When Do Qualitative Risk Disclosures Backfire? The Effects of a Mismatch in Hedge Disclosure Formats on Investors' Judgments

Disclosure standards mandate the quantitative disclosure of hedging‐instrument‐related risks but not the disclosure of hedged‐item‐related risks. We examine how a match (mismatch) in formats, caused by making quantitative (qualitative) hedged item disclosures alongside quantitative hedging instrument disclosures, affects investors' integration of information from these two related disclosures. Our first experiment varies the hedged item disclosure format (quantitative or qualitative) and the portion of risk hedged (small or large). We find that when disclosure formats are mismatched, the less comparable nature of the two disclosures caused investors to neglect the offsetting relationship when assessing net risks. As a result, risk and investment judgments were influenced by the more prominent quantitative hedging instrument disclosures. Our second experiment finds that the use of a qualitative debiaser that clarifies the relationship between the two disclosures led to the integration of information and mitigated this effect.     

Game theoretic derivations of competitive strategies in conjoint analysis

While conjoint analysis has been applied in a wide variety of different contexts in Marketing, most applications fail to explicitly consider retaliatory reactions from competitors. In this paper, a methodological extension is developed for conjoint analysis by explicitly modeling competition in a game theoretic context. The Nash equilibrium concept is employed to model competitive reactions to produce design, and its implications for reactive product strategies are discussed. The optimal product design problem for each firm is formulated as a nonlinear integer programming problem, which is solved via a specialized branch and bound method combined with a heuristic. In order to compute a Nash equilibrium, a sequential iterative procedure is proposed. The proposed procedure is illustrated under several scenarios of competition using previously published conjoint data.This research has been supported by the Henry Rutgers Research Fellowship, Rutgers University.     

A flight to Q? Firm investment and financing in Korea before and after the 1997 financial crisis

We examine investment behavior among exchange-listed Korean manufacturing firms before and after the 1997 financial crisis using firm-level panel data. Starting with the standard Q-theory of investment, we augment it by allowing for a sales accelerator and the possibility of cash constraints, categorizing firms based on their age, size and affiliation to an industrial conglomerate (i.e., chaebol). We find that Tobin’s Q is a robust determinant of investment in a pooled sample for 1992–2001, but that it became more important for small firms and less important for chaebol-affiliated firms after the crisis. Investment by chaebol firms also became more sensitive to the availability of internal cash balances after the crisis. We interpret this as reflecting a shift in the Korean economy to a stronger market orientation after the crisis and to a business climate in which the quality of potential projects became more important relative to capital market imperfections in determining the destination of investment funds.     

韩国企业对中国直接投资的实情分析和决定因素

文章通过对韩国企业对中国直接投资的实情分析,考察不同规模企业的特征,并依 据投资国的国内因素分析了对中国直接投资的决定因素。     

Do converters facilitate the transition to a new incompatible technology? A dynamic analysis of converters

This paper analyzes the process of transition in standards between incompatible technologies when converters are available. Contrary to a common presumption that converters facilitate the transition from an old technology to an otherwise incompatible new technology, I find circumstances in which the possibility of transition is blockaded by the existence of converters. In the welfare analysis of converters, a distinction is made between ex ante and ex post efficiency effects. Finally, I also analyze the equilibrium behavior in the provision of converters and compare it to the socially optimal outcome.     

An Analysis of Trade Patterns and the Effects of the Real Exchange Rate Movements in East Asia

This article investigates the patterns of vertical specialization in trade among China, Japan and Korea, and the effects of real exchange rate fluctuations under a multistage production process. By extending the models of Yi (2003, 2010), we derive two distinct features of vertical specialization and test them using Time-Varying Parameter (TVP) VAR. We find that a positive shock to China’s final good consumption increases the intermediate goods trade between Korea and China, with expanding magnitude over time. In addition, the positive effect of a real exchange rate depreciation on intermediate goods trade is strengthened through the competitiveness-enhancing channel, with this effect being more pronouncing in Korea-China trade than in Korea-Japan trade.     

Financial System and Housing Price

The 2007/2008 US financial crisis is related to the securitization of mortgage loans and the housing-price boom and bust. In this article, we test the hypothesis that housing-price change is related to the development of the financial system. Using panel data for 23 countries from 1988 to 2012, we have found that the housing-price growth rate increases as the financial system moves a bank orientation to a market orientation. The policy implication is that the government should beware sudden increases in the capital market relative to the banking sector. Especially, more sophisticated financial supervision with respect to housing-price movement is required when a bank-based financial system progresses quickly to a market-oriented financial system.     

BANK PRIVATIZATION AND CONVERGENCE OF PERFORMANCE: INTERNATIONAL EVIDENCE

We trace the extent of performance deviation of privatized banks from established private banks in 30 countries from 1994 to 2005 and investigate the role of bank regulatory and supervisory norms, market competition, ownership structure, deposit insurance scheme, and governance structure affecting the deviation. Evidence shows that privatization does improve the performance of banks in the first year of being privatized, but performance gradually declines, which is consistent with the government restructuring argument before the privatization. Governance, foreign ownership, banking freedom (regulations), and the deposit insurance scheme in respective economies are found to affect performance deviation significantly.     

A NOTE ON PRICING OF PRODUCT QUALITY FOR STATUS CONCERNS

The paper analyses the optimal pricing of the product quality scheme when concerns for relative standing exist among consumers. We demonstrate that if the proportion of high‐value consumers is over (respectively, under) 1/2 of the total consumers, a firm has an incentive to select a large (respectively, small) quality gap among products. Therefore, there exists a cut‐off level for status concerns, which eliminates quality differences, and the firm assigns the same quality to all the consumers. These results indicate that consumers’ qualities will reflect distortions at the top and bottom. Accordingly, the firm's profit depends on which consumer category is larger.