Advances in Pacific Basin Business, Economics and Finance: Volume 8

Although stock price co-movement has been examined extensively, its causes are not well understood. Using a decomposition method, we extract three information components from the turnover rate: market information, firm-specific information, and investors' opinion divergence. We find that market information strengthens stock price co-movement, whereas firm-specific information weakens it. Moreover, our analysis shows that divergence of investors' opinion increases stock price variations but weakens price co-movement.

Value at risk (VaR) and expected shortfall (ES) are popular market risk measurements. The former is not coherent but robust, whereas the latter is coherent but less interpretable, only conditionally backtestable and less robust. In this chapter, we compare an innovative artificial neural network (ANN) model with a time series model in the context of forecasting VaR and ES of the univariate time series of four asset classes: US large capitalization equity index, European large cap equity index, US bond index, and US dollar versus euro exchange rate price index for the period of January 4, 1999, to December 31, 2018. In general, the ANN model has more favorable backtesting results as compared to the autoregressive moving average, generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARMA-GARCH) time series model. In terms of forecasting accuracy, the ANN model has much fewer in-sample and out-of-sample exceptions than those of the ARMA-GARCH model.

Recently, there has been much progress in developing Markov switching stochastic volatility (MSSV) models for financial time series. Several studies consider various MSSV specifications and document superior forecasting power for volatility compared to the popular generalized autoregressive heteroscedasticity (GARCH) models. However, their application to option pricing remains limited, partially due to the lack of convenient closed-form option pricing formulas which integrate MSSV volatility estimates. We develop such a closed-form option pricing formula and the corresponding hedging strategy for a broad class of MSSV models. We then present an example of application to two of the most popular MSSV models: Markov switching multifractal (MSM) and component-driven regime switching (CDRS) models. Our results establish that these models perform well in one-day-ahead forecasts of option prices.

This chapter examines momentum in the corporate bond market using a comprehensive data set that includes bonds with different characteristics and provisions. We find that momentum exists in a wide range of corporate bonds. The momentum effect is more significant for callable bonds and lower-rated bonds. This effect cannot be explained by standard risk factors and liquidity in the bond market. Bond momentum prevails over time and remains strong even after the corporate bond market becomes more transparent and liquid with establishment of TRACE. The high magnitude of momentum profits casts doubt that they can be explained by risk-based theories.

The information of pledging stocks for liquidity by controlling shareholders of publicly traded firms in Taiwan has been required to disclose since 1998. A common perception by market practitioners in Taiwan is that stock pledging by controlling shareholders is an indication of expropriation of firms. This study first examines the determinants of the tendency that controlling shareholders of firms in Taiwan pledge their stocks to financial institutions for liquidity and then evaluates how stock pledging by controlling shareholders affects their firms' accounting and financial performances. Determinants of firm attributes, market conditions, and corporate governance are identified. The tendency of stock pledging by controlling shareholders has a negative effect on accounting and financial performances. The negative effect on firm performance is reduced when the firm has a higher level of working capital. These findings indicate that stock pledging by controlling shareholders is an indication of weak corporate governance when the firm has lower liquidity. These findings may provide insights to the equity markets of the other countries in which public firms have more concentrated ownerships.

We revisit the performance of seasoned equity offerings (SEOs) in Japan against the backdrop of the Tokyo Stock Exchange's historical nine-year run up from 1980 to 1989, with the time period chosen for the purpose of comparison to previous studies. We analyze the long-run performance of 427 issues or 387 Japanese firms that conducted SEOs from 1980–1990. Initial results indicate that SEOs firms underperform standard benchmarks over subsequent 3- and 5-year periods after issuing. The results from value-weighted portfolios, however, show that SEOs outperform three out of five benchmarks. The results from the Fama-French three factor model show that all of the 16 SEO portfolios (formed by size and book-to-market quartiles) have positively significant intercepts, and most loadings are significant. The size loadings from time series three-factor model of value-weighted portfolio show that SEO sample firm returns exhibit characteristics of large firms as opposed to those of small firms under equally weighted portfolios. Our results support the arguments that (1) the returns of issuing firms are not idiosyncratic, but rather covary with the common factors of nonissuing firms and that (2) the underperformance of SEOs is sensitive to the precise test specifications.

Using a 10,709 firm-year sample covering the 1998–2007 period, we investigate the determinants of capital structure among 1,491 ASEAN-4 (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand) emerging market firms. Building on the work of previous authors, we apply the two-step generalized method of moments (Arellano & Bond, 1991) to develop country-specific dynamic models of target leverage decisions. The right-hand variables incorporate a lagged leverage term that controls for the firms' target adjustment process and the following four explanatory variables: firm size, profitability, tangibility, and nondebt tax shields. The sign and significance of each coefficient provides evidence regarding whether the impact of the associated variable is consistent with the trade-off or pecking order theories. We find that size is negatively associated with leverage among Malaysian, Philippine, and Thai firms but positively associated among Indonesian firms. Profitability is negatively associated with leverage among Indonesian and Malaysian firms but positively associated among Philippine firms. Tangibility is negatively associated with leverage among Malaysian firms but positively associated among Philippine firms. While the impacts of size and profitability are consistent with pecking order theory, the impact of tangibility is not supportive of a specific theory. Of the four variables, size is consistently influential, while nondebt tax shields have no significant impact among firms in any country.

This study examines the impact of the trading volume on Initial Public Offering (IPO) initial return in the context of an emerging market from January 2006 to December 2016. Models consist of hierarchical and multiple regressions have been evaluated. Our results show, firstly, IPO provides an average of 21.90% of initial return to investors on the first trading day, 9.08% of return on the second day of trading, and 7.12% of return on the third day of return. Secondly, there is a positive relationship between the oversubscription ratio and initial return and no relationship between trading volume and initial return on the first three trading day. Thirdly, the trading volume does not act as a moderator that worsens the relationship between the oversubscription ratio and initial return. Lastly, this study shows that investors should actively participate in the subsequent trading of an IPO. Higher participation will bring greater liquidity and shareholder wealth in the stock market. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study on the moderating effect of trading volume on IPO initial return in an emerging market.

This study aims to examine the effects of participating in physical activities on female college graduates' starting salaries. We used an instrumental variable (IV) approach to address the possible endogeneity problem. By using the Taiwan Higher Education Dataset, we discovered that participating in physical activities during college increased an individual's earnings by 3.06%. The significant positive effect of physical activity on salary demonstrated in this study is consistent with that in other relevant studies. This study also discovered that both the intensity and the persistence of participation in physical activities affected salary outcomes. Individuals earned 0.17%–2.41% more if they exercised for an additional hour per week, suggesting the importance of the intensity of participation in physical activities. In addition, persistent participation in physical activities was associated with a 3.08% higher salary.

The market is a complex organism that has rich implications and essential stipulations. From the property right perspective, the market is a series of property rights, rules, and system arrangements (an aggregation of rights), which are constructed, owned, operated, and managed by the state and from which the government can benefit. The market property right is owned by the government (state). The costs of market property right include tangible (explicit) cost, system cost, human cost, and other cost components. The study on the cost components of market property right is conducive to establishing the principle of matching investment with ownership, matching investment with income, and integrating (unifying) cost with efficiency.

Applying a computable general equilibrium model to assess the impact of tariffs between the US and China, Taiwan stands to gain from trade diversion of the trade war between the two largest world economies in the short term.

Initially, Taiwan suffered a minor loss from the sector-specific tariff on steel and aluminum imposed by the US. However, its loss is mitigated after counting counter measures from foreign countries. The cumulated US tariffs and China's retaliations led to trade diversion effect. Taiwan's initial loss from the steel and aluminum tariffs was over compensated by a series of trade war between the US and China.

Under the scenario of the cumulated tariffs of $250 billion of US imports and China's retaliations of $110 billion on US goods, the social welfare, exports, import and trade balance in Taiwan increased. Its terms of trade improved as well. Real wage increases slightly more for unskilled labor than for skilled labor. The short-term effect of the trade war has positive effect on all macro indicators of Taiwan's economy.

On sectoral shift, Taiwan's export will gain the most in precision engineering products ($2,941.6 million), followed by electronics ($310.7 million) and agricultural products ($31.3 million). The negative effects are in sectors such as business services ($58.323 million), other services ($46.9 million), transportation service ($36.6 million), trade service ($25.3 million), and finance service ($24.5 million). Taiwan's total imports will increase by 0.59%, whereas its total export will increase by 0.33%. However, total trade balance still increases by $451.1 million.

The study also finds that Taiwan has a high degree of overlapping export commodities with China in the US market, much higher than most major trading partners for the US, yet its market share for those products in the US is ranged from 1% to 5% only. Moreover, more than 60% of Taiwan's export to the US is in intermediate goods which have less product differentiation than those in final consumption goods. These two factors will provide an opportunity for Taiwan to exploit the US market.

Though the short-term effect of trade war is positive, Taiwan needs to have a long-range planning amid the external shocks. Policy implications for Taiwan are to map out a cosmopolitan view of its geo-strategy by diversifying outward foreign direct investment and trade destinations. It needs to reduce the “systemic risk” of relying on single market in China which is vulnerable to the uncertainty in the US–China relations. If the trade war lasts too long, Taiwan would need to reevaluate its triangular trade-investment nexus with China and the US as well as its role in the global supply chain.