中国经济之强劲增长：对东亚的寓意

中国的崛起对东亚经济产生了深刻影响。不仅中国在东北亚的近邻通过贸易和投资从中国的开放政策中获益，而且那些曾经与中国争夺国外直接投资（FDI）和出口市场的东盟国家也开始从中国的经济增长中得到好处。中国作为世界经济增长的发动机之一已经对其东亚邻国产生了积极影响。通过“东盟＋3”方案，特别是始于2002年的“中国-东盟”自由贸易协定，中国为东亚地区经济一体化提供了新的动力，从而为东亚经济增长发挥着日益重要的地缘政治和地缘经济作用。     

EXPLOITING AN ADVANTAGE--DECLINING AN ADVANTAGE

Within the context of the study, a firm is said to have an advantageover another if it obtains more customers given they both chargethe same price. Further, consumer switching costs imply thelarger the difference in the prices charged by the two firmsthe greater the proportion of consumers who switch from thehigher-priced firm to the lower-priced one. The Nash equilibriumto the price-posting game is characterized The firm with theadvantage charges a higher price Finally, it is shown that ifone firm can freely choose to have an advantage, it will rejectit. This follows as the greater the advantage, the smaller theequilibrium profits to both firms.     

Household Finance

The study of household finance is challenging because household behavior is difficult to measure, and households face constraints not captured by textbook models. Evidence on participation, diversification, and mortgage refinancing suggests that many households invest effectively, but a minority make significant mistakes. This minority appears to be poorer and less well educated than the majority of more successful investors. There is some evidence that households understand their own limitations and avoid financial strategies for which they feel unqualified. Some financial products involve a cross‐subsidy from naive to sophisticated households, and this can inhibit welfare‐improving financial innovation.     

An Experimental Study of Bond Market Pricing

An important feature of bond markets is the relationship between the initial public offering (IPO) price and the probability that the issuer defaults. On the one hand, the default probability affects the IPO price; on the other hand, the IPO price affects the default probability. It is a priori unclear whether agents can competitively price such assets. Our paper is the first to explore this question. To do so, we use laboratory experiments. We develop two flexible bond market models that are easily implemented in the laboratory. We find that subjects learn to price the bonds well after only a few repetitions.     

When Does Information Asymmetry Affect the Cost of Capital?

This paper examines when information asymmetry among investors affects the cost of capital in excess of standard risk factors. When equity markets are perfectly competitive, information asymmetry has no separate effect on the cost of capital. When markets are imperfect, information asymmetry can have a separate effect on firms’ cost of capital. Consistent with our prediction, we find that information asymmetry has a positive relation with firms’ cost of capital in excess of standard risk factors when markets are imperfect and no relation when markets approximate perfect competition. Overall, our results show that the degree of market competition is an important conditioning variable to consider when examining the relation between information asymmetry and cost of capital.     

Presidential Address: Discount Rates

Discount‐rate variation is the central organizing question of current asset‐pricing research. I survey facts, theories, and applications. Previously, we thought returns were unpredictable, with variation in price‐dividend ratios due to variation in expected cashflows. Now it seems all price‐dividend variation corresponds to discount‐rate variation. We also thought that the cross‐section of expected returns came from the CAPM. Now we have a zoo of new factors. I categorize discount‐rate theories based on central ingredients and data sources. Incorporating discount‐rate variation affects finance applications, including portfolio theory, accounting, cost of capital, capital structure, compensation, and macroeconomics.     

EXTREME VALUE AT RISK: A SCENARIO FOR RISK MANAGEMENT

This paper uses the generalised extreme value (GEV) distribution to model the extreme losses that are likely to occur during market crashes, in the case of an investor who has long positions in stocks and currencies. The null hypothesis – which tests for normality of asset returns – is rejected due to asymmetry of these returns. We assume that the asymmetric behaviour and volatility of the returns are captured by the shape and scale parameters, respectively, of a GEV distribution. The data set includes stock indices for the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and South Africa, and the South African rand exchange rates against the US dollar observed from 3 January 2005 to 30 December 2009. In addition, we divide this sample period into two periods: the pre‐crisis period, from 3 January 2005 to 31 December 2007 and the crisis period, from 1 January 2008 to 30 December 2009. We compared the estimates of value at risk (VaR) using an extreme value theory (EVT) model, with the estimates derived from the traditional variance–covariance method and found that during the crisis the 99% extreme VaR estimates are more reliable as they lie within the Basel II green zone. These results suggest that, at higher quintiles, the VaR estimates based on EVT are reliable and more accurate than estimates from the traditional method.     

Investor behaviour in a nascent capital market: Scottish bank shareholders in the nineteenth century

This article uses the records of nineteenth‐century Scottish banks in an attempt to understand investor behaviour in the early British capital market. It presents four main findings, some of which do not conform to the basic assumptions of standard asset pricing theories. First, in an era when efficient portfolio diversification was not possible, the intrinsic risk of an equity security was an important input into investor decision‐making. Second, our evidence suggests that businesspeople initially regarded bank stock as a consumption good, as being a stockholder gave them privileged access to bank finance. When bank lending practices changed in the middle of the century, this access‐to‐credit advantage associated with owning bank stock largely disappeared. Third, investors typically exhibited a bias towards banks that conducted business in the areas where they resided. Fourth, a sizeable proportion of investors were stockholders in more than one bank.     

Substitutes for legal protection: corporate governance and dividends in Victorian Britain1

Companies in Victorian Britain operated in a laissez‐faire legal environment from the perspective of outside investors, implying that such investors were not protected by the legal system. This article seeks to identify the alternative mechanisms that outside shareholders used to protect themselves by examining the dividend policy and governance of over 800 publicly traded companies at the beginning of the 1880s. We assess the importance of these mechanisms by estimating their impact on Tobin's Q. Our evidence suggests that dividends and well‐structured and incentivized boards of directors may have played a role in protecting the interests of outside investors.