, consistent with home country tax laws governing ADR price behavior. Neither liquidity nor transaction costs can explain the anomalous delayed ex-dividend adjustment of ADRs.     

A Cross-Section Analysis of the Income Elasticity of Housing Demand in Spain: Is There a Real Estate Bubble?

Much attention has been given to claims that real estate prices in Spain are overvalued in relation to income and how plummeting house prices can jeopardize the economy (The Economist, 2003 and IMF, 2004). The measure of income elasticity on housing expenditure is often of considerable interest to applied researchers and policy makers in real estate economics, but the problem of omitted variables in some estimation techniques can lead to severe biases. In this paper we estimate the income elasticity of the demand for housing in Spain based on the cross-section of prices and income in fifty Spanish provinces from 1996 to 2002. In comparison to long-run equilibrium models fitted with time-series data, our results show a much weaker role of income growth as a vehicle for house price increases in the long run. According to our estimates, the rate of growth of house prices in Spain between 1998 and 2003 points to a real estate bubble with prices above the long-term equilibrium level.     

Modelling long run comovements in equity markets: A flexible approach

International equity markets linkages are characterized by nonlinear dependence and asymmetries. We investigate shifts in long run comovements in stock markets by means of an ‘interrupted’ Markov switching cointegration specification. This flexible approach allow us to study to what extent documented changes in global integration are permanent, or whether market linkages are subject to changes. Using an illustrative sample from 1980 to 2012 for USA, UK and Hong Kong stock price indices, we find evidence of interrupted cointegration across these markets between May 1997 and April 2002, which is consistent with the decoupling of stock prices from fundamentals during the dot-com bubble.     

Do the Forward Sales of Real Estate Stabilize Spot Prices?

We examine the effect of forward sale (pre-sale) activities on the volatility of spot prices in the real estate market. The abundance of pre-sales data and major changes in regulatory control on the pre-sale market during the 90's in Hong Kong allow us to undertake empirical tests using Hong Kong's real estate data. Our results show that the volatility of spot prices increased significantly after forward sales were severely dampened by regulatory control measures introduced in 1994, but decreased again when the measures were partly relaxed in 1998. The results contribute to the long lasting debate on whether the introduction of a futures market reduces the volatility of spot prices. Previous studies were mainly conducted in markets with low transaction costs, notably financial markets. By utilizing the unique regulatory changes in the pre-sale market of Hong Kong, we are able to conduct an experiment on the conditional volatility of spot prices in a high information-cost environment, thereby shedding light on the important role of forward housing contracts in providing price expectation information for spot trading.     

Office Property Returns in Shanghai,Guangzhou, and Shenzhen

Commercial property development in China has been a growth industry in recent years. This article examines the returns on office property in the three major cities of Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen in the period 1991 to 1997. Analyses based on the Security Market Line (SML) show that property investments in the office sector in Shanghai and Guangzhou have excess returns and that Shanghai office property tends to dominate the optimal portfolios due to its superior risk-adjusted returns. While equal returns in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen cannot be rejected, the Shanghai office property is subject to the least systematic risk, compared with all other cities. Hong Kong office property is included only in the less risky optimal portfolios. In addition, our results indicate that there is little correlation between the office property returns in Hong Kong and the office property in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Guangzhou and Shenzhen office markets, which are geographically relatively close to Hong Kong, tend to be more volatile than the Shanghai office market. However, owing to Shenzhens proximity to Hong Kong, there is significant correlation between the returns of the office property in Shenzhen and the office property in Hong Kong.     

A股、H股新股初始收益率比较研究

本文借鉴IPO已有的研究成果，分别对上海A股、香港H股的新股初始收益率进行了实证研究，探讨了企业选择A股或H股发行上市所导致的两个市场的不同反应及其真正动因。实证结果表明，上海A股市场较香港H股市场具有更高的新股初始收益率，但呈逐年递减趋势；A股市场的新股初始收益率与中签率、发行价、上市首日开盘价、上市首日换手率显著相关，而H股市场的新股初始收益率则与净利润增长率、香港恒生指数显著相关。     

基于均衡分析的我国房地产泡沫度分析

基于均衡分析得到一个检测房地产价格合理性的理论参照,通过将计算出的房地产泡沫度在时间上做纵向对比以及在不同地区间做横向对比,考察现阶段我国房地产泡沫的严重程度。结果表明,现阶段我国大陆总体上的房地产泡沫度与房地产过热阶段的1993年相差不大,与楼市高峰时的香港有不小的差距;我国内地省市的房地产泡沫度一般较低,部分沿海地区接近或超过了楼市高峰时的香港。     

首日涨停板制度与IPO解禁效应——基于投机泡沫视角的分析

本文以2006—2016年上市的1397家公司为研究样本,实证检验了首日涨停板制度对新股解禁效应的影响。结果发现:首日涨停板制度实施期间发行的新股,解禁时有显著更差的市场表现,[-30,30]窗口期间的超额回报低至-8.43%,同时有更小的异常交易量和异常波动率;新股上市时股价高估程度越大、投资者情绪越高,首日涨停板制度对解禁效应的影响越强。上述结果支持了Hong et al.(2006)提出的“解禁与资产泡沫破灭”的理论,即首日涨停板制度导致新股发行后投机泡沫累积,投机泡沫破灭导致解禁时更大幅度的股价下跌。本文的研究结论补充了首日涨停板制度后果的文献,并对防范金融风险和完善新股市场化改革具有一定的政策参考价值。     

Short-sale constraints and stock price informativeness

Morck, Yeung, and Yu (2000), in their pioneering study of international differences in stock price synchronicity, emphasize the effect of market development on investors' ability to incorporate firm-specific information into prices. We use a unique institutional feature in the Hong Kong market to investigate one of the important tools investors use to do this and hence reduce stock price synchronicity: short selling. Examining the cross-sectional and time-series variation in short-sale constraints in the Hong Kong market, we find that after the removal of short-sale constraints, stock prices become more informative and move less in tandem with the market.     

Speculation and price bubbles in the Korean and Japanese real estate markets

This article investigates the possibility of speculation having caused the prices of land and housing to deviate from their given long-run equilibrium levels in Korea and Japan. We modeled speculation by incorporating the expected future price into the demand equation. The existence of growing rational bubbles was tested on Korean and Japanese data using the standard econometric technique for estimating linear rational expectations models. Our analysis of the Korean annual data suggests that a growing rationale bubble existed during the 1974–1989 period, nominal or real. Estimation results of the same model using Japanese annual data also confirmed the existence of a bubble in land price. Contrary to our analysis of land price data, the evidence of the bubble was much less obvious in Korean annual housing price data. We therefore estimated the model using quarterly data and found that the existence of a bubble could not be established in housing prices. This finding was also consistent with the trend of the rent-to-value ratio series in apartment units. Our results need to be taken with caution because our approach suffers from the common econometric problem of possible mis-specification of the model and because of the small size of the sample.     

US ADR and Hong Kong H-share discounts of Shanghai-listed firms

This paper examines the differential between the share prices of Chinese securities traded on their home market of Shanghai versus prices observed offshore in New York and Hong Kong. The discounts attached to Chinese securities, whether trading as ADRs on the NYSE or as H-shares on the Hong Kong market, appear to have been significantly influenced by changes in both exchange rate expectations and investor sentiment during 1998–2006. Expected exchange rate changes alone account for approximately 40% of the total variation in each case. This is combined with large cross-sectional variation, however, reflecting additional significant market-wide and company-specific sentiment effects.