Globalization, telecommunications and trade

This article describes some characteristics of globalization, one of the most dramatic impacts of the information revolution. There is a need for a broad international agreement on trade in services, yet the changes in thinking that this demands are being hampered by old perceptions, particularly in telecommunications. Issues arising in the Geneva negotiations on trade in services are examined. Particular importance is attached to factoring the implications of the globalization process and the new telecommunications realities into national decision making, if governments wish to retain control over those decisions and their impacts.     

Quantifying and sustaining welfare gains from monetary commitment

Our objectives are: to quantify the stabilization welfare gains from commitment; to examine how commitment to an optimal rule can be sustained as an equilibrium; to find a simple interest rate rule that approximates the optimal commitment one. We utilize an empirical micro-founded euro-area DSGE model, a quadratic approximation of household utility as the welfare criterion, employing a nominal interest rate lower bound. In contrast to previous studies, we find significant commitment stabilization gains of around a 0.4-0.5% equivalent permanent consumption increase, and with higher price stickiness gains over 2%. We find that a simple optimized commitment rule responding to inflation and the real wage mimics the optimal one.     

An empirical investigation of whether Australian capital gains tax reforms influence individual investor behaviour

This paper examines whether an asset's qualification for discounted tax treatment is associated with positive abnormal trading volumes and negative abnormal returns, as would be predicted if investors modified their behaviour to reduce their tax liability. Our examination of 152 initial public offerings (IPOs) documents that there is an incremental increase in abnormal trading volume for those IPOs that have experienced a significant increase in price since listing over those IPOs that have increased only marginally. Although we provide only limited evidence to suggest that this increase in trading volume is accompanied by a decrease in returns, this is not unexpected in a market that has anticipated this type of behaviour by the relatively small proportion of individual investors able to benefit from the discounted tax treatment.     

Sources of gains from international portfolio diversification

This paper looks at the determinants of country and industry specific factors in international portfolio returns using a sample of forty eight countries and thirty nine industries over the last three decades. Country factors have remained relatively stable over the sample period while industry factors have significantly increased during the last decade and dropped again since 2000. The importance of industry and country factors is correlated with measures of economic and financial international integration and development. We find that financial market globalization is the main driving force behind the changes in relative magnitude of the different shocks. Country factors are smaller for countries integrated in world financial markets and have declined as the degree of financial integration and the number of countries pursuing financial liberalization has increased. Higher international financial integration within an industry increases the importance of industry factors in explaining returns. Economic integration of production also helps in explaining returns. Countries with a more specialized production activity have higher country shocks.     

Productivity,restructuring, and the gains from takeovers

This paper investigates how takeovers create value. Using plant-level data, I show that acquirers increase targets' productivity through more efficient use of capital and labor. Acquirers reduce capital expenditures, wages, and employment in target plants, though output is unchanged. Acquirers improve targets' investment efficiency through reallocating capital to industries with better investment opportunities. Moreover, changes in productivity help explain the merging firms' announcement returns. The combined announcement returns are driven by improvements in target's productivity. Targets with greater productivity improvements receive higher premiums. These results provide some first empirical evidence on the relation between productivity and stock returns in takeovers.     

全球化视角下的金融开放与金融安全

金融全球化迅猛发展,带动了我国金融开放,也影响了金融安全.本文首先对金融全球化进行理论分析,指出金融全球化的适度性边界,并对我国金融化放现状进行阐述,其中包括对所引发金融安全问题的总结,再对美国的金融保护战略进行分析,最后明确提出了维护我国金融安全关键在于采取正确的对外开放战略.     

The origin principle and the welfare gains from indirect tax harmonization

This paper establishes a parallelism between indirect tax harmonization when taxes are levied according to the destination principle and its counterpart when taxes are imposed on an origin basis. Using a simple two-country model of international trade it is argued that, under normal circumstances, indirect tax harmonization under the origin principle, considered as a movement of domestic taxes toward an appropriately designed average tax structure, is potentially Pareto improving. It is also shown that if the initial position is a Nash equilibrium, there are exceptional situations under which the above-mentioned reform may generate an actual Pareto improvement, so that both countries improve their welfare without any need for a compensating international transfer.     

An investigation of the gains from commitment in monetary policy

We propose a simple framework for analyzing a continuum of monetary policy rules characterized by differing degrees of credibility, in which commitment and discretion become special cases of what we call quasi-commitment. The monetary policy authority is assumed to formulate optimal commitment plans, to be tempted to renege on them, and to succumb to this temptation with a constant exogenous probability known to the private sector. By interpreting this probability as a continuous measure of the (lack of) credibility of the monetary policy authority, we investigate the welfare effect of a marginal increase in credibility. Our main finding is that, in a simple model of the monetary transmission mechanism, most of the gains from commitment accrue at relatively low levels of credibility.     

日本银行业国际化的教训与启示

1907年中国山西的合盛元票号在日本神户设立中国合盛元银行,1910年,日本的横滨正金银行在美国旧金山设立经理处,中日两国的银行业几乎同时踏上了海外经营的征途。而事隔近一个世纪之后,中国银行业已经远远地落在了后面。但是我们不难发现,中国银行业现时的处境与日本同行在国际化之前有着惊人的相似之     

Optimization,cointegration and diversification gains from international portfolios: an out-of-sample analysis

This study investigates comparative performance of iShares and their underlying market indices in a portfolio context from the perspective of U.S. investors. Two aspects are important. First, portfolios based on standard optimization procedures and a portfolio based on cointegration procedures are created and out-of-sample performance is compared. The portfolio utilizing cointegration inputs shows superior out-of-sample performance. Second, portfolio performance measurement is extended to different holding periods. The findings do not differ.     

Windfall gains and stock market participation

We exploit the randomized assignment of lottery prizes in a large administrative Swedish data set to estimate the causal effect of wealth on stock market participation. A $150,000 windfall gain increases the stock market participation probability by 12 percentage points among prelottery nonparticipants but has no discernible effect on prelottery stock owners. A structural life cycle model significantly overpredicts entry rates even for very high entry costs (up to $31,000). Additional analyses implicate pessimistic beliefs regarding equity returns as a major source of this overprediction and suggest that both recent and early-life return realizations affect beliefs.     

Capital gains lock-in and governance choices

Differences in accrued gains and investors’ tax-sensitivity induce variation in a capital gains lock-in effect across mutual funds even for the same stock at the same time. Exploiting this variation, we show this effect influences funds’ governance decisions: higher capital gains decrease the likelihood a fund exits prior to contentious votes and increase the likelihood a fund votes against management. Consistent with tax motivation, these findings are concentrated among funds with tax-sensitive investors. Further, high aggregate capital gains across funds holding a stock predict a higher likelihood management loses a vote and a lower likelihood a contentious vote is proposed.     

The British investor's gains from international portfolio investment

This paper analyses the effects of exchange controls on the ranking of British and overseas investments. A method is developed by which the costs of such controls can be incorporated into return calculations. It is shown that the adjustment of returns for exchange controls significantly alters the rankings of investments. An additional aspect of the paper is to rank domestic and foreign investments by stochastic dominance and compare the derived rankings with mean-variance. Again a significant differences in rankings is identifiable. It is concluded that the exchange rate regime, institutional exchange controls and the entire distribution of returns should be considered in ranking domestic and foreign investments.     

Stock market development under globalization: Whither the gains from reforms?

Over the past decades, many countries have implemented significant reforms (including financial liberalization, privatization, and regulatory and supervisory improvements) to foster domestic capital market development. Despite these policies, the performance of capital markets in several countries has been disappointing. To understand the effects of reforms, we study the impact of six capital market reforms on domestic stock market development and internationalization. We find that reforms tend to be followed by increases in domestic market capitalization and trading. But reforms are also followed by an increase in the share of activity in international equity markets, with potential negative spillover effects.     

对标要素③ 国际化

随着竞争的日益激烈,实现国际化是世界一流企业致力于成为全球市场领先者和全球资源整合者的必由之路。新一轮“一手优化国资,一手提升国企”的改革思路亦显示了未来国资国企改革的布局将最大可能地集中主业、提高证券化率、股权多元化、鼓励国企走出去。     

关于贸易收汇和贸易出口真实性与一致性的研究

贸易收支是异常资金流入与流出的重要渠道之一,异常资金流动会导致贸易收汇和贸易出口所对应的资金流与货物流之间的匹配出现偏差。本研究探索了有关贸易收汇和贸易出口真实性与一致性非现场监测的非参数分析方法,并利用此方法对江苏省2007年贸易收汇和贸易出口之间真实性和一致性的情况进行了实证分析。     

从沉淀成本角度分析经济全球化

由于生产要素具有沉淀成本的性质,全球化并不是表面上的市场交换。这就需要我们进行相应的制度安排以减少沉淀成本产生的不利影响,从而使我国在经济全球化过程中处于平等的经济地位。     

An application of a three-factor performance index to measure stockholder gains from merger

This article re-examines the magnitude of stockholder gains from merger. To measure stockholder gains we employ four alternative two-factor market-industry models in combination with a matched non-merging control group. The four two-factor models are based on either the capital asset pricing model or Black's (1972) zero-beta model combined with two alternative industry factors. The four models are shown to produce generally consistent results. However, the results from a two-factor model are sometimes different from the results of a simpler one-factor model. Also, the introduction of a third factor, the non-merging control group, is shown to have a substantial impact on performance measurement.