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Emergence Of Fintech And The Lasic Principles, David K. C. Lee, Ernie G. S. Teo Dec 2015

Emergence Of Fintech And The Lasic Principles, David K. C. Lee, Ernie G. S. Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Financial technology (FinTech) has been receiving much attention lately. For instance, global investments in FinTech ventures (covering sectors from remittances, loans to payments) have grown 3 times from US$ 4.05 billion in 2013 to US$ 12.21 billion in 2014 (Accenture, 2015). Although the development of FinTech is still in early stages, they will define and shape the future of the financial industry. Even though there are large amounts of funds entering the market, not all FinTech ventures will be successful; various factors (both internal and external) are crucial. We identify some of these factors which we term the LASIC (Low …


Open Market Share Repurchase Programs And Corporate Governance: Company Performance, Gary Caton, Jeremy Goh, Yen Teik Lee, Scott C. Linn Dec 2015

Open Market Share Repurchase Programs And Corporate Governance: Company Performance, Gary Caton, Jeremy Goh, Yen Teik Lee, Scott C. Linn

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Payout policies based on share repurchase programs provide greater flexibility than do those based on cash dividends. We develop and test an empirical model in which strongly-governed companies outperform weakly-governed companies after announcing share repurchase programs. Our findings include positive associations between strong governance and both post-announcement adjusted operating performance and abnormal stock returns. The results are robust to sample selection bias, different sample criteria, governance measurement, and various control variables. In addition, governance strength is associated with larger post-announcement changes in CEO incentive compensation and merger and acquisition activity, both of which we argue are consistent with strongly-governed companies …


Industry Interdependencies And Cross-Industry Return Predictability, David E. Rapach, Jack Strauss, Jun Tu, Guofu Zhou Dec 2015

Industry Interdependencies And Cross-Industry Return Predictability, David E. Rapach, Jack Strauss, Jun Tu, Guofu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We use the adaptive LASSO from the statistical learning literature to identify economically connected industries in a general framework that accommodates complex industry interdependencies. Our results show that lagged returns of interdependent industries are significant predictors of individual industry returns, consistent with gradual information diffusion across industries. Using network analysis, we find that industries with the most extensive predictive power are key central nodes in the production network of the U.S. economy. Further linking cross-return predictability to the real economy, lagged employment growth for the interdependent industries predicts individual industry employment growth. We also compute out-of-sample industry return forecasts based …


Volume Information In Nikkei And Topix Futures Transactions, Chyng Wen Tee, Christopher Ting Dec 2015

Volume Information In Nikkei And Topix Futures Transactions, Chyng Wen Tee, Christopher Ting

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

According to the Kyle (1985) model of informed trading, information in trade size is likely to effect a permanent price impact, as opposed to bid-ask bounce, which mainly captures transitory price fluctuation. However, two prominent structural models in the literature do not include trade size in their framework. In this paper, we present a nesting relationship of major structural models and formulate a generalized model that includes all relevant trade variables. A new measure to quantify the amount of information in the order flow is proposed. Using this price impact measure, our empirical analysis shows that it is indeed the …


On The Edge Of Disruption, David K. C. Lee Nov 2015

On The Edge Of Disruption, David K. C. Lee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The financial system is on the verge of massive disruption. Innovative competitors operating on sleek business models and offering new alternative services are entering at the bottom of the market, where gross margins are low and latent demand is high. As these new entrants scale and progress through higher market segments, they will erode incumbent pricing power.


Competition Of The Informed: Does The Presence Of Short Sellers Affect Insider Selling?, Massimo Massa, Wenlan Qian, Weibiao Xu, Hong Zhang Nov 2015

Competition Of The Informed: Does The Presence Of Short Sellers Affect Insider Selling?, Massimo Massa, Wenlan Qian, Weibiao Xu, Hong Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study how the presence of short sellers affects the incentives of the insiders to trade on negative information. We show it induces insiders to sell more (shares from their existing stakes) and trade faster to preempt the potential competition from short sellers. An experiment and instrumental variable analysis confirm this causal relationship. The effects are stronger for "opportunistic" (i.e., more informed) insider trades and when short sellers' attention is high. Return predictability of insider sales only occurs in stocks with high short-selling potential, suggesting that short sellers indirectly enhance the speed of information dissemination by accelerating trading by insiders. …


The Bright Side Of Political Uncertainty: The Case Of R&D, Julian Atanassov, Brandon Julio, Tiecheng Leng Nov 2015

The Bright Side Of Political Uncertainty: The Case Of R&D, Julian Atanassov, Brandon Julio, Tiecheng Leng

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the relationship between political uncertainty and R&D investment by exploiting the timing of U.S. gubernatorial elections as a source of plausibly exogenous variation in uncertainty. In contrast to the literature documenting negative effects of political uncertainty on real investment, we find that uncertainty over government policy encourages firm-level R&D. Firms increase R&D investments by an average of 4.6% in election years relative to non-election years. The uncertainty effect is stronger in hotly contested elections, in politically sensitive and hard-to-innovate industries, and in firms subject to higher growth options and greater product market competition. Our findings suggest that, as …


A Risk- And Complexity-Rating Framework For Investment Products, Benedict S. K. Koh, Francis Koh, David K. C. Lee, Kian Guan Lim, David Ng, Kok Fai Phoon Nov 2015

A Risk- And Complexity-Rating Framework For Investment Products, Benedict S. K. Koh, Francis Koh, David K. C. Lee, Kian Guan Lim, David Ng, Kok Fai Phoon

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Many investors who bought such investments as Lehman Brothers’ minibonds did not understand the products’ complicated features. This fact suggests that if the inherent risk and complexity of products’ structure are not clearly understood by investors, they will be unable to make informed decisions. Some practitioners have recently attempted to calibrate product complexity. The authors propose a framework for classifying investment product risk and complexity separately with a list of factors that contribute to these attributes. They demonstrate the framework’s simplicity and usefulness in helping investors make informed decisions, showing that it can be used to calibrate a variety of …


New Approach To Density Estimation And Application To Value-At-Risk, Kian Guan Lim, Hao Cheng, Nelson K. L. Yap Nov 2015

New Approach To Density Estimation And Application To Value-At-Risk, Kian Guan Lim, Hao Cheng, Nelson K. L. Yap

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The key contribution in this paper is to provide a new approach in estimating the physical distribution of the underlying asset return by using a quadratic Radon-Nikodym derivative function. The latter function transforms a fitted Variance Gamma risk-neutral distribution that is obtained from traded option prices. The generality of the VG distribution helps to avoid unnecessary mis-specification bias. The estimated empirical distribution is then used to find the risk measure of VaR. We show that possible underestimation of VaR risk using existing methods is largely not due to VaR itself but perhaps due to mis-specification errors which we minimize in …


Trading Costs On The Stock Exchange Of Thailand, Nattawut Jenwittayaroje, Charlie Charoenwong, David K. Ding, Yung Chiang Yang Oct 2015

Trading Costs On The Stock Exchange Of Thailand, Nattawut Jenwittayaroje, Charlie Charoenwong, David K. Ding, Yung Chiang Yang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines the components of trading costs incurred in trading large and liquid stocks listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand. We find that aggressive orders pay an immediacy price measured by price impact, whereas executed passive orders gain the immediacy price. We also find a sizable opportunity cost from the unexecuted portion of a limit order that more than offsets the benefit obtained from the partial fulfillment of the order. The total trading cost, which includes price impact and opportunity cost, is positively related to order size and stock price volatility, but negatively associated with firm size, stock …


Local Business Cycles And Local Liquidity, Gennaro Bernile, George Korniotis, Alok Kumar, Qin Wang Oct 2015

Local Business Cycles And Local Liquidity, Gennaro Bernile, George Korniotis, Alok Kumar, Qin Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines whether state-level economic conditions affect the liquidity of local firms. We find that liquidity levels of local stocks are higher (lower) when the local economy has performed well (poorly). This relation is stronger when local financing constraints are more binding, the local information environment is more opaque, and local institutional ownership levels and trading intensity are higher. Overall the evidence supports the notion that the geographical segmentation of U.S. capital markets generates predictable patterns in local liquidity.


Tail Event Driven Asset Allocation: Evidence From Equity And Mutual Funds Markets, Wolfgang Karl Hardle, David K. C. Lee, Sergey Nasekin, Xinwen Ni, Alla Petukina Aug 2015

Tail Event Driven Asset Allocation: Evidence From Equity And Mutual Funds Markets, Wolfgang Karl Hardle, David K. C. Lee, Sergey Nasekin, Xinwen Ni, Alla Petukina

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The correlation structure across assets and opposite tail movements are essential to the asset allocation problem, since they determine the level of risk in a position. Correlation alone is not informative on the distributional details of the assets. Recently introduced TEDAS -Tail Event Driven ASset allocation approach determines the dependence between assets at tail measures. TEDAS uses adaptive Lasso based quantile regression in order to determine an active set of negative nonzero coefficients. Based on these active risk factors, an adjustment for intertemporal correlation is made. In this research authors aim to develop TEDAS, by introducing three TEDAS modifications differing …


Related Securities And Equity Market Quality: The Case Of Cds, Ekkehart Boehmer, Sudheer Chava, Heather Tookes Aug 2015

Related Securities And Equity Market Quality: The Case Of Cds, Ekkehart Boehmer, Sudheer Chava, Heather Tookes

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We document that equity markets become less liquid and equity prices become less efficient when markets for single-name credit default swap (CDS) contracts emerge. This finding is robust across a variety of market quality measures. We analyze the potential mechanisms driving this result and find evidence consistent with negative trader-driven information spillovers that result from the introduction of CDS. These spillovers greatly outweigh the potentially positive effects associated with completing markets (e.g., CDS markets increase hedging opportunities) when firms and their equity markets are in “bad” states. In “good” states, we find some evidence that CDS markets can be beneficial.


Why Do U.S. Firms Invest Less Over Time?, Fangjian Fu, Sheng Huang, Rong Wang Jul 2015

Why Do U.S. Firms Invest Less Over Time?, Fangjian Fu, Sheng Huang, Rong Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The ratio of capital expenditure to total assets of U.S. firms decreases by more than half from 1980 to 2012. The decline in capital investment is pervasive; it has occurred for firms in most industries and is robust to firms of different sizes, investment opportunities, profitability, accesses to external financing, and expenses on R&D or acquisitions. Existing theories of corporate investment fall short in explaining the decline trend. The decline is also not explained by time variation in firm characteristics, industry composition, and public listing cohorts, or by corporate lifecycle. Our further evidence suggests that it is related to the …


The Persistence Of Long-Run Abnormal Returns Following Stock Repurchases And Offerings, Fangjian Fu, Sheng Huang Jul 2015

The Persistence Of Long-Run Abnormal Returns Following Stock Repurchases And Offerings, Fangjian Fu, Sheng Huang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The long-run abnormal returns following both stock repurchases and seasoned equity offerings disappear for the events in 2003–2012. The disappearance is associated with the changing market environment: increased institutional investment, decreased trading costs, improved liquidity, and enhanced regulations on corporate governance and information disclosure. In response to the more efficient pricing of stocks, firms become less opportunistic in stock repurchases and offerings. Recent events of stock repurchases and offerings are motivated more by business-operating reasons than to exploit mispricing. Both external market factors and internal firm factors contribute to the disappearance of the postevent abnormal returns. Our findings on the …


Home Away From Home: Geography Of Information And Local Investors, Gennaro Bernile, Alok Kumar, Johan Sulaeman Jul 2015

Home Away From Home: Geography Of Information And Local Investors, Gennaro Bernile, Alok Kumar, Johan Sulaeman

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We develop a 10K-based measure of spatial variation in the availability of value-relevant information that reflects the multi-dimensional nature of firm location. Spatially distributed information generates location-based information asymmetries that affect institutional portfolio decisions and performance. Institutions overweigh firms with greater local economic exposure and earn superior returns on corresponding trades, even for firms not headquartered locally. These patterns are stronger among harder-to-value stocks. Consistent with local informational advantage, local investor performance increases with the local exposure of individual stock holdings and her portfolio as a whole, and more so when her portfolio is more heavily tilted toward local stocks.


Density Forecast Evaluation For Dependent Financial Data: Theory And Applications, Aurobindo Ghosh, Anil K. Bera Jul 2015

Density Forecast Evaluation For Dependent Financial Data: Theory And Applications, Aurobindo Ghosh, Anil K. Bera

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper, we propose a formal test for density forecast evaluation in presence of dependent data. Apart from accepting or rejecting the tested model, our smooth test identifies the possible sources (such as the location, scale and shape of the distribution) of rejection, thereby helping in revising the initial model. We also propose how to augment the smooth test to investigate explicit forms of dependence in the data within the same test framework. An extensive application to S&P 500 returns indicate capturing time-varying volatility and non-gaussianity significantly improve the performance of the model. Although we are dealing with index …


The Invisible Hand Of Short Selling: Does Short Selling Discipline Earnings Management?, Massimo Massa, Bohui Zhang, Hong Zhang Jun 2015

The Invisible Hand Of Short Selling: Does Short Selling Discipline Earnings Management?, Massimo Massa, Bohui Zhang, Hong Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We hypothesize that short selling has a disciplining role vis-a-vis firm managers that forces them to reduce earnings management. Using firm-level short-selling data for thirty-three countries collected over a sample period from 2002 to 2009, we document a significantly negative relationship between the threat of short selling and earnings management. Tests based on instrumental variable and exogenous regulatory experiments offer evidence of a causal link between short selling and earnings management. Our findings suggest that short selling functions as an external governance mechanism to discipline managers.


Buying Insurance The D-I-Y Way, Benedict Koh Jun 2015

Buying Insurance The D-I-Y Way, Benedict Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Singaporeans face two key risks in life: dying too young and living too long. The latter risk, commonly known as longevity risk, has been the key focus of the Central Provident Fund Advisory Panel's recent deliberation and recommendations. By saving the Basic Minimum Sum and purchasing a life annuity, Singaporeans can hedge the risk of outliving their lifetime savings.


E-Finance In Asean, David Kuo Chuen Lee May 2015

E-Finance In Asean, David Kuo Chuen Lee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.


Institutional Change Versus Resilience: A Study Of An Incorporation Of Independent Directors In Singapore Banks, Lai Si Tsui-Auch, Toru Yoshikawa Apr 2015

Institutional Change Versus Resilience: A Study Of An Incorporation Of Independent Directors In Singapore Banks, Lai Si Tsui-Auch, Toru Yoshikawa

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine how Anglo-American capital market logic penetrated into Singapore where relational logic tends to guide business activities and illustrate how domestic banks reacted to this imported logic in the corporate governance field. We argue that the banks’ ability to accommodate competing logics was enhanced by state agencies’ willingness to modify Anglo-American standards to fit the local context. Given the resulting institutional ambiguities in rules, local banks, while incorporating higher outside representation on their boards, reinterpreted the meaning of independence and emphasized the resource provision role rather than the monitoring function of outside directors. The resultant institutional change has been …


Disaggregating Activities Of Daily Living Limitations For Predicting Nursing Home Admission, Joelle H. Y. Fong, Olivia S. Mitchell, Benedict S. K. Koh Apr 2015

Disaggregating Activities Of Daily Living Limitations For Predicting Nursing Home Admission, Joelle H. Y. Fong, Olivia S. Mitchell, Benedict S. K. Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Objective: To examine whether disaggregated activities of daily living (ADL) limitations better predict the risk of nursing home admission compared to conventionally used ADL disability counts. Data Sources: We used panel data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) for years 1998–2010. The HRS is a nationally representative survey of adults older than 50 years (n = 18,801). Study Design: We fitted Cox regressions in a continuous time survival model with age at first nursing home admission as the outcome. Time-varying ADL disability types were the key explanatory variables. Principal Findings: Of the six ADL limitations, bathing difficulty emerged as …


The Psychology Of Unethical Behavior In The Finance Industry, Marko Pitesa Apr 2015

The Psychology Of Unethical Behavior In The Finance Industry, Marko Pitesa

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The finance industry has been singled out as a case of rampant unethical behavior and corporate greed. Drawing on scientific research on unethical behavior from the disciplines of psychology, behavioral ethics, behavioral economics, and organizational behavior, I discuss three characteristics of the finance industry that might explain the high level of unethical behavior in this domain of work. I review research explaining how the disproportionate representation of power and wealth might affect how people working in finance approach social relationships, with important consequences for their propensity to behave unethically. Next, I review the literature suggesting that competitive and demanding work …


Investor Sentiment Aligned: A Powerful Predictor Of Stock Returns, Dashan Huang, Fuwei Jiang, Jun Tu, Guofu Zhou Mar 2015

Investor Sentiment Aligned: A Powerful Predictor Of Stock Returns, Dashan Huang, Fuwei Jiang, Jun Tu, Guofu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We propose a new investor sentiment index that is aligned with the purpose of predicting the aggregate stock market. By eliminating a common noise component in sentiment proxies, the new index has much greater predictive power than existing sentiment indices have both in and out of sample, and the predictability becomes both statistically and economically significant. In addition, it outperforms well-recognized macroeconomic variables and can also predict cross-sectional stock returns sorted by industry, size, value, and momentum. The driving force of the predictive power appears to stem from investors' biased beliefs about future cash flows.


Predictability Of Eu Bank Stress Test Results, Kian Guan Lim Mar 2015

Predictability Of Eu Bank Stress Test Results, Kian Guan Lim

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Since the global financial crisis of 2008 and the European sovereign debt crisis of 2009, the banking system in EU and in the Eurozone in particular has been under-performing and weak. The EU bank stress tests were conducted for capital adequacies and to avoid systemic risks. The first test results indicated that of over 120 banks, seven banks failed the stress tests. Spain, with 27 tested banks, made up the biggest portion of the test banks. In this paper we examine using nonlinear LOGIT and PROBIT regression models, the predictability of stress test failures on the sample of Spanish banks, …


How Do Institutional Investors Trade When Firms Buy Back Their Shares?, Sheng Huang, Zhe (Joe) Zhang Feb 2015

How Do Institutional Investors Trade When Firms Buy Back Their Shares?, Sheng Huang, Zhe (Joe) Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study how institutional investors trade when firms buy back shares. We find that institutions sell following share repurchase announcements. The institutional sell-off results in a more concentrated ownership by institutions, as the number of institutions in the investor base declines after accounting for the change in the universe of institutions. While some institutions sell shares passively to meet the firm demand for the market to clear, the overall institutional sell-off only accounts for 27% of shares bought back contemporaneously by firms. Many firms experience a net inflow of institutional investment. The institutional sell-off is greater in firms that experience …


Momentum Life Cycle Around The World, Frank Weikai Li, K. C. John Wei Feb 2015

Momentum Life Cycle Around The World, Frank Weikai Li, K. C. John Wei

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The momentum life cycle (MLC) hypothesis first proposed by Lee and Swaminathan (2000) applies also to global markets. Early-stage strategies significantly outperform the late-stage and conventional strategies in most countries. Individualism culture is positively associated with late-stage but unrelated to early-stage momentum profitability, suggesting that early- and late-stage momentums are driven by different underlying mechanisms. Consistent with Stein’s (2009) model that arbitrageurs could amplify mispricing, we find that late-stage momentum profits are more pronounced in countries with lower limits to arbitrage. Furthermore, we find that the MLC also applies to exchange traded funds in the United States.


Limited Attention, Marital Events, And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray, Melvyn Teo Jan 2015

Limited Attention, Marital Events, And Hedge Funds, Yan Lu, Sugata Ray, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We explore the impact of limited attention on investment performance by analyzing the returns of hedge fund managers who are distracted by personal events such as marriage and divorce. We find that marriages and divorces are associated with significantly lower fund alpha, during the six-month period surrounding the event and for up to two years after the event. Relative to the pre-event window, fund alpha falls by an annualized 8.50 percent during a marriage and 7.39 percent during a divorce. Busy fund managers who manage larger funds and engage in high tempo investment strategies are more affected by marriage. Fund …


The Interaction Effects Of Ceo Power, Social Connections And Incentive Compensation On Firm Value, Gary Caton, Choo Yong, Jeremy Goh, Jinghao Ke, Scott C. Linn Jan 2015

The Interaction Effects Of Ceo Power, Social Connections And Incentive Compensation On Firm Value, Gary Caton, Choo Yong, Jeremy Goh, Jinghao Ke, Scott C. Linn

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study the relation between company value and the interplay between CEO power, CEO equity incentives and the friendliness of the board of directors. Following Bebchuk, Cremers and Peyer (2011), we measure CEO power as the proportion paid to the CEO of the total compensation paid to the top five executives of the firm. We find that strong CEO equity incentives and the presence of a friendly board of directors both individually moderate the negative effect of CEO power on Tobin’s q. Moreover, these variables also work together. We find that firm value tends to increase when equity incentives are …


Asset Allocation In The Chinese Stock Market: The Role Of Return Predictability, Jian Chen, Fuwei Jiang, Jun Tu Jan 2015

Asset Allocation In The Chinese Stock Market: The Role Of Return Predictability, Jian Chen, Fuwei Jiang, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this article the authors investigate asset allocation in the Chinese stock market from the perspective of incorporating return predictability. Based on a host of return predictors, they find significant out-of-sample return predictability in the Chinese stock market. They then examine the performance of active portfolio strategies—such as aggregate market timing as well as industry, size, and value-rotation strategies—designed to profitably exploit return predictability. Strong evidence is found by the authors that these portfolio strategies incorporating return predictability can deliver superior performance—up to 600 basis points per annum and almost double the Sharpe ratios—compared with the passive buy-and-hold benchmarks that …