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.     

Information Transmission Through Rumors in Stock Markets: A New Evidence

The authors provide new evidence of the influence of false rumors based on Taiwan's stock market. The results indicate significant patterns of abnormal returns and trading volumes surrounding the event day and that the rumors seem to be disseminated in the stock market before appearing in newspapers. The results also indicate asymmetry: Investors hearing a positive rumor about a stock may tend to buy the stock, prompting a price run-up until the rumor dies away, while negative rumors usually have greater and longer negative impacts on stock returns than positive rumors do. The presence of a daily price limit is negatively correlated to the size of abnormal returns and abnormal trading volumes on the event day, and the abnormal trading volumes are more sensitive to the price limit surrounding the event day. Finally, firm managers might receive rumor information earlier and then conduct stock trading before the rumor's announcement.     

Dimensions of international expansions by US firms to China: Wealth effects,mode selection,and firm-specific factors

China's recent efforts to attract foreign investment have been viewed favorably by US firms, who have explored a variety of strategies for expanding to China. This paper provides evidence related to a comprehensive set of strategies used by US firms to expand to China. For the 302 announcements of expansion by US firms into the Chinese market, several firm-specific factors are found to affect both the choice of mode entry and the reaction of investors to the announcement of the expansion. The results suggest that firms with a high investment in proprietary assets prefer foreign direct investment (FDI) modes to non-FDI modes, as do firms with high levels of geographic diversification. Firms entering the Chinese market utilize non-FDI modes, while those who have established a presence in China prefer FDI modes. The reaction of the stock market to expansions to China is positive; average excess returns of 0.75% are observed for the two days surrounding the announcement. Both FDI and non-FDI categories of expansion have statistically significant excess returns. Analysis by mode of expansion shows that expansions through joint ventures (JVs) and contracts are the most desirable alternatives. Other modes of expansion do not result in significant excess returns. Finally, a firm's prior financial performance has a significant influence on its ability to profitably expand to China.     

Has the Asian crisis changed the role of foreign investors in emerging equity markets: Taiwan's experience

This paper examines whether the 1997 Asian crisis changed the trading behaviors of foreign investors and of local institutional investors in Taiwan's stock market. There is little evidence that the Asian crisis changed the relationship between equity flows and market returns in Taiwan's stock market but there is evidence that volatility effects and volatility spillover were strengthened after the crisis. The general findings are (i) feedback trading arguments are much stronger than information arguments; (ii) relationships between returns and sale changes are the weakest but volatility effects using sale measures are the strongest; (iii) strong volatility effects and volatility spillover are found after the crisis; and (iv) the results for domestic institutional investors are slightly stronger than those for foreign investors.     

The impact of news,oil prices,and global market developments on Russian financial markets1

This paper analyses the impact of news, oil prices, and international financial market developments on daily returns on Russian bond and stock markets. First, regarding returns, energy news affects returns, while news from the war in Chechnya is not significant. Market volatility does not appear to be sensitive to either type of news. Second, a significant effect of the growth in oil prices on Russian stock returns is detected. Third, the international influence on Russian financial markets depends upon the degree of financial liberalization. The higher the degree of financial liberalization, the stronger is the impact of US stock returns on Russian financial markets. In addition, banking reform and interest rate liberalization efforts seem to dictate the globalization of Russian stock markets, while it is the progress in liberalizing securities markets and non‐bank financial institutions that matters more for the globalization of Russian bond markets.     

审计师变更、时机选择与投资者评价

文章从投资者评价的角度对我国证券市场中审计师变更事件的经济后果进行考察。研究发现,在我国证券审计市场中,审计师变更事件具有显著为正的市场反应;市场总体正的累计超额回报主要是由晚变更样本的公告信息引起,晚变更公司在变更公告日附近的累计超额回报为正,并且显著大于早变更的公司;总体来看,审计师变更会显著降低公司的财务盈利可信度,并且在审计师变更以后,晚变更公司盈利可信度的下降程度显著大于早变更的公司。     

Stock and Industry Return Characteristics Around Price Shocks

The author investigates positive and negative price shocks in individual securities and the degree to which they affect related firms in the same industry. This price contagion effect is significant with initial price shocks leading to substantial long-term abnormal returns across firms in the same industry over time. Price shocks also have predictive value regarding future earnings and revenues for the firm in question and its industry overall. Positive (negative) price shocks that are continued over time are associated with higher (lower) Sharpe ratios suggesting that abnormal returns are not simply a form of compensation for greater expected future volatility.     

The Importance of Monitoring and Mitigating the Safety-Net Consequences of Regulation-Induced Innovation

To be effective, programs of regulatory reform must address the incentive conflicts that intensify financial risk-taking and undermine government insolvency detection and crisis management. Subsidies to risk-taking that large institutions extract from the financial safety-net encourage managers to make their firms riskier, harder to supervise, and politically and administratively more difficult to fail and unwind. Except in the very short run, repealing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act or breaking up so-called too-big-to-fail institutions will do little to arrest subsidy-induced activities. Rebuilding Glass-Steagall barriers between banking, securities, and insurance firms would instead make implicit taxpayer support of large institutions less transparent and serve foreign interests by encouraging conglomerate firms to operate affected businesses through foreign subsidiaries. To discourage financial institutions from abusing safety-net support, government supervisors must be made specifically accountable for delivering and pricing safety-net benefits fairly and efficiently. If it wants to make the system more stable, Congress should focus on: rewriting top officials' oaths of office; changing the ways top officials are recruited, trained, and compensated; reworking the ways they measure and report regulatory performance; and changing the kinds of securities that large institutions have to issue.     

Do stock markets penalize environment-unfriendly behaviour? Evidence from India

A growing body of research points to the fact that capital markets react to environmental news and thus create incentives for pollution control in both developed and emerging market economies. In this paper, we conduct an event study to examine the impact of environmental rating of large pulp and paper, auto, and chlor alkali firms on their stock prices. We find that the market generally penalizes environmentally unfriendly behaviour in that announcement of weak environmental performance by firms leads to negative abnormal returns of up to 30%. A positive correlation is found between abnormal returns to a firm's stock and the level of its environmental performance. These findings should be viewed as further evidence of the important role that capital markets could play in environmental management, particularly in developing countries where environmental monitoring and enforcement are weak.     

Chinese overseas M&A performance and the Go Global policy1

It is well known that government plays an important role in the business activities of Chinese firms. Less certain is the effect this influence has on the wealth of those firms’ shareholders. We contribute to the literature by analysing stock market reactions to announcements by Chinese firms of overseas mergers and acquisitions (OMAs). OMAs are of particular interest because there can exist a conflict between the interests of the public sector in acquiring overseas assets, and the interests of the private sector in maximizing shareholder wealth. Our main dataset consists of 213 observations of 157 OMA events that occurred between 1994 and 2009, using share market returns from the Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and US markets. The aggregation of share price data across multiple markets, and the listing of firms in multiple exchanges, raise econometric issues for the standard event‐study methodology. To address these, we use a new, feasible generalized least squares (GLS) procedure developed by Gu and Reed (2012) . On the basis of an analysis using both aggregated and disaggregated samples, and of daily and cumulative abnormal returns, we find consistent evidence that (i) Chinese OMAs have not lowered the wealth of shareholders of Chinese acquiring firms, and (ii) shareholders of Chinese acquiring firms have not fared worse under under China's ‘Go Global’ policy of encouraging outward investment by Chinese firms.     

The relation between asset growth and the cross-section of stock returns: Evidence from the Chinese stock market

This study examines the effect of firm investment on stock returns by using data on the Chinese stock market. We find that stocks with higher investment experience lower future returns and there is an obvious investment effect in the Chinese stock market. The investment effect is stronger for firms that have higher cash flows, lower debt or for state-owned firms. We further explore the relation between investment and returns over the 3 years around portfolio formation. The results show that the high investment firms earn higher returns than low investment firms before portfolio formation; however the high investment firms earn lower returns than low investment firms after portfolio formation, such evidence is supportive of investor's overreaction explanation. Additionally, the stock returns don't necessarily decrease after investment, and the stock returns don't significantly positively correlate with firm profitability or book-to-market, so the result don't support risk-based explanation. Overall, both our portfolio sort and two-stage cross-sectional regression analysis show that behavioral finance theories are better than risk-based theories in explaining the investment anomaly. Evidence from the Chinese stock market provides a useful perspective to understand the debate on the investment anomaly.     

A FURTHER EXAMINATION OF THE PRICE AND VOLATILITY IMPACT OF STOCK DIVIDENDS AT EX‐DATES*

We examine the price and volatility reaction around stock dividend ex‐dates for an Australian sample, over the period January 1992 to December 2000. We find that price reaction around stock dividend ex‐dates provides positive abnormal returns both prior, and subsequent, to the abolishment of par value of shares in July 1998. When we partitioned the sample into financial, industrial non‐financial and mining firms, the price reaction is found to be positive and significant only for industrial non‐financial companies. Volatility of daily returns for periods subsequent to ex‐dates is significantly greater than corresponding periods prior to announcement dates, while cumulative raw returns subsequent to ex‐dates are significantly lower than periods prior to announcement dates for industrial non‐financial companies. The magnitude of the price reaction is statistically significantly related to an increase in the volatility of daily returns and to a reduction in cumulative raw returns subsequent to the ex‐dates, for industrial non‐financial companies. These findings support buying pressure hypothesis suggested by Dhatt et al. (1994, 1996 ).     

The effectiveness of the sunshine effect in Taiwan's stock market before and after the 1997 financial crisis

This study constructs a variety of GARCH models with the consideration of the generalized error distribution to analyze the relationship between the cloud cover and stock returns in Taiwan in the whole sample period (1986 to 2007) and in the two sub-sample periods (1986 to 1996 and 1997 to 2007). The data include Taiwan Stock Exchange Capitalization Weighted Stock Index, the primary eight stock sector indices, and the U.S. Dow Jones Industrial Average index to proxy the impact of U.S. stock market on Taiwan's stock market performance. The empirical finding of this study could be used to reconfirm the existence of the so-called sunshine effect. In addition, by comparing the long-run impulse multiplier effects of the cloud cover on the stock return in the two sub-sample periods; this study could examine the transition of the sunshine effect in Taiwan's stock market. The empirical results suggest that cloud cover has a significant negative impact on Taiwan's stock market, especially in the low cloud cover periods. Moreover, the pre-determined distribution of the error term plays an important role on the significance of the sunshine effect. The empirical result shows that most long-run multipliers are negative and the multiplier is more effective in the low cloud cover periods than in the high cloud cover periods.     

建立多层次证券市场交易费用的分析

作者借助新制度经济学的交易费用理论,以金融体系与建立多层次证券市场的相互关系作为分析背景,针对我国民营企业逐步壮大以至于在很大程度上改变了金融市场之运作主体的事实,分析我国金融体系的现状和局限性。作者着重考察我国现阶段证券市场运行过程中交易费用的形成及其对行为主体参与金融活动的影响,并以此分析证券市场交易费用的存在对经济运行和经济发展的损害及建立有效率多层次证券市场体系的内在原因。     

The effect of the tax reform act of 1986 on the location of assets in financial services firms

This paper examines the effects of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 on the international location decisions of U.S. financial services firms. The Act included rule changes that made it substantially more difficult for U.S. firms to defer U.S. taxes on overseas financial services income held in low-tax jurisdictions. We use information from the tax returns of U.S. corporations to examine how local taxes affect the allocation of financial assets held abroad by financial services firms. We find that, before the Act, the location of reported assets in financial subsidiaries was responsive to differences in host country tax rates across jurisdictions. However, after the Act, differences in host country tax rates no longer explain the distribution of assets held in financial services subsidiaries abroad. Our results suggest that the tightening of the anti-deferral provisions applicable to financial services companies has been successful in diminishing the effect of host country income taxes on asset location decisions.     

Bond rating changes and stock returns: evidence from the Spanish stock market

This study analyzes the effect of corporate bond rating changes by international agencies on stock prices. This topic has not yet been analyzed for the Spanish stock market, despite the growing importance of ratings in Spanish financial markets. On an efficient market, rating changes will only have an effect if they contain some new information. The results from an event study indicate that rating actions cause significant negative abnormal returns in issuing firms around the date of the announcement. This evidence indicates an informational effect related to downgrades, which supports the hypothesis that credit rating agencies provide information that may reduce the asymmetric information problem between firms and investors. In the case of upgrades, our results are compatible with a redistribution of wealth between bondholders and owners or with the reputation hypothesis.      

政策诱因与中国证券市场的内在不稳定性——转轨过程中新兴市场的特征

与发达证券市场及新兴证券市场不同 ,我国证券市场具有转轨经济与新兴市场的双重特征 ,在金融制度、参与者行为、政府监管等各方面都有自身的特点 ,证券市场的内在不稳定性具有内生性和周期性。针对我国证券市场的具体情况 ,本文提出了相关的政策建议 :在条件成熟时及时推出市场对冲机制 ,逐步实行证券信用交易 ;拓展有效合理的资金渠道 ;在条件成熟的时候 ,考虑放开对三类企业持股时间的限制 ;中央银行要改变状态依存的监管政策 ,实行以规则为基础的实时监管政策 ,防止资金的非法流转。     

Central bank's liquidity provision and firms' financial constraints

This paper investigates the impact of central bank's liquidity operations on the financial constraints of the bank-dependent firms. We use the Reserve Bank of India's liquidity operation called Term Repo Operation (TRO) in the study. The empirical analysis is based on a large scale firm-level data for the period 2011–2016 and panel logit estimation method. Our findings indicate that the financial constraints of the bank-dependent firms have reduced than their counterparts since the introduction of the operation. We also show that larger firms reap significant benefit out of TRO than the smaller firms.     

An analysis of the spillover effects of exchange-traded funds

This article used the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity-Autoregressive Moving Average (GARCH-ARMA) and the exponentially Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity-Autoregressive Moving Average (EGARCH-ARMA) models to study the impact of the spillover and the leverage effects on returns and volatilities of stock index and Exchange Trade Fund (ETF) for developed and emerging markets. Previous unexpected returns for developed and emerging markets which have an opposite influence pattern on ETFs’ returns were identified. The spillover effects from returns are excellent for Hong Kong, followed by Singapore. Meanwhile, Taiwan's stock index return was recorded to have a strong negative impact on ETF return. Notably, this article shows that the spillover effects on stock index and ETF volatilities existed with bilateral influences. Despite a strong positive asymmetric volatility effect in Korea's ETF market, the leverage effect appears to play important roles in the explanation of both stock index and ETF returns.