Private information in currency markets

Using daily abnormal currency returns for the universe of countries with flexible exchange rates, we show local currency depreciations ahead of unscheduled, public sovereign debt downgrade announcements. Consistent with the private information hypothesis, the effect is stronger in lower institutional quality countries and holds after we control for concurrent public information and for publicly available rumors about the forthcoming downgrades. Our results persist when abnormal currency returns are adjusted for global carry and dollar risk factors, world equity and bond returns, as well as local stock market returns. Finally, the currency depreciations are permanent, providing evidence for a link between fundamentals and currency markets.     

Bargaining externalities in a privatization programme

In privatization programmes, the state commonly keeps a minority ownership stake in firms. We provide an explanation based on the externality that privatization of one firm has on the profitability of others. If this externality is negative, as with oligopolistic firms, the government can gain a strategic advantage in bargaining over the sale of one firm if it keeps an ownership share in another. We consider both the simultaneous and the sequential sale of firms. The results apply to the period in which privatization takes place, and are consistent with the delayed sale of minority ownership often observed in practice.     

Defining Ownership: An empirical assessment of the ownership measures

Ownership is considered to be one of the crucial governance mechanisms; however, there have been no systematic attempts at validating the construct and measures used to operationalize ownership. We review the current understanding of ownership and the measures used by each perspective, namely blockholder/dispersed shareholder perspective, owner identity perspective, and aggregated ownership perspective. We thereafter critique each of these perspectives, offer hypotheses regarding their validity, and empirically assess each ownership measure vis‐à‐vis firm performance outcomes. We utilize a sample of 3,990 US firms to test our hypotheses and find no consistent results for the blockholder measure, or for the owner identity measure. However, the aggregated ownership measure consistently accounts for significant increases in explanation of variance in firm performance. Copyright © 2018 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The China model view is factually false

ABSTRACT

Using a cross-regional analysis of China, this article shows that the China model view is factually false and the universal model view is factually true. It is the marketization and development of non-state sectors, rather than the strong power of government and the state sector, that have driven the Chinese economy to grow fast and to be increasingly innovative. If China wants to sustain its economic performance, it must stay on the way to continuing marketization. Otherwise, China will fall into stagnation.     

资源依赖、制度安排与区域创新能力 —基于空间杜宾模型

区域创新能力提升是我国加快建设创新型国家、实现高质量发展的现实需求。 本文通过构建涵盖资源依赖、制度安排与区域创新能力的理论模型分析其内在关系并提出假 说，运用2000-2016年全国30个省（区、市）的面板数据与空间杜宾模型，检验三者之间的影 响及空间溢出效应。研究结果表明：（1）资源依赖程度越高，越不利于本地区创新能力提升；（2）有效率的制度安排对区域创新能力有正向促进作用；（3）从空间溢出效应来看，本地区 资源依赖程度越高，越抑制周边地区区域创新能力提升，有效的制度安排能助推周边地区创新能力提高。     

Foreign Ownership and Firm Innovation: Evidence from Korea

ABSTRACT

This study examines whether foreign equity investment promotes domestic firms’ innovation activities. Using panel data on the Korean firms during the 1999–2013 period, we find that foreign ownership has a positive effect on firms’ innovation activities. Furthermore, we also show that, as compared to non-chaebol firms, chaebol firms’ innovation activity becomes much greater with the increase of foreign ownership. Finally, we investigate industry-level spillover effects of innovation. Specifically, we find that foreign ownership promotes innovation activities via forward linkage, the effect of which is also more pronounced in chaebol firms.     

News sentiment,credit spreads,and information asymmetry

This paper examines how the sentiment of firm-specific news affects CDS spreads conditional on the degree of information asymmetry. Using a large set of news releases, we document a strong negative relationship between the sentiment of firm-specific news and CDS spreads. More importantly, consistent with the role of public news in reducing information asymmetry, we find evidence that the relation between news sentiment and CDS spreads is stronger for firms with higher information asymmetry. Furthermore, the relation is stronger for news with negative sentiment and during the 2008 financial crisis. Our results are robust to alternative sentiment measures.     

Bank ownership type and temporal evolution of long‐term bank funding in the period 2005–2017

This study uses a large panel dataset of Western European banks to examine the determinants of bank funding stability. Banks are divided into three categories by bank ownership type; the ownership types in this study are commercial banks, cooperative banks and savings banks. Three sources of stable bank funding are investigated: customer deposits, equity, and long‐term liabilities. Furthermore, the sum of these funding components is used as a proxy variable for a bank's total available stable funding (ASF). A special focus is on the temporal evolution of these funding types. The regression results show that commercial banks’ funding became much more stable in the period 2005–2017. However, that funding remains, on average, less stable than does cooperative and savings banks’ funding. In addition, funding stability has remained at the pre‐crisis level in cooperative and savings banks, despite a steep dip in cooperative banks’ ASF during the sovereign debt crisis. Furthermore, banks substantially decreased financing from long‐term liabilities after the financial crisis, replacing it with customer deposits and equity.     

S&P 500 Affiliation and Stock Price Informativeness

Abstract

When firms are added to a stock index, more information should be discovered, traded on, and incorporated into their stock prices, making them more informative. We test this hypothesis using a large sample of additions to the S&P 500 index. Using two alternative statistical tests, we find that the stocks added experience more random, less predictable return and, thus, appear to be priced more efficiently information-wise. We further find concurrent increases in institutional ownership and investor awareness, which tend to contribute to the higher pricing efficiency, adding to the literature. These findings should be of interest to academics and practitioners.     

中国的所有制结构与区域劳动生产率收敛

基于2001~2017年中国工业分企业所有制-分地区-分行业的面板数据，利用相对劳动生产率和变异系数指标对全国和分区域的国有企业、私营企业、外商和港澳台企业的劳动生产率增长和收敛性进行描述性分析，并运用双向固定效应模型对其进行计量检验。结果显示：从全国范围来看，三类所有制结构的劳动生产率均呈现显著的绝对收敛和条件收敛，但是收敛速度呈现差异。其中，私营企业收敛速度最快，外商和港澳台企业次之，国有企业收敛速度最慢。分区域来看，东北和西部收敛速度相对较快，中部次之，而沿海三类所有制结构的劳动生产率收敛速度均较慢。因此，政府应进一步从深化国有企业改革、鼓励非公有制经济发展和完善市场竞争等方面努力，有助于缩小区域发展差距和促进所有制结构的收敛，从而带动整体经济的收敛。