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The Chinese stock market is a typical emerging market with special features that are very different from those of mature markets. The objective of this study is to investigate whether and how these features affect the volatility‐volume relation for Chinese stocks.

This paper examines the roles of the number of trades, size of trades, and share volume in explaining the volatility‐volume relation in the Shanghai Stock Exchange with high frequency trade data used.

The results confirm that the volatility‐volume relation is driven mainly by the number of trades on the Chinese stock market. The number of trades explains the volatility‐volume relation better than the size of trades. Furthermore, some results are obtained that differ from those of mature markets, such as the US market. The results show that the second largest sized trades affect the volatility more than other trades on the Chinese market.

The results show that, in the Shanghai Stock Exchange, informed traders camouflage their private information or manipulation behavior through the second largest sized trades. The results may have important implications for work explaining the volatility‐volume relation on the Chinese stock market, further providing a reference by which to regulate emerging markets.

We examine tick sizes, stock prices, and share turnover in eighteen stock markets in developed countries and find that differences in mandatory tick sizes explain a significant proportion of the variation in stock prices among markets, and that lower percentage tick sizes are not associated with higher turnover. We consider the implications of these findings for the recent decimalization of stock trading in the United States, and conclude that decimal trading is likely to result in lower stock prices (due to stock splits) with no substantial change in dollar trading volume.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the changes in B‐share discounts across 76 Chinese stocks around an important regulatory event to understand the importance of political risk in pricing stocks in emerging markets.

On February 19, 2001, the Chinese Securities Regulatory Commission announced that Chinese residents would be allowed to own B‐share classes of stocks traded on both the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets. These share classes were previously restricted to foreign investors while domestic residents were only permitted to hold A‐share classes of stock and were typically priced at a significant discount. This regulatory change triggered a dramatic decline of prevailing B‐share discounts from 80 percent down to 40 percent.

The paper finds that the largest declines in the B‐share discounts around this regulatory event are concentrated in the firms with low government ownership stakes and are unrelated to the firms' risks, relative supplies of shares outstanding and liquidity attributes.

This surprising finding challenges the current wisdom about what influences the B‐share discount and particularly the role of political risk in explaining the discount puzzle.

The paper offers an alternative interpretation for the B‐share discount puzzle. The findings have important implications for China's future financial liberalization policies.

This paper aims to investigate Chinese bull and bear markets. The Chinese stock market has experienced a long period of bear cycle from early 2000 until 2006, and then it fluctuated greatly until 2010. However, the cyclical behaviour of stock markets during this period is less well established. This paper aims to answer the question why the Chinese stock market experienced a long duration of bear market and what factors would have impacted this cyclical behaviour.

By comparing the intervals of bull and bear markets between stocks and indices based on a Markov switching model, this paper examines whether different industries or A- and B-share markets could lead to different stock market cyclical behaviour and whether firm size can determine the relationship between the firm stock cycles on the market cycles.

This paper finds a high degree of overlapping of bear cycles between stocks and indices and a high level of overlapping between the bear market and a fraction of stock with increasing stock prices. This leads to the conclusion that the stock performance and trading behaviour are widely diversified. Furthermore, the paper finds that the same industry may have different overlapping intervals of bull or bear cycles in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets. Firms with different sizes could have different overlapping intervals with bull or bear cycles.

This paper fills the literature gap by establishing the cyclical behaviour of stock markets.

Previous studies on the Malaysian securitised real estate market have largely emphasised on performance analysis, whereas the importance of securitised real estate in asset allocation is largely ignored. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to examine the role of Malaysian property shares and real estate investment trusts (REITs) in a mixed‐asset portfolio from 1991 to 2006.

The mean‐variance and downside risk optimisations were utilised to assess the role of REITs and property shares in a mixed‐asset portfolio allocation. More specifically, the portfolio diversification potential and return enhancement benefits for both assets were examined.

The results showed that property shares offer little diversification benefits or portfolio return enhancement, whereas the equally weighted REITs portfolio does provide some diversification benefits and return enhancements under the mean‐variance and downside risk frameworks. However, the benefits have diminished in recent years. Besides, the results also revealed that the equally‐ and value‐weighted REIT portfolios do behave differently.

This study has several important implications for investors. Importantly, investors should consider the inclusion of REITs rather than property shares in their portfolios.

This paper is one of few studies in emerging markets, although Malaysia was the first country to introduce REITs in Asia. Additionally, it could be the first attempt to assess the downside risk of Malaysian securitised real estate.

I find that median wealth plummeted over the years 2007–2010, and by 2010 was at its lowest level since 1969. The inequality of net worth, after almost two decades of little movement, was up sharply from 2007 to 2010. Relative indebtedness continued to expand from 2007 to 2010, particularly for the middle class, though the proximate causes were declining net worth and income rather than an increase in absolute indebtedness. In fact, the average debt of the middle class actually fell in real terms by 25 percent. The sharp fall in median wealth and the rise in inequality in the late 2000s are traceable to the high leverage of middle-class families in 2007 and the high share of homes in their portfolio. The racial and ethnic disparity in wealth holdings, after remaining more or less stable from 1983 to 2007, widened considerably between 2007 and 2010. Hispanics, in particular, got hammered by the Great Recession in terms of net worth and net equity in their homes. Households under age 45 also got pummeled by the Great Recession, as their relative and absolute wealth declined sharply from 2007 to 2010.

The purpose of the analysis is to estimate price elasticities of demand for individual FTSE‐100 stocks between 1 August 1994 and 31 July 1995.

This paper measures excess demand in order to measure the slope of the demand curve for individual stocks. An econometric approach is adopted that models the slope of the excess demand curve within an econometric framework using signed market maker transactions data between 1 August 1994 and 31 July 1995.

The findings confirm that the demand curves for individual stocks do slope downwards. For example, the mean estimated percentage fall in stock price caused by a new share issue that is 1 per cent of the existing number of outstanding shares is −5.6.

Downward sloping demand curves pose difficulties for theories in finance that rely on the law of one price and price‐takers in competitive markets. For example, the dividend policy and capital structure irrelevance theorems of corporate finance, and the efficient markets hypothesis assumption that the price of a stock is determined only by information about future cash flows and the discount rate are not consistent with a downward sloping demand curve.

The slope of the demand curve is estimated using an econometric model and market makers' transactions data for specific stocks. This approach identifies observable unexpected shifts in the demand for a stock as unexpected changes in market makers' inventories. This approach is superior to event studies because it provides multiple observations that enable the slope of the demand curve to be quantified with sufficient confidence to calculate the price elasticity of demand for the stock.

We highlight key assumptions implicit in the models used by academics conducting research on market efficiency. Most notably, many academics assume that investors can borrow unlimited amounts and construct long-short portfolios at zero cost. We relax these assumptions and examine the attractiveness of long-short strategies as stand-alone investments and as a part of a diversified portfolio. Our analysis illustrates that the key benefit of long-short investing is adding diversification to a portfolio beyond what the market provides. We show that as stand-alone investments, nontrivial risk remains in the “hedge” strategies and that the returns generally do not beat the market in a head-to-head contest. Our findings raise questions about the degree of inefficiency in anomaly studies because plausible measures of costs generally offset strategy returns. The ability to achieve greater diversification may be, but is not necessarily, due to market inefficiency. We also highlight the key role of the generally ignored but critically important short interest rebate and show that absent this rebate, the long-short strategies we examine generally yield insignificant returns.

This paper looks at one relatively less‐visited issue in market timing: switching investments on common stocks between different stock markets, namely, “intermarket timing”. By employing the stock price data for the period of 1992‐2002 from a developed market, Hong Kong, and two emerging markets, Shanghai and Shenzhen, this paper examines potential gains and the required predictive accuracy for intermarket timing between Hong Kong and Shanghai, and between Hong Kong and Shenzhen from Hong Kong investors’ perspective. Potential gains could be obtained from such timing strategy, and the non‐high minimum forecasting ability required for successful timing is fairly attainable for Hong Kong investors, even after taking into account the assumed transaction costs.

This paper examines empirically Chinese stock price reactions to financial announcements for 2002. We find that B share prices react more strongly to negative financial announcements than A shares. The announcements can lead to excess returns. One explanation is that the markets are segmented by the inconvertibility of China’s currency, as well as by the structural change of investors. Meanwhile China listed companies need to improve their transparency and disclosure.