Social networks in the global banking sector

We show that banks with shared social connections partner more often in the global syndicated loan market and that central banks in the network play dominant roles in various interbank transactions, indicating that social connections facilitate business connections. However, more centralized banks in the network also contribute significantly to the global systemic risk. Moreover, we find the soft information generated by social networks is particularly valuable when potential partners operate under different accounting and regulatory standards. Finally, we show that the recent banking crisis significantly limited the positive soft information effects of social networks in the global banking system.     

Zombie Board: Board Tenure and Firm Performance

We show that board tenure exhibits an inverted U‐shaped relation with firm value and accounting performance. The quality of corporate decisions, such as M&A, financial reporting quality, and CEO compensation, also has a quadratic relation with board tenure. Our results are consistent with the interpretation that directors’ on‐the‐job learning improves firm value up to a threshold, at which point entrenchment dominates and firm performance suffers. To address endogeneity concerns, we use a sample of firms in which an outside director suffered a sudden death, and find that sudden deaths that move board tenure away from (toward) the empirically observed optimum level in the cross‐section are associated with negative (positive) announcement returns. The quality of corporate decisions also follows an inverted U‐shaped pattern in a sample of firms affected by the death of a director.     

The Wealth Effects of Fairness Opinions in Takeovers

This paper explores the wealth effects associated with a bidder's decision to solicit a fairness opinion in a takeover transaction. Using a hand‐collected sample with bidders’ filing proxy statements, this paper finds that the use of fairness opinions does not negatively affect bidder shareholders’ wealth, a finding that contradicts prior studies’ findings. In addition, I find a positive wealth effect associated with bidder use of fairness opinions in the post‐Rule 2290 period. Collectively, these results are consistent with a fairness opinion being used by bidder management as a means to facilitate transactions rather than a mechanism to entrench management.     

ETF Premiums and Liquidity Segmentation

Exchange traded funds (ETFs) provide a means for investors to access assets indirectly that may be accessible at a high cost otherwise. I show that liquidity segmentation can explain the tendency for ETFs to trade at a premium to net asset value (NAV) as well as the life‐cycle pattern in premiums. ETFs with larger NAV tracking error standard deviations (TESDs) tend to trade at higher premiums and the liquidity benefits offered by foreign ETFs and fixed income ETFs are revealed to be the most valuable to investors. Further tests validate that TESD has the desirable properties of a liquidity segmentation measure.     

Annual report readability and corporate agency costs

Annual reports are the main sources of information for outside investors’ investment decisions and enable shareholders to supervise the management. Difficulties with the readability of these reports may therefore have serious consequences. Using 19,221 firm-year observations of Chinese A-share listed firms from 2001 to 2015, we investigate the association between annual report readability and corporate agency costs, where readability is proxied by report file length and/or file size. We find that firms with better annual report readability experience lower agency costs, and the negative association between readability and agency costs is more pronounced in firms with higher external audit quality, internal control quality or analyst coverage. These results hold after several robustness checks. The positive effect of annual report readability is stronger in private firms than in state-owned enterprises, and becomes stronger after the implementation of new accounting standards in 2007. Readable annual reports can help in monitoring corporate insiders’ opportunistic behavior and thus reduce agency costs.     

Political uncertainty and firms' information environment: Evidence from China

How political uncertainty affects the supply of value relevant information about a firm is an important but unresolved question. Using an emerging market setting where political leaders are expected to exert significant influence on economic activities, we examine the effect of political uncertainty caused by turnovers of local government leaders on a firm’s information environment. We find that during periods of political uncertainty, the total amount of idiosyncratic information about a firm that is available to the market is reduced. The adverse effect on information supply is manifest in firms that are more politically dependent and stronger when uncertainty is more severe. Further, we provide evidence suggesting that firms react to political uncertainty by reducing the amount and the quality of information provided to investors. We find that information intermediaries such as financial analysts and the media have a moderating effect on the information environment as they increase the production of information during periods of political uncertainty. However, these intermediaries do not negate the net loss of information.     

国内手机营销渠道演变探析

随着移动通信技术的不断发展和进步,作为移动通信终端产品的手机和人们的生活联系越来越紧密。在不同的技术背景和市场环境下,手机的渠道营销模式也呈现出不同的特点。通过对不同市场阶段的手机营销渠道的归纳和总结,对即将到来的3G时代下的手机营销渠道进行分析和探讨,有助于国内手机营销环节中的运营商、生产商、批发商、零售商更好地把握商机,明确自身在营销渠道中的定位。     

3G时代移动互联网展望

移动通信具有可移动性这一鲜明特点,互联网则是现今信息传播的最重要载体,移动通信与互联网结合产生移动互联媒体,这将是现在乃至未来一段时期内通信的发展趋势。本文将围绕中国移动互联网的现状和发展以SWOT的方式进行讨论,并简要分析。     

A re-examination of the forward exchange rate unbiasedness hypothesis

A Re-Examination of the Forward Exchange Rate Unbiasedness Hypothesis. — This paper applies the Phillips and Hansen estimation and inference procedures to re-examine the hypothesis that the forward exchange rate is an unbiased predictor of the future spot exchange rate. The results indicate that the 90-day forward exchange rate is not an unbiased predictor. However, the 90-day forward and future spot exchange rates are cointegrated. Only for the U.K. pound/U.S. dollar exchange rate is there an error correction representation. Overall, however, the evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that risk-averse agents in the forward foreign exchange market form expectations rationally.     

EXTREME VALUE AT RISK: A SCENARIO FOR RISK MANAGEMENT

This paper uses the generalised extreme value (GEV) distribution to model the extreme losses that are likely to occur during market crashes, in the case of an investor who has long positions in stocks and currencies. The null hypothesis – which tests for normality of asset returns – is rejected due to asymmetry of these returns. We assume that the asymmetric behaviour and volatility of the returns are captured by the shape and scale parameters, respectively, of a GEV distribution. The data set includes stock indices for the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and South Africa, and the South African rand exchange rates against the US dollar observed from 3 January 2005 to 30 December 2009. In addition, we divide this sample period into two periods: the pre‐crisis period, from 3 January 2005 to 31 December 2007 and the crisis period, from 1 January 2008 to 30 December 2009. We compared the estimates of value at risk (VaR) using an extreme value theory (EVT) model, with the estimates derived from the traditional variance–covariance method and found that during the crisis the 99% extreme VaR estimates are more reliable as they lie within the Basel II green zone. These results suggest that, at higher quintiles, the VaR estimates based on EVT are reliable and more accurate than estimates from the traditional method.