Individuals’ Trading Prior to Earnings Announcements

This paper investigates the relationship between individuals’ net trading and stock price movements before and after annual earnings announcements for the Taiwan Stock Exchange. We conduct an event study on the effects of pre‐event individual trade imbalances on pre‐ and post‐announcement abnormal returns. With a unique and comprehensive dataset, we accurately classify executed orders by aggressiveness of order price. The evidence indicates that while individuals, as a group, are not informed about impending earnings announcements, individuals who place aggressive orders are informed as their net trading coincides with contemporaneous and future stock returns. Aggressive individuals lose their edge during the financial crisis. More importantly, the advantage (disadvantage) for individuals who adopt aggressive (passive) orders weakens when foreign institutions own concentrated equity in firms. We also find that net individual trading contains information about abnormal returns that either past returns or volume does not subsume. Controlling for past returns, trading volume and volatility, or using an alternative measure of net individual trading does not change our conclusions.     

Earnings,institutional investors,tax avoidance,and firm value: Evidence from Taiwan

This study examines the valuation of earnings from China and Taiwan by foreign and domestic institutional investors across a sample of Taiwanese electronics firms. We further compare the valuation of firm earnings reported in tax havens and non-tax havens, and whether these firms have changed tax avoidance activities since 2004 when the Taiwanese government enacted stricter auditing of transfer pricing regulation.Our findings show that both operating income from the home country and investment income are positively associated with firm value. Operating income from China, however, is not significantly related to firm value when institutional ownership of the firm exceeds fifty percent. This result indicates that operating income is valued differently, depending on the location from which the income was generated. Non-operating income enhances firm value regardless of the revenue source. We also report that foreign institutional investors favor operating income from domestic and investment sources over earnings generated from non-domestic sources and other non-operating income. Furthermore, our results suggest that firms rearrange reported profits from subsidiaries located in tax havens to affiliates in other countries following the transfer pricing audit guide Taiwan implemented in 2004. Results also indicate firms may have been shifting profits to other low-tax-rate countries, or to countries which do not require firms to pay taxes, even if they are not doing business in that country.     

Monetary policy and stock returns: Financing constraints and asymmetries in bull and bear markets

We examine asymmetries in the impact of monetary policy surprises on stock returns between bull and bear markets in the period 1994 to 2005. We ask how these impacts respond to the relative ability of firms to obtain external finance. We find that the impact of a surprise monetary policy in a bear market is large, negative, and statistically significant, and this holds across size decile portfolios. The impact of a surprise policy action in a bear market for most industries is significantly greater than the impact of surprise monetary policy in a bull market. Controlling for the capacity for external finance, stock returns of firms in bear states respond more than firms in bull states. Capacity for external finance is more important in a bear market, as it partially mitigates the larger impact of monetary policy in a bear market.     

Earnings Management and the Long-Run Underperformance of Firms Following Convertible Bond Offers

Abstract:  This paper examines whether the long-run underperformance of convertible bond issuers can be explained by earnings management, as reflected in discretionary current accruals around the time of the offer. Consistent with the earnings management hypothesis, we find that convertible issuers who adjust their discretionary current accruals to report higher net income in the issue year will generally experience inferior operating and stock return performance over the five-year post-issue period. Our findings indicate that there is some temporary overvaluation of convertible issuers by the stock market, but that the resultant disappointed investors will subsequently correct their valuation errors. The similarity of our results to those reported within the prior literature on initial public offers (IPOs) and seasoned equity offers (SEOs) suggests that the earnings management hypothesis is not unique to stock offers, but that it actually extends to convertible bond offers.     

Analyzing yield, duration and convexity of mortgage loans under prepayment and default risks

In this article, we construct a general model, which considers the borrower’s financial and non-financial termination behavior, to derive the closed-form formula of the mortgage value for analyzing the yield, duration and convexity of the risky mortgage. Since the risks of prepayment and default are reasonably expounded in our model, our formulae are more appropriate than traditional mortgage formulae. We also analyze the effects of the prepayment penalty and partial prepayment on the yield, duration and convexity of a mortgage, and provide lenders with an upper-bound for the mortgage default insurance rate. Our model provides portfolio managers a useful framework to more appropriately appraise the mortgage and more effectively hedge their mortgage holdings. From the results of sensitivity analyses, we find that higher interest-rate, prepayment and default risks will increase the mortgage yield and reduce the duration and convexity of the mortgage.     

Asymmetric Fluctuating Behavior of China's Housing Prices

The present study explains the reasons for the imbalanced development of the Chinese housing market. Using the quantile autoregression unit‐root test, we examine housing prices in China's five major cities. The results show that the rising and falling of housing prices in these cities exhibits asymmetric reversion. When housing prices fall, market capital is highly sensitive to housing prices, and housing prices resist the pressure to fall further. However, when housing prices rise, the housing market becomes imbalanced, with housing prices tending to overreact in an upturn. The results of this study indicate that when housing prices rise irrationally, the government should intervene in the housing market promptly to prevent housing bubbles.     

论东亚各国资本移动自由化的影响——资本移动自由化的文献综述

亚洲各国的资本移动自由化开始于20世纪80年代后期至90年代之间。历经90年代后期的金融危机,亚洲各国的资本移动情况各不相同。以韩国为例,亚洲危机之后,外资流入股市的比例激增;另一方面,流入印尼和菲律宾的外资则多为外债的借入,投入股市及直接投资的比例几无成长。在中国,以其独特的外资管制政策抑制投入股市的总额之外,90年代后期起,更快速的开放国外直接投资的资本进入。文章拟就有关国际资本移动自由化既存的研究作简单回顾,同时考察亚洲各国对外资管制多样化的各种重要论述。     

Population decentralization policies: the experience of Taiwan

"Social and economic policies and programs adopted by the government of Taiwan have slowed the pace of population concentration and prevented the highly concentrated distribution of population experienced by many developing countries. After presenting a brief analysis of Taiwan's population growth and distribution during the past three decades, this text examines the policies and programs credited with having curbed population concentration. They include both spatial development policies established for the purpose of decentralizing the population and its economic activities, and development policies that, although not designed expressly to curb population concentration, have had such an effect."     

Hotel Selection Criteria Used by Mainland Chinese and Foreign Individual Travelers to Hong Kong

Given the growing number of outbound tourists from Mainland China to other parts of the world, it is important that hoteliers are aware of the different needs of this group of travelers. This study examines differences in the importance ratings of hotel selection criteria between Mainland Chinese and foreign individual travelers to Hong Kong. The results indicate that Mainland Chinese travelers placed different levels of importance on the various attributes examined than did their non-Chinese counterparts. They are generally more demanding than foreign respondents, despite the fact that the budgets they allocate for accommodation are smaller both in percentage and in absolute dollars.