EFFICIENCY OF THE TAIWAN STOCK MARKET*

This study uses two popular technical trading rules to assess whether the gradual liberalization of Taiwan's securities markets has improved the efficiency of its stock market. The results show that the two rules have considerable predictive power for 1983–1990, they become less predictive for 1991–1997, and they cannot predict the market for 1998–2005. These results indicate that the efficiency of Taiwan stock market has been greatly enhanced by the liberalization measures implemented over the last 20 years.     

ADAPTIVE EXPECTATIONS AND STOCK MARKET CRASHES*

A theory is developed that explains how stocks can crash without fundamental news and why crashes are more common than frenzies. A crash occurs via the interaction of rational and naive investors. Naive traders believe that prices follow a random walk with serially correlated volatility. Their expectations of future volatility are formed adaptively. When the market crashes, naive traders sell stock in response to the apparent increase in volatility. Since rational traders are risk averse as well, a lower price is needed to clear the market: The crash is a self‐fulfilling prophecy. Frenzies cannot occur in this model.     

THE IMPACT OF OIL PRICE SHOCKS ON THE U.S. STOCK MARKET*

It is shown that the reaction of U.S. real stock returns to an oil price shock differs greatly depending on whether the change in the price of oil is driven by demand or supply shocks in the oil market. The demand and supply shocks driving the global crude oil market jointly account for 22% of the long‐run variation in U.S. real stock returns. The responses of industry‐specific U.S. stock returns to demand and supply shocks in the crude oil market are consistent with accounts of the transmission of oil price shocks that emphasize the reduction in domestic final demand.     

THE ABSENCE OF THE BOOK‐TO‐MARKET EFFECT IN THE TAIWAN STOCK MARKET: A DECOMPOSITION APPROACH

This paper examines the absence of the book‐to‐market equity (BM) effect in the Taiwan stock market, applying the BM decomposition proposed by Daniel and Titman (2006 ). First, we do not observe a significantly negative correlation between future stock return and intangible return on research‐and‐development‐intensive firms in Taiwan, which is inconsistent with the US evidence documented by Daniel and Titman. Second, undervaluation of research‐and‐development‐intensive firms possibly leads to the absence of the BM effect. Those firms, most of which have low BM, perform well not only in the past, but also in the future, thereby obscuring the BM effect.     

THE MARKET FOR FRANCHISE OPPORTUNITIES*

Franchised distribution accounts for a substantial proportion of retail sales each year. This form of vertical integration is frequently found in the accompaniment of parallel distribution through company-owned establishments. Similarly, franchise contracts are characterized by mixed compensation strategies. This paper contains empirical models of the market for franchise opportunities where incentives for mixed distribution and compensation strategies are evaluated.     

#br# 融资融券加大了沪深股市波动吗*

融资融券设计初衷是通过融资加强市场流动性和通过融券提供投资者规避价格下跌风险的金融工具,改善由供求关系严重失衡导致市场巨幅震荡的局面,实现资本市场长期稳定的目标。实际操作中,融资融券疏通货币市场和资本市场间的资金流动,撬动巨额资金涌入股市;融资规模扩张过快而融券做空力量薄弱,业务结构发展严重失衡,导致两融业务具有“小冲击、大波动”的金融加速效应,放大了外部冲击引起股价上涨和下跌的幅度。协整回归分析表明,两融业务规模的扩张和收缩对上证指数涨跌具有显著的同向影响。TGARCH事件模型结果进一步证实融资融券从稳定股价到加剧波动的功能变化。随着标的股票扩容和业务常规化,两融业务导致股市投机过度,加剧了沪深两市的资产价格异动,没有达到平抑波动的设计预期。     

THE FOUNDATION OF MARKET QUALITY ECONOMICS*

This study is based on my observation that high quality markets are indispensable for the healthy growth of a modern economy. Many problems surrounding markets are attributable to the lack of high quality markets. An industrial revolution creates extremely vibrant but unhealthy markets. This study introduces a concept of fairness in dealing and pricing (competitive fairness), which differs from efficiency, and defines market quality as a measure for the efficiency of allocation and the fairness of dealing and pricing. This study shows that competitive fairness is achieved by several market mechanisms that I constructed in my previous work.     

OPPORTUNISTIC MATCHING IN THE HOUSING MARKET*

We construct a model of the housing market in which agents differ in their flow values while searching. Agents enter the market relaxed (with high flow values) but move to a desperate state (low flow values) at a Poisson rate if they have not already transacted. We characterize the equilibrium steady‐state matching pattern and the joint distribution of price and time to sale (for sellers). The expected price conditional on time to sale falls with time spent on the market, whereas the conditional variance of price first rises and then falls with time on the market.     

SEGREGATION IN THE AUSTRALIAN LABOUR MARKET*

An important measure of the success of immigration is the assimilation of immigrants into the labour force of the host country. This criterion is important from both the perspective of immigrants themselves and that of the host country. Conversely, concentration of migrants in a few sectors is undesirable because of its adverse socio‐economic consequences. Since the pattern of distribution of migrant employment influences the structure and outcomes in the labour market in various ways, it attracts public, academic and policymakers’ attention. The present paper employs various numerical measures to estimate the degree of immigrant segregation across occupations and industries in Australia. The results indicate that the occupational distribution of immigrants is very similar to the proportion of native workers employed in the various occupations. This similarity also characterises the industrial distribution of immigrant employment. Thus, contrary to popular perception and findings for the United States, evidence from the Australian labour market does not indicate the existence of widespread immigrant segregation.     

SPINOFFS AND THE MARKET FOR IDEAS*

We present a theory of entry through spinoffs where workers generate ideas and possess private information concerning their quality. Because quality is privately observed, adverse selection implies that the market can only offer a price that reflects the average quality of ideas sold. Only workers with good ideas decide to spin off, whereas workers with mediocre ideas sell them. Existing firms pay a price for ideas sold in the market that implies zero expected profits. Hence, firms’ project selection is independent of firm size, which can lead to scale‐independent growth. This mechanism results in invariant firm‐size distributions that resemble the data.     

EFFECTS OF STOCK MARKET FLUCTUATIONS ON THE ADEQUACY OF RETIREMENT WEALTH ACCUMULATION

This paper examines the relation between fluctuations in the aggregate value of equities and the adequacy of households’ saving for retirement. Using more recent data than most studies on this topic, we find that many and perhaps most households appear to be saving adequate amounts for retirement, and that there is almost no link between aggregate equity values and the adequacy of retirement saving. A simulated 40 percent decline in stocks has little effect on the adequacy of saving. The substantial growth in equity values and ownership in the 1980s and 1990s did not lead to a surge in the adequacy of retirement saving provisions. The results occur because equity holdings are concentrated among households with significant amounts of other wealth.     

PRODUCTIVITY AND THE LABOR MARKET: COMOVEMENT OVER THE BUSINESS CYCLE*

The productivity‐driven Mortensen–Pissarides model predicts that labor productivity is strongly correlated with labor market variables whereas these correlations were argued to be much weaker in the data, especially since the 1980s. We first document that the size of these discrepancies between the data and the model becomes substantially smaller if employment data from the Current Population Survey is used in measuring productivity instead of the commonly used employment data from the Current Employment Statistics. Second, we show that incorporating time to build and a stochastic value of home production helps reconcile the quantitative performance of the model with the data.     

中国股市与世界其他股市之间的大风险溢出效应:更正说明

《经济学季刊》2004年第3卷第3期第703—726页发表的洪永淼、成思危、刘艳辉、汪寿阳共同撰写的论文"中国股市与世界其他股市之间的大风险溢出效应"存在若干笔误,特作如下更正     

THE TREATMENT OF STOCK APPRECIATION IN THE MEASUREMENT OF NATIONAL INCOME*

In the latest official national income publication the Australian Commonwealth Statistician has altered the treatment of stock appreciation in the measurement of national income at current prices. Previously, stock appreciation had been included in both national expenditure and national product. Now the amount of stock appreciation (the difference between the change in the value of stocks and the value of the change in stocks) has been deducted from investment in stocks, and consequently national expenditure, and from trading incomes, and consequently national income. The former procedure (including stock appreciation in national expenditure and national product) had been advocated by the present author, when editor of the first official national income publications issued by the Commonwealth Statistician. In this note an attempt is made to set out the reasons for this view. A new approach is also suggested for handling the item of stock appreciation in national income accounts, which does not rest on the assumption that stock appreciation is a capital gain which should be excluded from trading incomes and national product.     

SECULAR MEAN REVERSION AND LONG‐RUN PREDICTABILITY OF THE STOCK MARKET

The empirical financial literature reports evidence of mean reversion in stock prices and the absence of out‐of‐sample return predictability over horizons shorter than 10 years. Anecdotal evidence suggests the presence of mean reversion in stock prices and return predictability over horizons longer than 10 years, but thus far, there is no empirical evidence confirming such anecdotal evidence. The goal of this paper is to fill this gap in the literature. Specifically, using 141 years of data, this paper begins by performing formal tests of the random walk hypothesis in the prices of the real S&P Composite Index over increasing time horizons of up to 40 years. Although our results cannot support the conventional wisdom that the stock market is safer for long‐term investors, our findings speak in favor of the mean reversion hypothesis. In particular, we find statistically significant in‐sample evidence that past 15‐17 year returns are able to predict the future 15‐17 year returns. This finding is robust to the choice of data source, deflator, and test statistic. The paper continues by investigating the out‐of‐sample performance of long‐horizon return forecasting based on the mean‐reverting model. These latter tests demonstrate that the forecast accuracy provided by the mean‐reverting model is statistically significantly better than the forecast accuracy provided by the naive historical‐mean model. Moreover, we show that the predictive ability of the mean‐reverting model is economically significant and translates into substantial performance gains.     

THE MARKET SELECTS THE WRONG FIRMS IN THE LONG RUN*

We consider the effects of free entry on the market structure and social welfare of an asymmetric Cournot oligopoly. Even if we allow for the existence of different types of firms initially, only one type (in almost all cases) can survive in the long run. Free entry leads an economy to a symmetric equilibrium, in which the excess entry theorem holds. Further, we consider the socially optimal policy for this economy. In cases of either (i) a concave demand (which implies strategic substitutability) or (ii) strategic complementarity (which implies a convex demand), the type of firms that should remain in the market to achieve social optimality does not necessarily coincide with the type of firms that will survive in the long run. The market may select not only the wrong number of firms but also the wrong type of firms in the long run.     

景气循环下不动产市场对金融控股 公司股价回报之影响*

本文主要目的在于调查中国台湾地区景气循环变化对于金融产业股价回报的影响,同时引入不动产市场因子进行分析,研究对象将2003年1月至2011年6月中国台湾证券交易市场所有上市银行类股作为研究样本。与过去研究不同,本文进一步划分公司群体为金控与非金控公司进行探讨。实证结果显示在景气扩张时期,因为投资人普遍追求短期房价获利的投机心理,因此,呈现出不动产市场活动效果不显著的现象。反之,在资金成本与房市购买意愿变化下,不动产市场状况与金控公司具有反向的关联。此外,当市场处于景气扩张时期时,金融产业的动量效应较为明显,显现市场投资人较易存在不理性的投资行为,倾向于持有现货进行投机行为,故动量效应在景气扩张时期较衰退时期的效果大。在货币市场方面,当市场处景气扩张时,非金控公司具有负向的利率敏感性,但金控公司则未达统计的显著水平。