Macro Liquidity Risk,Money Growth,and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns: The Case of Korea

According to the homogeneity of money holding purpose, we decompose the broad money M2 into an underlying and a non-underlying part and propose innovations in future non-underlying M2 growth as a proxy for macro liquidity. In both the cross-sectional regression tests and the GMM tests, we find that risk related to innovations in future non-underlying M2 growth is strongly significantly priced in Korea, after controlling for the well-known risk factors and other macroeconomic variables. Meanwhile, risk related to innovations in future aggregate or underlying M2 growth is insignificantly priced. These results indicate that non-underlying M2 growth more directly affects macro liquidity than does aggregate or underlying M2 growth.     

Capital structure in an emerging stock market: The case of India

This paper applies two alternative methods of estimation, viz., fully modified OLS (FMOLS) and generalized method of moments (GMM), to analyse the determinants of the capital structure of Indian firms using a panel of 1169 non-financial firms listed in either the Bombay Stock Exchange or the National Stock Exchange over the period 1995-2008. The results thus obtained are robust across the estimation methods. Among the three alternative theories of capital structure, the pecking order theory and the static trade-off theory both seem to explain Indian firms’ decisions. However, there is little evidence to support the agency cost theory.     

The Sarbanes-Oxley act and corporate investment: A structural assessment

We assess the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 on corporate investment in an investment Euler equation framework. We allow a dummy for the passage of the Act to affect the rate at which managers discount future investment payoffs. Using generalized method of moments estimators, we find that the rate U.S. firm managers apply to discount investment projects rises significantly after 2002, while the discount rate for U.K. firms remains unchanged. The effects of the legislation on corporate investment are asymmetric, and are much more significant among relatively small firms. We also find that well-governed firms, firms with a credit rating, and accelerated filers of Section 404 of the Act have become more cautious about investment.     

Dollarization,Seigniorage, and Prices: The Case of North Korea

This study employs a general equilibrium monetary search model to examine the effects of the recent dollarization in North Korea on seigniorage and prices. Maximum seigniorage is generated at a high rate of money growth when dollarization is mild. However, under a high degree of dollarization seigniorage declines sharply when the money growth rate is high. Accordingly, seigniorage can be increased by de-dollarizing the economy through lowering the money growth rate. This finding implies that the post-2013 price stabilization may be a result of the restriction on printing of money with the aim of increasing seigniorage. This finding also recognizes that the North Korean authorities have little room for maneuver on monetary policy under the conditions of widespread dollarization.     

Volatility Implied by Option Prices: The Case of Takeover Bids

We model the effect of an impending share price jump on the implied standard deviation (ISD) of a company's options, testing the model by investigating its predictive ability for ISDs of companies subject to a takeover bid. Our model fits the observed ISDs well for all but certain deep in-the-money options. However, the model demonstrates that a discontinuity in the relationship between moneyness and the ISD both explains the combination of high and zero ISDs exhibited by these options, and impairs the predictive power of the model at these levels of moneyness.     

Stock Market Returns and Economic Fundamentals in an Emerging Market: The Case of Korea

This paper investigates the feedback relationship between stock market returnsand economic fundamentals in an emerging market. Starting from an intertemporalconsumption-based CAPM (CCAPM), we obtain a restricted VAR model for stockreturns and macroeconomic variables. We then apply this model to Korea and findstatistically significant departures from the restrictions implied by CCAPM.Consequently, an unrestricted VAR model is used to analyze the variations of expectedand unexpected returns in the Korean stock market. It is shown that the expectedmarket returns vary with a set of macroeconomic variables, and that thepredictable component is substantial. Reflecting richer dynamics in the data,relative to the usual single equation modeling in the literature, the estimatedVAR model shows considerable predictive ability for both real economic activityand real returns. Using the model for a variance decomposition of unexpectedreturns, we find that, although we cannot directly observe the market's revisionof expected future dividend growth, we can estimate a large part of therevision with the news in the expected industry output growth from our VAR model.Finally, we also find that economic fundamentals can explain only a smallportion of the variation in unexpected returns in the Korean stock market.     

金融与消费需求关系研究的文献综述

2009年底的中央经济工作会议对2010年经济工作进行了全面部署,其中把扩大居民消费、增强居民消费能力和加快居民消费结构升级提到了前所未有的战略高度。本文对金融与消费需求关系的有关文献进行回顾,从消费信贷、股票市场、保险等三个方面对国内消费需求所受的影响进行综述,并对未来的研究进行了展望。     

An Open Economy DSGE Model with Search-and-Matching Frictions: The Case of Hungary

This article builds and estimates a medium scale, small open economy DSGE model augmented with search-and-matching frictions in the labor market, and different wage setting behavior in new and existing jobs. The model is estimated using Hungarian data between 2001–2008. We find that: (i) the inclusion of matching frictions significantly improves the model’s empirical fit; (ii) the extent of new hires wage rigidity is quantitatively important for key macro variables; (iii) labor market shocks do not play an important role in inflation dynamics, but the structure of the labor market influences the monetary transmission mechanism.     

金融危机背景下消费信贷发展状况及应对措施:以山东为例

发展消费信贷、拉动经济回升已成为当前金融危机背景下需要研究的重点问题.本文以山东省为例,着重分析了金融危机以来消费信贷的运行状况及对经济回升的作用效果,并提出了进一步促进消费信贷发展、应对金融危机影响的针对性措施.     

Consumer Preference for Meat in China: A Case Study of Beijing

We analyze Chinese consumer preferences for pork shoulder-cut attributes during the recent period of fluctuating food prices caused by production and market anomalies. Consumers were randomly sampled in Beijing, China. Results indicate that consumers place great importance on where they purchase pork products as well as on whether the animals are raised with organic feed. Whether pork is fresh or previously frozen does not appear to matter much to consumers. This may provide partial support for the Chinese government's policy of using frozen pork reserves to stabilize pork prices.     

经济欠发达地区个人消费信贷发展机遇及制约因素浅析——以安阳市为例

央行早在1999年就出台了<关于开展个人消费信贷指导意见>,但长期以来,地处经济欠发达地区的安阳市个人消费信贷发展相对缓慢,虽然近年来个人消费信贷发展有所提速,但规模仍然偏小、占信贷总量的比重偏低,个人消费信贷对消费增长拉动作用尚未充分发挥.本文以安阳为例从经济欠发达地区个人消费信贷市场发展状况分析入手,阐述了存在的机遇,同时也总结出目前制约个人消费信贷发展的"三个误区",并提出加快发展经济欠发达地区个人消费信贷的建议.     

The Effects of Oil Supply and Demand Shocks on U.S. Consumer Sentiment

This paper investigates how the University of Michigan's Index of Consumer Sentiment responds to oil price shocks. While oil supply shocks play only a limited role, the effect of aggregate demand shocks is positive for the first few months and negative thereafter. A typical other oil demand shock has a significant negative impact for up to 2 years. By studying the responses of individual survey questions, we find that expectations of future inflation and a change in real household income as well as perceived vehicle and house buying conditions are the main transmission channels of oil supply and demand shocks.     

Applying Portfolio Change and Conditional Performance Measures: The Case of Industry Rotation via the Dynamic Investment Model

This paper applies portfolio change and conditional performance measures to assess the performance of the dynamic investment model in various industry-rotation settings spanning the 1934–1995 period. The dynamic investment model employs the empirical probability assessment approach in raw form. In addition, it incorporates three adjustments for estimation error: James–Stein, Bayes–Stein, and CAPM-based corrections. The tests are unanimous in their conclusion that the excess returns attained by the (unadjusted) historic, the Bayes–Stein, and the James–Stein estimators are (sometimes highly) statistically significant over the 1966–1995 and 1966–1981 sub-periods. This lends support to the idea that the joint empirical probability assessment approach based on the recent past, with and without Stein-based corrections for estimation error, contains information that can be profitably exploited. The relationship of these findings to the extant literature on momentum and contrarian strategies is addressed.     

The Effectiveness of Price Limits and Stock Characteristics: Evidence from the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges

We examine the effectiveness of price limits on Chinese A shares and investigate the characteristics of those stocks that hit their price limits more frequently. We find that the effect of price limits is asymmetric for the A shares in upward and downward price movements and different for bullish and bearish sample periods. During a bullish period price limits effectively reduce stock volatility for downward price movements, but not for upward price movements; while during a bearish period price limits effectively reduce stock volatility for upward price movements, but not for downward price movements. Second, price limits delay efficient price discovery for upward price movements, but not for downward price movements. However, we do not find evidence to suggest that price limits harmfully interfere with the stock trading processes in the Chinese A share markets. Finally, we find that actively traded stocks hit their price limits more often and tend to hit the lower limit more frequently when overall market conditions are bearish. Stocks with high book-to-market values of equity hit their upper price limits more frequently, while stocks with a high ratio of tradable shares tend to hit their price limits less frequently.JEL Classification: G10, G14, G15     

Consumer durables and risky borrowing: The effects of bankruptcy protection

There exist substantial differences in the generosity of bankruptcy protection across U.S. states. This paper exploits cross-state variation in exemption levels to assess the dual role of durable goods as informal collateral for unsecured debt and self-insurance against bad shocks to earnings. The generosity of bankruptcy protection is found to change both the incentives and the ability of households to accumulate durable wealth. The gains from a high level of insurance are reduced by the effect of tighter credit constraints, so that the net effects of a change in exemption are very small. A more generous bankruptcy regulation reduces net durable wealth in the first half of the life cycle. In addition, the optimal level of exemption is positive but low.     

The Dynamic Speed of Cash-Holding Adjustment in a Transition Economy: A New Approach and Evidence

Using a new approach, we estimate the speed of cash-holding adjustment for a typical transitional economy by using Chinese listed firms’ samples over 1999–2011. First, we use model-averaging techniques to identify reliably important cash-holding determinants. Second, we conduct Monte Carlo simulation using the real finance data to evaluate appropriateness of the empirical estimator from a variety of dynamic estimation methods and suggest an optimized system of generalized method of moments (OPT-GMM) as an appropriate econometric approach for speed estimation. Finally, we get the speed of 46 percent, which is significantly lower than the contemporary speed in the United Kingdom and the United States.     

Detecting insider trading: The theory and validation in Korea Exchange

This paper provides an empirical basis for identifying insider transactions by deriving a theoretical model, which incorporates the relationship between insider transactions and time series of stock returns. Thus, this model enables us detecting insider transactions by applying stock return time series. We show that when there is an insider transaction in the market, time series can be derived as an ARMA(1,1) process having closed solution coefficients. For validation of the model, we test publicly released insider transactions and reverse takeover events using the minute-by-minute stock price data. The selected events show higher pass rate of the detection criteria than the current detection system which shows that our model produces smaller Type II error than the existing post transaction-based cumulative abnormal return model.     

The stocks at stake: Return and risk in socially responsible investment

We relate US portfolio returns, book-to-market values and excess stock returns to different dimensions of socially responsible performance. We find that socially responsible investing (SRI) impacts on stock returns by lowering the book-to-market ratio and not by generating positive alphas. Our result is consistent with the theoretical work suggesting that SRI is reflected in demand differences between SRI and non-SRI stock. It also explains why so few studies are able to establish a link between alpha’s and SRI.     

The value-relevance of R&D and advertising expenditures: Evidence from Korea

This study examines the value-relevance of R&D and advertising expenditures of Korean firms, using a regression model based on the Ohlson [Contemp. Account. Res. (1995) 661] equity-valuation framework. Results indicate that R&D expenditures are positively associated with stock price, suggesting that capitalizing R&D expenditures is appropriate. The association is stronger for the portion of R&D expenditures that is capitalized, rather than expensed, suggesting that investors agree with management that the capitalized expenditures represent greater future economic benefits. Investors also appear to interpret fully expensed R&D expenditures as positive net present-value investments, however, suggesting that these expenditure should also be capitalized. Additional results indicate that advertising expenditures are negatively associated with stock price, and the magnitude of this negative association is similar to the association between other expenses and stock price. These findings suggest that investors believe the economic benefits of advertising expenditures expire in the current period, similar to other expenses.