The co-movement of stock markets in East Asia: Did the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis really strengthen stock market integration?

This paper examines the integration and causality of interdependencies among seven major East Asian stock exchanges before, during, and after the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis. For this purpose, we use daily stock market data from July 1, 1992 to June 30, 2003 in local currency as well as US dollar terms. The data reveal that the relationships among East Asian stock markets are time varying. While stock market interactions are limited before the Asian financial crisis, we find that Hong Kong and Singapore respond significantly to shocks in most other East Asian markets, including Shanghai and Shenzhen, during this crisis. After the crisis, shocks in Hong Kong and Singapore largely affect other East Asian stock markets, except for those in Mainland China. Finally, considering the role of the USA shows that it strongly influences stock returns in East Asia – except for Mainland China – in all periods, while the reverse does not hold true.     

The determinants of service offshoring: Does distance matter?

The importance of distance for international trade remains an unsettled issue. Innovations in information technology have reduced the costs of offshore outsourcing of services. However, empirical studies using the gravity model continue to demonstrate that distance is important for merchandise and service trade. We estimate a gravity model of the determinants of service trade. After we properly control for all non-transport trade costs, including information barriers, and multilateral resistance terms as suggested by Anderson and van Wincoop (2003), we show that the remaining influence of distance is negligible.     

The determinants of bilateral FDI: Is Asia different?

Intra-Asian foreign direct investment (FDI) is dominated by flows from high technology economies to medium technology economies, while FDI elsewhere primarily consists of flows among high technology economies. This distinctive pattern is not due simply to differences in the relative distribution of Asian FDI recipients by technology, or to systematic differences in Asia's technology characteristics. A gravity model analysis is used to explore whether Asian FDI patterns differ significantly from those elsewhere, and if so, in what ways. The results show that Asian FDI flows, in contrast to other FDI flows, systematically favor hosts with relatively low technology achievement and relatively strong intellectual property rights regimes. This type of “Asian exceptionalism” is consistent with “flying geese” theories that have argued that Asian development is the result of technology flows among economies that occupy nearby rungs of the technology ladder.     

Business connectedness or market risk? Evidence from financial institutions in China

We utilize the spectral representation of generalized forecast error variance decomposition to investigate the frequency dynamics of volatility connectedness and systemic risk of financial institutions in China from 2011 to 2018. We find that, first, high-frequency components account for the largest part of volatility connectedness (48.33%), followed by low-frequency components, and finally the medium-frequency components. Second, the low-frequency components reflect the business connectedness among financial institutions, while the high-frequency components capture the market risk. Third, the business connectedness among financial institutions will lead to a rise in overall connectedness as well as the accumulation of potential risks. Further, once a crisis breaks out, the potential risks have realized and the business connectedness among institutions declines; while market risk increases rapidly, which helps systemic financial risk stay at a high level. Lastly, among the financial sectors, the banking sector possesses a relatively higher level of business connectedness which plays an important role in the accumulation of potential financial risks; the securities sector features with higher market risk; while the insurance sector has both comparatively lower business connectedness and market risk.     

From financial repression to financial crisis? The case of China

This study explores the connections between financial repression policies and the possibility of financial crisis, a relationship that has been overlooked in previous literature. We focus on China, a country with one of the highest levels of financial repression in the world. China's case shows that when financial repression is maintained at a modest level, as the government did before 2008, the possibility of a financial crisis is low; however, when financial repression policies are pushed to an excessive level, as the government did after 2008, the national asset‐liability structure may be damaged to such an extent that a financial crisis becomes likely. The key to understanding the changing role of China's financial repression policies lies in the survival strategy of the Chinese party‐state, which regards finance as a powerful weapon and is eager to use it to address certain economic, political, or social problems that may endanger its rule.     

Extending the determinants of currency substitution in Nigeria: Any role for financial innovation?

Existing literature suggests that macroeconomic and institutional factors are the drivers of currency substitution. The persistent and significant incidence of currency substitution during the period of mixed performance of macroeconomic variables suggests the existence of a knowledge gap on the drivers of currency substitution during the era of rapid technological innovation. To contribute to this literature, we augmented the traditional money demand model of the determinants of currency substitution to introduce financial innovation. We use Nigerian data from 2005Q1 to 2019Q4 and Pesaran et al. (2001, https://doi.org/10.1002/jae.616 ) autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bound test approach to cointegration to estimate the models. The results confirm the presence of short-run and long-run relationships between financial technology and currency substitution in Nigeria. In effect, the deployment of financial technology in developing payment system infrastructure creates additional incentives for economic agents to hold foreign currency deposit. Economic managers must, therefore, mainstream credible monetary and fiscal policies to moderate the effect of financial innovation on currency substitution.     

Do global financial crises validate assertions of fractal market hypothesis?

The frequent occurrence of crises in recent decades has triggered a debate between the proponents of Efficient market hypothesis and Fractal market hypothesis. While, the proponents of Efficient market hypothesis view crises as non-existent and highly improbable, the advocates of Fractal market hypothesis view crises as the dominance of certain investment horizons. We test whether the assertion of Fractal Market hypothesis regarding the dominance of certain frequencies during financial crises hold for the global stock markets. Following Kristoufek (Sci Rep 3:2857, 2013) the wavelet power spectra based on continuous wavelet framework are used to test the said hypothesis. It is shown that stock markets around the globe indicate the dominance of higher frequencies during the crises periods, hence, validate the assertions of Fractal market hypothesis. The results drawn are robust to the use of different countries as well as different crises.     

Job satisfaction and relative income in economic transition: Status or signal?: The case of urban China

We use two datasets for urban China to examine whether an increase in reference group income lowers or increases job satisfaction. The former is consistent with a status effect — an increase in the income of others lowers my satisfaction because I feel jealous. The latter is consistent with a signal effect — an increase in the income of others might make me jealous, but it also provides an information signal about my future prospects. When we use a single item indicator of job satisfaction we find no support for a status or signal effect; however, when we use a psychometrically valid instrument to measure job satisfaction, we find some support for the existence of a status effect. We consider the components of job satisfaction through which the status effect operates. We find that the status effect operates through satisfaction with co-workers, operating procedures, pay and supervision.     

The empirics of economic geography: how to draw policy implications?

Using both reduced-form and structural approaches, the spectrum of policy recommendations that can be drawn from empirical economic geography is pretty large. Reduced-form approaches allow the researchers to consider many variables that impact on regional disparities, as long as they are careful about interpretation and endogeneity issues. Structural approaches have the opposite advantages. Less issues can be simultaneously addressed, but one can be more precise in terms of which intuitions are considered and the underlying mechanisms and effects at work. Many regional policy issues remain unanswered, opening some interesting future lines of research.     

Exploring dimensions of regional economic integration in East Asia: More than the sum of its parts?

No single measure of real or financial integration sufficiently captures all of the salient characteristics of the extent of integration between individual economies and of economies within particular regional groups. This paper introduces the idea of utilising and combining the effects of a number of individual measures of integration and, in doing so, presents an assessment of the stylised facts around bilateral and regional real and financial integration for the ASEAN5 and the large industrial Asian countries for the period 2000–2009. By using many measures, one should be able to achieve two objectives. The first is to capture many of the main attributes of integration in order to further provide insight into the integration landscape in East Asia. The second is to investigate which individual (if any) measure drives the overall level of integration and, as such, address the question of what might be the possible sources of integration between countries in the region. This has significant policy implications about how to best target policies of liberalisation in both goods and financial markets as well as informing the ongoing debate about optimal currency areas (OCA) and a possible monetary union in Asia.     

Efficiency or equity? The effect of an exogenous agricultural commercial shock: Evidence from Manchuria in the 1930s

The adoption of high-value cash crops (HVCs) is considered an efficient way to improve farmers' productivity and welfare, although the systematic empirical evidence is limited. By exploiting an exogenous commercial shock for soybeans and microlevel rural survey data from Manchuria of China in the 1930s, where factor markets were relatively well functioning, this study investigates the influence of HVC cultivation on farmers' agricultural performance, welfare, and inequality both theoretically and empirically. We find that (i) larger farms devote a larger proportion of land to HVCs and that (ii) farmers who cultivate a larger proportion of HVCs have higher agricultural productivity, profit, net income, and expenditure. Furthermore, the adoption of HVCs lowers profit, income, and expenditure inequality by enhancing income from wages relative to land rents, which benefits households with less land.     

Are all trade agreements equal? The role of distance in shaping the effect of economic integration agreements on trade flows

Review of World Economics - How does geographic distance affect the impact of trade agreements on bilateral exports, and through what channels? This paper examines these questions in a gravity...     

The current global financial crisis: Do Asian stock markets show contagion or interdependence effects?

In the framework of the current global economic crisis, a pertinent question is whether the world economies are suffering from contagion or interdependence effects. With its origins in the US sub-prime mortgage market crisis starting at the end of 2007, when a loss of confidence by investors in the value of securitized mortgages resulted in a liquidity crisis, hard-hitting the banking system and rapidly spreading into the financial markets, the effects of the crisis were automatically reflected in the rest of the world economies. These effects become more severe as the rest of the world is facing economic and financial instability. Therefore, the American shock can be seen as the trigger that revealed the other economies’ own financial problems. The main finding of this paper shows that the US stock markets are not generating contagious effects into the Asian stock markets. However, strong evidence of volatility transmission derived from these economies’ interlinkages has been detected.     

Whither China? Reform and economic integration among Chinese regions

This paper investigates the changing nature of economic integration in China. Specifically, we consider business-cycle synchronization (correlation of demand and supply shocks) among Chinese provinces during the period 1955–2011. We find that the symmetry of supply shocks has declined after the liberalization initiated in 1978. In contrast, the correlation of demand shocks has increased during the same period. We then seek to explain these correlations by relating them to factors that proxy for interprovincial trade and vulnerability of regions to idiosyncratic shocks. Interprovincial trade and similarity in factor endowments tend to make shocks more symmetric. Surprisingly, foreign trade and inward FDI have little effect on the symmetry of shocks.     

The Kreuger Crash of 1932 in memory of a financial genius,or was he a simple swindler?

Abstract

This paper discusses recent Swedish research on an event now celebrating its fiftieth anniversary — the Kreuger Crash.¹ It is divided into three parts. The first briefly introduces the ‘Kreuger problem’ and the scholarly work done on it during the 1970s. The second outlines the rise of the Kreuger empire, which is divided into three quite distinct periods: 1) the initial building industry stage (1908–13), 2) the match industry stage (1913–24), and 3) the period of furious growth (1924–30), when finance was the main concern of the parent company, Kreuger & Toll. Lastly the paper attempts to answer the question in its sub-title, in the process summarising the principal conclusions reached by research on the Kreuger problem during the last few years.     

The distribution of financial aid in China: Is aid reaching poor students?

China's central government incrementally introduced various kinds of student financial aid since the late 1990s in response to public concerns about the rising burden of college prices. Despite the marked increase in financial assistance from governmental as well as non-governmental sources in recent years especially, little is known about how well aid is currently distributed across Chinese universities and whether it is successfully reaching needy students.We use a unique randomly-sampled dataset of all local senior college students in one northwest province and a combination of non-parametric, semi-parametric and fixed effects methods to examine how various types of financial aid are currently distributed to students of different backgrounds across the university system. We also evaluate whether aid is reaching the main target population of low-income students. We primarily find that government-financed aid is allocated evenly across universities of varying selectivity and is reaching its target population of low-income students within universities. By contrast, university- and society-financed aid is not reaching low-income students. In addition, students in the most selective universities receive large implicit subsidies as they have high instructional costs, get more aid, and pay low tuition fees. Finally, a significant proportion of disadvantaged students do not seem to receive any type of aid.     

A kalman filter-gravity equation approach to assess the trade impact of economic integration: The case of Spain, 1986–1992

A Kaiman Filter-Gravity Equation Approach to Assess the Trade Impact of Economic Integration: The Case of Spain, 1986-1992. — The main objective of this paper is to propose an alternative method for evaluating the effects that economic integration between countries has on their trade flows. The trade impact model of reference is the gravity equation and the empirical application of the methodology focuses on Spain’s incorporation into the EEC in 1986. The principal contribution consists in the dynamization of the gravity equation by means of the Kaiman filter. By way of the Kalman algorithm, we use all the preintegration information in order to predict the coefficients of the gravity equation for the subsequent years, thereby defining a more credibleantimonde.     

A hallmark of India’s new economic policy:: deregulation and liberalization of the financial sector

A fundamental job of the financial sector of any economy is to allocate capital efficiently. To achieve this, capital is supposed to be invested in the sectors that are expected to have high returns and be withdrawn from sectors with poor prospects. The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the validity of this proposition in the context of financial liberalization in India. We first examine whether the total funds (debt and equity) available for investment started flowing to the “more efficient” (defined later), Indian firms due to financial liberalization. We examine changes in the allocation of credit across industrial sectors and changes in the allocation of capital among firms within the same sector or industry. Our empirical analysis shows that during the early years of financial liberalization the share of investment going to the more efficient firms did not rise, resulting in no perceptible rise in the overall efficiency of investment allocation for the economy. Our analysis of the sources and uses of funds shows that in the period immediately following the announcement of liberalization in 1991, there was a tendency in the Indian corporate sector towards a myopic use of funds. The surge in the availability of funds in the stock market, coming mainly from small and medium savers, failed to translate itself into any noticeable rise in gross fixed assets (GFAs). Thus, the lack of an improvement in the index of efficiency of investment allocation can be partly ascribed to bad investments to begin with. The message that emerges is that financial reforms in an inadequate regulatory framework do not necessarily have positive effects.     

Impact of liberalization of financial resources in China’s economic growth: evidence from provinces

By using the sources of investment and based on provincial data, this paper examines the efficiency performance of the four sources of total investment in fixed assets in China for the period 1985–1998: state budget appropriation, national bank loans, self-raised funds, and foreign investment. The result of the panel data study shows that the growth of provincial output is positively related to the growth of national bank loans and self-raised funds. State appropriation is still a significant source of investment in the interior provinces, though this suggests a lack of alternative of nonstate sources. The paper concludes that nonstate sources of funding are generally more efficient in promoting output growth.