China's export growth and the China safeguard: threats to the world trading system?

Abstract Is there evidence from China's pre‐WTO accession period that newly imposed U.S. or EU import restrictions deflect Chinese exports to third markets? We examine this question by drawing on a newly constructed data set of U.S. and EU product‐level import restrictions on Chinese trade imposed between 1992 and 2001, and we estimate their impact on Chinese exports to alternative markets. We find no systematic evidence that the import restrictions imposed during this period resulted in Chinese exports surging to third markets. To the contrary, there is weak evidence of a chilling effect on China's exports to third markets.     

Evolving discretionary practices of U.S. antidumping activity

Abstract .  Using data on U.S. dumping margin calculations by the U.S. Department of Commerce (USDOC), we first document the rapid rise in U.S. dumping margins from around 15% in the early 1980s to over 60% by 2000. Second, statistical analysis finds that USDOC discretionary practices have played the major role in rising U.S. dumping margins over this period. Importantly, the evolving effect of discretionary practices is due not only to increasing use of these practices over time, but to apparent changes in implementation of these practices that mean a higher increase in the dumping margin whenever they are applied.     

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.     

Political and Regulatory Risk: Beta Sensitivity in U.K. Electricity Distribution*

To establish price caps, regulators must determine appropriate returns for utilities capital employed. This paper uses the techniques of the Kalman Filter to estimate daily betas for the U.K.s regional electricity companies in the period from privatization to end-1998. The paper demonstrates that utilities risk is time-variant, and establishes significant political and regulatory influences in the systematic risk faced by shareholders. It finds beta to be mean reverting, with little evidence of cyclical variation across the regulatory review cycle. The paper confirms the prevalence of significant excess returns in U.K. privatized electricity distribution and suggests that over-estimation of the systematic risk faced by investors may imply further excess returns in the next regulatory review period.     

Simultaneous Releases of U.S. and Foreign GAAP Earnings

Prior studies examine the incremental information content of U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) reconciliation of U.S. listed foreign firms and find mixed results. One of the main methodological issues in prior studies is the uncertainty concerning the dates of the reconciliation releases. This study examines the information content of U.S.GAAP reconciliation for a sample of U.S. listed foreign firms that released both U.S. and foreign GAAP earnings information simultaneously. The findings show that there is no incremental information content for the U.S. GAAP reconciliation over foreign GAAP earnings. When added to other empirical evidence from prior studies, this studies' results of no incremental information content further support the recent SEC announcement to work towards eliminating the reconciliation by 2009 for firms using IFRS.     

Co-movement of the Chinese and U.S. aggregate stock returns

This article studies the co-movement of the levels, as well as of the volatilities, of the Chinese and U.S. aggregate stock returns in 1995–2014, focusing on the impact of the liberalization of Chinese stock market from 2005. The volatilities of the two returns appear to have started to co-move in 2006. To understand the co-movement, we use the GARCH BEKK method. The result suggests that before 2006, the evolution of the U.S. returns had a tendency to affect the Chinese returns in level and volatility. However, after 2006, the two returns affected each other in a more complex way.     

Awash in a Sea of Confusion: Benefit Corporations,Social Enterprise,and the Fear of “Greenwashing”

In the last five years, the majority of U.S. states enacted benefit corporation legislation, creating a new legal form of business that embraces the “triple-bottom line” of people, planet, and profit. Benefit corporation status provides legal protections for directors and officers, who may now balance social and environmental impact with shareholder returns. It also creates rich opportunities for social entrepreneurs, gives investors more socially responsible options, and offers a helpful designation for consumers. I describe the history and purpose of benefit corporations, evaluate their pros and cons, and argue that safeguards against “greenwashing” make benefit corporations a valuable business form of social enterprise.     

Tariff evasion and rules of origin violations under the Canada‐U.S. Free Trade Agreement

Abstract Using product‐level data on trade between Canada and the U.S., this paper presents evidence of tariff evasion and violation of the rules of origin occurring under the Canada‐U.S. Free Trade Agreement (CUSFTA). It shows that more imports go unreported at the destination country when tariffs are higher. Consistent with the tariff evasion hypothesis, this result implies that the trade creation effect of a free trade agreement may in fact be due to less underreporting. Further, this paper shows that the larger Canadian tariff preference margin for the U.S. is associated with more goods originating in third countries being transshipped through the U.S. territory for re‐export. The preference margin is also positively correlated with the value of excess imports from the U.S., which qualify for preferential treatment. Both results suggest the presence of persistent violations of CUSFTA’s rules of origin.     

The Impact of U.S. Individual and Institutional Investor Sentiment on Foreign Stock Markets

This study examines the degree to which U.S. individual and institutional investor sentiments are propagated abroad. Previous studies construe investor sentiments as fully irrational; we find contrary evidence that individual and institutional investor sentiments are driven by both rational and irrational factors, with distinct effects on domestic and international stock market returns. The generalized impulse response functions from VAR model estimations show that U.S. institutional investor sentiments have varying degrees of impact on the equity markets of the U.K., Mexico, and Brazil, and no effect on Chile. Specifically, the individual investor sentiment effect is statistically significant only for the U.K market. Not surprisingly, the two classes of investor sentiments have a strong significant effect on the U.S. stock market returns. The response of the U.S. to individual investor sentiments is relatively more erratic, while the response to institutional investor sentiments is smoother. This difference in pattern becomes more visible when we consider the response of the foreign stock markets. We find significant effects of rational sentiments of institutional investors on the U.S., the U.K., Mexico, and Brazil. However, there is an insignificant effect of the irrational sentiments on the same set of countries. A direct implication of our empirical evidence is that it is important for international asset pricing models to consider the role of rational sentiments of institutional and individual investors on developed and emerging markets.     

U.S. trade remedy law and agriculture: trade diversion and investigation effects

Abstract .  We study U.S. agricultural antidumping and countervailing duty cases from 1980 to 2005, and gauge the effectiveness of trade remedy law as a form of protection. The purpose is to measure the resulting investigation and trade diversion effects. Previous research on trade in manufactured products has shown that the domestic protection offered by AD and CV duties is largely offset by trade diversion. In contrast, we find that for agriculture, trade diversion is relatively unimportant. So AD and CVD cases are very effective forms of protection for U.S. agriculture.     

Changing aid regimes? U.S. foreign aid from the Cold War to the War on Terror

This paper explores how U.S. bilateral economic aid has changed over time, focusing on how the recent era-in which the War on Terror has played a prominent role in the Bush administration's aid policy-differs from previous eras. In particular, has the renewed geopolitical role of aid coincided with a reduction of aid to the poorest countries or less weight on need in U.S. aid allocation decisions? We start with an analysis of annual U.S. aid budgets from 1955 to 2006. Controlling for domestic political and economic conditions, we find that the War on Terror's effect on the aid budget is significantly larger than is immediately apparent. To explore how the emphasis on need may have changed over time, we use country-level panel data on aid allocations to 119 countries across the same time period. This shows that U.S. aid flows-for the poorest as well as other developing countries-increased with the War on Terror. However, after rising for 35 years, the emphasis placed on need has been falling steadily for core aid recipients during the War on Terror.     

International bonds and the currency risk: How do macroshocks affect returns?

The currency translation risk borne by international investors and the riskiness of returns on long-term bonds both affect international investors' decisions. For the U.S. investor, excess returns on German, Japanese, Canadian, and U.K. bonds have been positively correlated with the respective excess local currency returns (1978–1997). However, for investors who measure their performance in the currencies of these countries, the comparable correlation between U.S. bond returns and positions in U.S. dollars has been negative. Traditional interest rate or portfolio flow models fail to explain the asymmetry. A sticky-price model with spillover effects from the U.S. to other countries is used to explore the effect of macroshocks on these returns.     

The U.S. trade imbalance and real exchange rate: An application of the heterogeneous panel cointegration method

The United States economy suffers from persistent trade deficits, arising from the so-called ‘global external imbalance’. Can the depreciation of the US dollar improve this phenomenon? This study for the first time applies the heterogeneous panel cointegration method to examine the long-run relationship between the real exchange rate and bilateral trade balance of the U.S. and her 97 trading partners for the period 1973–2006. Using new annual data, the empirical results indicate that the devaluation of the US dollar deteriorates her bilateral trade balance with 13 trading partners, but improves it with 37 trading partners, especially for China. In the panel cointegrated framework, a long-run negative relationship between the real exchange rate and the bilateral trade balance exists for the U.S.     

Spillovers of volatility index: evidence from U.S., European,and Asian stock markets

We investigated the cross-market relations of volatility indexes with U.S. and non-U.S. stock market returns. We found that the pervasive VIX influence at both U.S. and non-U.S. stock markets. The VSTOXX and VKOSPI capture the major shocks to the global economy and show movements similar to the VIX. The empirical findings indicate that volatility index changes are important in explaining stock returns. We also examined spillover effects across volatility indexes. The VIX is a main transmitter, and the VKOSPI the main receiver, of these spillovers. The results point to a leading role for the VIX in the international market.     

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.     

Market revaluations of foreign listings' reconciliations to U.S. financial reporting

The Securities and Exchange Commission requires foreign firms wishing to list their securities on the U.S. exchanges to convert their financial statements to U.S.-based generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) in a reconciliation filing known as Form 20-F. This paper extends prior research analyzing the importance of the SEC requirement by examining the value relevance to U.S. capital markets of Form 20-F reconciliation information under two additional hypotheses: investors' anticipation of the reconciliation, and investors' perception of foreign countries' enforcement and reliability in applying local accounting rules. It is argued that the information content of the Form 20-F reconciliation data is preempted (at least partially) on the date of foreign earnings announcements because of investor anticipation of these reconciliations. Therefore, only significant unanticipated reconciliations exhibit value relevance on the date of filing. In addition, investor perception of the reliability of the reconciliations and the degree of confidence in foreign authorities enforcing local GAAP also affect the value relevance of the reconciliation data. This study hypothesizes that reconciliations made by firms from countries with mature and developed capital markets should be more value relevant to U.S. investors. The results show that both unexpected foreign earnings and anticipated reconciliations to U.S. GAAP are significantly associated with unexpected market returns during the week of earnings announcements. The region of the foreign country is also significantly associated with market returns. However, unexpected reconciliations are not significantly associated with unexpected market returns during the week of Form 20-F filing.     

The propagation of U.S. shocks to Canada: Understanding the role of real financial linkages

This paper examines the role of financial frictions in affecting the transmission of U.S. real and financial shocks to Canada using a dynamic stochastic general‐equilibrium model with an active banking sector and financial frictions. We find that the U.S. banking and interbank markets can be a potentially important source of variability of Canadian output and inflation—consistent with the financial crisis. The presence of both the demand and the real supply sides of credit in the model help to capture the stylized facts of both the domestic and the international business cycles.     

Dynamic causality between the U.S. stock market,the Chinese stock market and the global gold market: implications for individual investors’ diversification strategies

This paper proposes a generalization of the prior VAR and EGARCH model to explore the linkage between returns and volatility transmissions in the U.S. stock market, the Chinese stock market, and the global gold market from 10 July 1996 to 20 July 2018. We found that past returns of the U.S. stock market can predict the current returns of the other two markets, and that significant reciprocal volatility transmission existed within and across all three markets. We further implemented average out-of-sample (OOS) forecasting to show that a risk-adjusted portfolio, such as mean-variance with sample estimator, does not outperform an equal-weighted portfolio. This provides insights for individual investors and helps to explain the ongoing disagreement in the portfolio literature concerning the effectiveness of risk-adjusted portfolios and equal-weighted portfolios when the number of assets is small.     

Technological change under residual risk regulation: The case of coke ovens in the U.S. steel industry

An engineering-economic model is used within a dynamic setting to determine the least cost mix of investment and import activities as the U.S. steel industry faces successively tighter controls on coke oven emissions over the next 10 years. In response to Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards proposed for 1995, U.S. steel producers would likely export their toxic pollution by importing 6 million tons of coke per year. About 4 million tons of coke oven capacity is retrofit and about 1 million tons of annual coke consumption is replaced by new iron technologies, such as Corex. The Lowest Achievable Emission Rate (LAER) standards proposed for 1998 roughly double the coke oven retirements estimated to occur under MACT. Coke imports also are substantial but are no higher than under MACT because the additional time allows the industry to invest in more coke-saving blast furnaces and in new less toxic coke-making technologies, such as the Jewell process. The LAER standards in conjunction with higher capital costs, however, force coke imports to more than 8 million tons per year and sharply increase imports of semi-finished steel. Such a situation could exacerbate existing disputes on international steel trade.The authors are associate professor, instructor, and graduate student, respectively. This research was performed under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Mines Distinguished Young Scholar Award Administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities for the Bureau of Mines. Naturally, the usual disclaimer applies.     

Non-tradable goods and the border effect puzzle

The surprisingly high Canada–U.S. border effect estimated by McCallum has been puzzling trade economists in the last ten years. We argue in this paper that conventional estimates of the border effect without consideration of non-tradable goods can overstate the trade reducing effect of the national border and the impacts can be considerable. We then explore the Canada–U.S. case with a numerical general equilibrium model with parameters calibrated to 2001 data. Our counterfactual experiment results suggest that after adjusting for effects of non-tradable goods the Canada–U.S. border effect is reduced to 2.11.