Price clustering on the limit-order book: Evidence from the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong

We examine the clustering pattern in trade and quote prices on the electronic limit order book of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK). Earlier research into clustering focuses on transaction prices only. We study clustering on quote prices over a maximum of five queues on the limit order book. We observe an abnormally high frequency of even and integer prices in trade and quote prices for all tick size groups on the SEHK. The deeper quotes display stronger clustering than the best quotes, indicating that the farther away the quotes are from the best queue, the less information they carry. Our analysis further reveals that an extremely fine tick size itself works as a binding constraint to hinder the price resolution process. We also find that short sale prohibition imposed on the majority of stocks listed on the SEHK causes a significant bias in clustering towards the ask side of the limit order book. This implies that a short sale prohibition impairs efficient price discovery in the market.     

国内外酒店销售模式的差异分析及对策

酒店销售模式是酒店销售哲学的外在反映,国内酒店的销售太多地依赖于销售人员个人的销售能力,这和国外销售工作依靠完整的销售系统差别巨大,本文分析了这不同的销售模式并提出策略性建议,对于指导国内酒店的销售工作具有现实的意义。     

Coping with sales call anxiety: The role of sale perseverance and task concentration strategies

The authors study how salespeople cope with social anxiety during customer contacts and find that two tactics, sale perseverance and task concentration, ultimately reduce dysfunctional protective actions. Both coping tactics, however, are differentially moderated by strength of felt physiological sensations and strength of negative expectations and thoughts. Salespeople experiencing anxiety cognitions should distract themselves by concentrating on their task to free up their thinking in relation to the task at hand. Engaging in behaviors to modify the situation by persevering on the sale, on the other hand, occupies action space and should be the coping strategy of choice for those salespeople confronting physiological sensations in relation to felt anxiety. Hypotheses are tested on a sample of 171 salespersons. Frank Belschak (f.d.belschak@uva.nl) is an assistant professor of marketing and organizational behavior in the Business School at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He received his PhD from the University of Cologne in Germany. His current research interests include personal selling, emotions, and emotion regulation in organizations and across cultures. Willem Verbeke (verbeke@few.eur.nl) is a chaired professor of sales and account management at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He received his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. His area of research interests includes personal selling, sales management, emotions and emotion regulation, and knowledge management. Richard P. Bagozzi (bagozzi@umich.edu) is a professor of marketing in the Ross School of Business and a professor of social and administrative sciences in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Michigan. He received his PhD from Northwestern University. He conducts research on human emotions, the theory of action, goal setting and goal striving, and structural equation methods.     

Value and liquidity under changing market conditions

Papers studying the liquidity of a market tend to focus on decisions involving the trade-off between the selling price and the time-till-sale for a given set of market conditions. This paper characterizes market conditions using a price-probability locus; a change in market conditions is some combination of changes in the level and/or slope of this locus. I show how the effect of either type of change on price and on the probability-of-sale can be decomposed into those commonly associated with an increase in the value and those which involve a substitution between price and probability. Two adding-up conditions restrict the set of possible predictions. Though the discussion focusses on real estate market, where scarcity is rationed by a mechanism which combines search and bargaining, the same ideas apply to markets with other types of selling mechanisms.     

Short Sale Constraints and Dispersion of Opinion: Evidence from the Indian Equity Market

Short sale constraints can inflate market prices, as bearish investors cannot act on their market views. The paper uses data from the Indian equity market to test whether opinion dispersion leads to higher overpricing when short sales are prohibited. The Indian equity market provides a natural testing environment, as short sales were banned between 2001 and 2008. The empirical results offer supportive evidence of the relation between opinion dispersion and overpricing in a market with short sale constraints.     

基于农产品“最后一公里”流通模式的思考

为加快农产品流通、减少流通环节,降低农产品终端零售价格,解决"卖难买贵"的难题,最近各地推出了"平价商店"和"平价市场"两种新的农产品流通模式。在客观分析"平价商店"对抑制农产品价格效果的基础上,指出其存在的不足,并提出建立公益性农产品直销"零收费平价市场"流通模式的设想以及配套措施的建议。     

煤炭行业的发展及其润滑油市场的开发

通过对国内煤炭行业基本状况、未来发展趋势和润滑油脂应用现状的分析,就如何运用现代营销手段与服务方式来开发维护煤炭行业这一巨大润滑油市场进行了讨论,认为润滑油行业应帮助煤炭行业建立完善的润滑管理体系,并与煤炭行业强技术领域合作,共同开发新产品及推进用油国产化。下游产品开发是煤炭行业今后重要的利润增长点,近期发展迅速,润滑油行业应密切关注其相关产业链设备的引进情况,及时提供所需润滑油品。     

Initial coin offerings (ICOs) to finance new ventures

In an initial coin offering (ICO), new ventures raise capital by selling tokens to a crowd of investors. Often, this token is a cryptocurrency, a digital medium of value exchange based on the distributed ledger technology. Both the number of ICOs and the amount of capital raised have exploded since 2017. Despite attracting significant attention from ventures, investors, and policy makers, little is known about the dynamics of ICOs. This initial study therefore assesses the determinants of the amount raised in 423 ICOs. Drawing on signaling theory, the study explores the role of signaling ventures' technological capabilities in ICOs. The results show that technical white papers and high-quality source codes increase the amount raised, while patents are not associated with increased amounts of funding. Exploring further determinants of the amount raised, the results indicate that some of the underlying mechanisms in ICOs resemble those found in prior research into entrepreneurial finance, while others are unique to the ICO context. The study's implications are multifold and discussed in detail. Importantly, the results enable investors to more accurately understand crucial determinants of the amount raised (e.g., technical white papers, source code quality, token supply, Ethereum-standard). This reduces the considerable uncertainty that investors face when investing in ICOs and enables more informed decision-making.     

Stabilizing the market with short sale constraint? New evidence from price jump activities

We re-examine the impact of short-sale constraints (SSC) on market stabilization via realized jump activities during 2002–2009 to circumvent the reverse causality in identifying the policy effects of SSC. We observed that the abnormal downturns under tighter short sale constraints are significantly larger whereas there is no difference for abnormal upturns. Our empirical results survive across a sequence of robustness examinations controlled for market illiquidity. The findings do not support the claims by regulators that restraining short-sales can stabilize prices; instead, SSC has led to a less efficient market with stronger extreme downward returns.     

Advance selling of new products to strategic consumers on flash sale platforms*

Flash sale (FS) is a new business model that offers discounted products in limited numbers over a short period. In this paper we discuss the impact of strategic consumers on advance selling (AS) of new products on FS platforms. We first study the impact of strategic consumers on competing retailers adopting AS to sell a homogeneous new product. And find that the retailers’ AS profits and inventory quantities decrease with the strategic customers’ valuation and valuation decreasing rate. Then we analyse whether FS can mitigate the impact of strategic customers on retailers adopting AS for new products. We consider a newsvendor model involving only one retailer adopting AS to sell a new product. We derive the results by comparing this model with two counterpart models, namely the classical newsvendor model with no strategic customers and a newsvendor model with strategic customers where the retailer does not use FS under AS.