Correlation and return dispersion dynamics in Chinese markets

This paper studies the relation between firm-level return dispersions and correlations among Chinese stocks during periods of unusually large upward and downward swings. We analyze individual stock returns across 18 sectors and test if return dispersions and stock correlations show asymmetric patterns for extreme up and down markets. Evidence from studies on U.S. stocks suggests that equity return correlations tend to be much greater on the downside than on the upside and that the degree of comovement gets even stronger during extreme market states. However, in the case of Chinese stock market, we find that higher downside correlations apply to only stocks within the Financial sector. With the exception of Financial stocks, we find that stock correlations are significantly higher during up markets, rather than down markets. Regarding firm-level return dispersions, our findings are consistent with rational asset pricing model predictions. We find that equity return dispersions are significantly higher during periods of large price changes.     

Book reviews

Review of Industrial Organization -     

Eva®*: An integrated financial management system**

Both the rise of hostile takeovers and the phenomenal success of LBOs in the 1980s can be explained in part as capital market responses to the shortcomings of the top-down, EPS-based model of financial management that has long dominated corporate America. the EVA financial management system, which presents the 1990s most serious challenge to the dominance of the EPS model, borrows important aspects from the LBO movement, particularly its focus on capital efficiency and ownership incentives. Unlike the LBO movement, however, the EVA system accomplishes such goals without the high leverage and concentration of risk that limit LBOs to the mature sector of the US economy.     

Ceo Compensation And The Transformation Of Banking

We examine the compensation strategies of commercial bank holding companies (BHCs) during 1992–2000. In particular, we analyze whether CEO compensation is more closely tied to the presence of growth options and to risk than is revealed in earlier research. We also examine whether BHC entry into investment banking has influenced compensation policies. Our evidence shows a stronger link between growth options and CEO compensation in the 1990s than observed in earlier studies and that pay‐for‐performance sensitivities are substantially larger for BHCs that have entered the underwriting business. We also find that BHC leverage and variability in returns have positive effects on CEO incentive pay. Finally, we find some evidence supporting the hypothesis that pay‐for‐performance sensitivities decline generally at BHCs as return variability increases, as agency theory predicts.     

Futures hedging under mark‐to‐market risk

This article introduces mark‐to‐market risk into the conventional futures hedging framework. It is shown that a hedger concerned with maximum daily loss will considerably reduce his futures position when the risk is taken into account. In case of a moderate hedge horizon, the hedger will hedge approximately 80% of his spot position. The effect of mark‐to‐market risk decreases very slowly as the hedge horizon increases. If the hedger is concerned with average daily loss, the effect is minimal for a moderate hedge horizon. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 23:389–398, 2003     

Effects of electronic trading on the Hang Seng Index futures market

This investigation of the switch from open-outcry trading to electronic trading on the Hang Seng Index (HSI) futures contract reveals that the bid–ask spread narrows and the futures price plays more of a role in information transmission. Factors, such as anonymity in trading and fast order execution in electronic trading, attract informed traders to the futures market, enhancing the information flow. Our results provide support for the worldwide trend of transforming open-outcry markets into electronic trading platforms.     

Economic Growth in Transition

This paper sets the contributions to this issue in the context of a large and rapidly growing literature. It argues, on theoretical and empirical grounds, that future research should focus on transitional growth dynamics.     

Imputing continuous data under some non-Gaussian distributions

There has been a growing interest regarding generalized classes of distributions in statistical theory and practice because of their flexibility in model formation. Multiple imputation under such distributions that span a broader area in the symmetry–kurtosis plane appears to have the potential of better capturing real incomplete data trends. In this article, we impute continuous univariate data that exhibit varying characteristics under two well-known distributions, assess the extent to which this procedure works properly, make comparisons with normal imputation models in terms of commonly accepted bias and precision measures, and discuss possible generalizations to the multivariate case and to larger families of distributions.     

Context,values and moral dilemmas: Comparing the choices of business and law school students

Much has been written about the ethics and values of today's business student, but this research has generally been characterized by a variety of methodological shortcomings — the use of convenience samples, a failure to establish the relevance of comparison groups employed, attempts to understand behavior in terms of unidimensional values preselected by the researcher, and the lack of well-designed longitudinal studies. The research reported here addresses many of these concerns by comparing the values and ethical decision making behavior of a large cohort of students entering an M. B. A. program to students entering law school. Using the Rokeach value survey and several ethical decision making vignettes, significant differences were found between the two groups which have important implications for both the business and legal professions and the education of their future leaders.