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Full-Text Articles in Business

Partisanship In Loan Pricing, Ramona Dagostino, Janet Gao, Pengfei Ma Dec 2023

Partisanship In Loan Pricing, Ramona Dagostino, Janet Gao, Pengfei Ma

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Does partisanship influence the way investors price financial assets? Using voter registration data of bankers originating large corporate loans, we show that bankers whose party differs from that of the U.S. President charge 7% higher loan spreads than other bankers. This effect holds regardless of borrowers’ partisanship, and becomes stronger for politically active bankers and when partisan media exhibit greater disagreement. Bankers do not match disproportionately with co-partisan borrowers but they lead syndicates more frequently with co-partisan bankers. Our results are not driven by bank or borrower fundamentals, but suggest that investor optimism, driven by political alignment, shapes asset prices.


The Value Of Official Website Information In The Credit Risk Evaluation Of Smes, Cuiqing Jiang, Chang Yin, Qian Tang, Zhao Wang Dec 2023

The Value Of Official Website Information In The Credit Risk Evaluation Of Smes, Cuiqing Jiang, Chang Yin, Qian Tang, Zhao Wang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The official websites of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) not only reflect the willingness of an enterprise to disclose information voluntarily, but also can provide information related to the enterprises’ historical operations and performance. This research investigates the value of official website information in the credit risk evaluation of SMEs. To study the effect of different kinds of website information on credit risk evaluation, we propose a framework to mine effective features from two kinds of information disclosed on the official website of a SME—design-based information and content-based information—in predicting its credit risk. We select the SMEs in the software …


How Commonality Persists? (Through Investors' Sentiment And Attention), Chyng Wen Tee, Raja Velu, Zhaoque Zhou Dec 2023

How Commonality Persists? (Through Investors' Sentiment And Attention), Chyng Wen Tee, Raja Velu, Zhaoque Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Studies on commonality generally attribute the variation in asset returns to the variation in order flows. In this research study, we show that order flows do not predict asset returns, rather their relationship have been static over time. Thus we model both returns and the order flows as endogenous variables, and use investors' sentiment and attention as exogenous factors via a reduced-rank regression. We provide empirical evidence to demonstrate that cross-sectional commonality in attention (sentiment) is linearly (nonlinearly) associated with both returns and order flows at the intraday level, while the sentiment and attention measures themselvesexhibit a nonlinear mutual relationship, …


Are Bond Returns Predictable With Real-Time Macro Data?, Dashan Huang, Fuwei Jiang, Kunpeng Li, Guoshi Tong, Guofu Zhou Dec 2023

Are Bond Returns Predictable With Real-Time Macro Data?, Dashan Huang, Fuwei Jiang, Kunpeng Li, Guoshi Tong, Guofu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the predictability of bond returns using real-time macro variables and consider the possibility of a nonlinear predictive relationship and the presence of weak factors. To address these issues, we propose a scaled sufficient forecasting (sSUFF) method and analyze its asymptotic properties. Using both the existing and the new method, we find empirically that real-time macro variables have significant forecasting power both in-sample and out-of-sample. Moreover, they generate sizable economic values, and their predictability is not spanned by the yield curve. We also observe that the forecasted bond returns are countercyclical, and the magnitude of predictability is stronger during …


Leviathan Inc. And Corporate Environmental Engagement, Po-Hsuan Hsu, Hao Liang, Pedro Matos Dec 2023

Leviathan Inc. And Corporate Environmental Engagement, Po-Hsuan Hsu, Hao Liang, Pedro Matos

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a 2010 special report, The Economist magazine termed the resurgence of state-owned, publicly listed enterprises “Leviathan Inc.” and criticized the poor governance and low efficiency of these firms. We compile a new comprehensive data set of state ownership of publicly listed firms in 44 countries over the period of 2004–2017 and show that state-owned enterprises are more responsive to environmental issues. The effect is more pronounced in economies lacking energy security and strong environmental regulation, and among firms with more local operations and higher domestic government ownership. We find a similar effect on corporate social engagement but not on …


The Economics Of Financial Scams: Evidence From Initial Coin Offerings, Kenny Phua, Bo Sang, Chi Shen Wei, Yang Yu Dec 2023

The Economics Of Financial Scams: Evidence From Initial Coin Offerings, Kenny Phua, Bo Sang, Chi Shen Wei, Yang Yu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We examine the economics of financial scams by analyzing the market for initial coin offerings (ICOs). Using data snapshots of 5,873 ICOs, we find that irregularities in ICO characteristics across listing websites predict higher scam risk and are likely intentional. These patterns are consistent with a model where malicious issuers maximize profits by using irregularities to screen for naïve investors. Almost half of the ICOs in our sample may be scams, amounting to more than U.S. $6 billion in losses. Our results draw attention to the frequent use of screening mechanisms in financial scams.


In Search Of Cryptocurrency Failure, Donglian Ma, Jun Tu, Zhaobo Zhu Dec 2023

In Search Of Cryptocurrency Failure, Donglian Ma, Jun Tu, Zhaobo Zhu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper explores the determinants of cryptocurrency failure and the pricing of crypto failure risk. We document different significant market- and characteristic-based predictors for coin and token failures. The introduction of Bitcoin futures and the outbreak of COVID19 affect the importance of many predictors. Investors require extra return for bearing high failure risk of crypto assets. The return difference across high and low failure risk crypto assets is not explained by the market, size and momentum factors in the cryptocurrency market. Finally, investors benefit from diversifying into high failure risk crypto assets that is little correlated with the stock market.


Is Anti-Herding Always A Smart Choice? Evidence From Mutual Funds, John Byong-Tek Lee, Jun Ma, Dimitris Margaritis, Wanyi Yang Nov 2023

Is Anti-Herding Always A Smart Choice? Evidence From Mutual Funds, John Byong-Tek Lee, Jun Ma, Dimitris Margaritis, Wanyi Yang

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

Recent empirical studies document a negative relation between herding behaviour and the skill of mutual fund managers. We explore this relationship further by focusing on fund managers' contrarian buy and sell behaviour against the market. Our study reveals an asymmetry in the performance of mutual funds with contrarian buy behaviour and contrarian sell behaviour. The contrarian-buy behaviour reflects skill by positively predicting the cross-section of next period's mutual fund returns, while the contrarian-sell behaviour reflects a lack of skill associated with a negative prediction. These findings are robust to various risk-adjusted performance measures. Contrarian-buy funds outperform momentum-buy funds by 3% …


An Idealist’S Approach For Smart Contract Correctness, Duy Tai Nguyen, Hong Long Pham, Jun Sun, Quang Loc Le Nov 2023

An Idealist’S Approach For Smart Contract Correctness, Duy Tai Nguyen, Hong Long Pham, Jun Sun, Quang Loc Le

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this work, we experiment an idealistic approach for smart contract correctness verification and enforcement, based on the assumption that developers are either desired or required to provide a correctness specification due to the importance of smart contracts and the fact that they are immutable after deployment. We design a static verification system with a specification language which supports fully compositional verification (with the help of function specifications, contract invariants, loop invariants and call invariants). Our approach has been implemented in a tool named iContract which automatically proves the correctness of a smart contract statically or checks the unverified part …


Tail Risk Hedging: The Search For Cheap Options, Poh Ling Neo, Chyng Wen Tee Nov 2023

Tail Risk Hedging: The Search For Cheap Options, Poh Ling Neo, Chyng Wen Tee

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The authors find that a simple heuristic of sorting liquid equity options by dollar price to construct a portfolio of cheap put options leads to a surprisingly robust hedge for tail risk – the superior performance holds even when compared against more advanced empirical strategies. Further investigation reveals the asymmetry in market correlation under different market conditions as the mechanism of this robust hedging performance. The cheap options selected by the heuristic comprises of stocks with diverse firm characteristics. The correlation spike accompanying tail risk events leads to the majority of these put options moving into-the-money (ITM), thus compensating the …


Physical Frictions And Digital Banking Adoption, Hyun Soo Choi, Roger Loh Nov 2023

Physical Frictions And Digital Banking Adoption, Hyun Soo Choi, Roger Loh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The behavioral literature suggests that minor frictions can elicit desirable behavior without obvious coercion. Using closures of ATMs in a densely populated city as an instrument for small frictions to physical banking access, we find that customers affected by ATM closures increase their usage of the bank's digital platform. Other spillover effects of this adoption of financial technology include increases in point-of-sale (POS) transactions, electronic funds transfers, automatic bill payments and savings, and a reduction in cash usage. Our results show that minor frictions can help overcome the status-quo bias and facilitate significant behavior change.


Mitigating Industry Contagion Effects From Financial Reporting Fraud: A Competitive Dynamics Perspective Of Non-Errant Rival Firms Exploiting Product-Market Opportunities, Eugene Kang, Nongnapat Thosuwanchot, David Gomulya Nov 2023

Mitigating Industry Contagion Effects From Financial Reporting Fraud: A Competitive Dynamics Perspective Of Non-Errant Rival Firms Exploiting Product-Market Opportunities, Eugene Kang, Nongnapat Thosuwanchot, David Gomulya

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Existing studies show that financial reporting frauds by errant firms cause declines in stock market valuations for non-errant rival firms (i.e. industry contagion effects). We posit that contagion effects may be mitigated by investors’ expectations of non-errant rivals exploiting product-market opportunities at the expense of errant firms. We apply the competitive dynamics literature to argue that non-errant rivals experience lower contagion effects when they have more available slack to engage in competitive actions. This effect is expected to strengthen when rival firms have previously deployed more resources for research and development and advertising investments or have higher prior market share …


Time To Regulate Influencers Who Tell You Where To Put Your Money, Patricia Lui Nov 2023

Time To Regulate Influencers Who Tell You Where To Put Your Money, Patricia Lui

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Financial scandals elsewhere have shown that ‘finfluencers’ do not always act in good faith and can mislead their followers.


Money Changers Have Their Own Fintech Disruption To Grapple With, Aurobindo Ghosh Nov 2023

Money Changers Have Their Own Fintech Disruption To Grapple With, Aurobindo Ghosh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a commentary, SMU Assistant Professor of Finance (Education) and Director of the Citi Foundation-SMU Financial Literacy Programme for Young Adults Aurobindo Ghosh discussed the outlook for money changers in a world of multi-currency apps. He however noted money changers still have a role to play, and shared his views on how money changers can respond to technological disruption.


Estimating And Applying Autoregression Models Via Their Eigensystem Representation, Leo Krippner Oct 2023

Estimating And Applying Autoregression Models Via Their Eigensystem Representation, Leo Krippner

Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics

This article introduces the eigensystem autoregression (EAR) framework, which allows an AR model to be specified, estimated, and applied directly in terms of its eigenvalues and eigenvectors. An EAR estimation can therefore impose various constraints on AR dynamics that would not be possible within standard linear estimation. Examples are restricting eigenvalue magnitudes to control the rate of mean reversion, additionally imposing that eigenvalues be real and positive to avoid pronounced oscillatory behavior, and eliminating the possibility of explosive episodes in a time-varying AR. The EAR framework also produces closed-form AR forecasts and associated variances, and forecasts and data may be …


Toolkit For The Evaluation Of Crypto Tax Risks (Outline), Vincent Ooi Oct 2023

Toolkit For The Evaluation Of Crypto Tax Risks (Outline), Vincent Ooi

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

This Toolkit seeks to provide a practical, structured framework for the identification and assessment of crypto tax risks that can be used by tax administrations. It has three main parts. Firstly, an introduction to the Toolkit and how it should be used. Secondly, a series of questionnaires to complete. Thirdly, a commentary to provide additional context and details on each part of the Toolkit and its application. As tax administrations go through the questionnaires, they can rely on the Commentary to complement their existing knowledge and expertise to accurately identify the crypto tax risks facing their domestic tax systems.


Digital Wealth Management And Consumption: Micro Evidence From Individual Investments, Qian Gong, Mingyuan Ban, Yunjun Yu, Luying Wang, Yan Yuan Oct 2023

Digital Wealth Management And Consumption: Micro Evidence From Individual Investments, Qian Gong, Mingyuan Ban, Yunjun Yu, Luying Wang, Yan Yuan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

With the rapid advancement of digital finance in China, accessing wealth management services through digital platforms has become considerably convenient. However, the potential impact of digital platform investments on residents' consumption remains a relatively unexplored question. This study addresses this gap by leveraging a unique dataset obtained from one of China's largest fintech companies, encompassing individual-level data on consumption and investment. Our findings indicate that engaging in digital platform investments can indeed stimulate residents' consumption. Importantly, participation in digital platform investment has an inclusive effect, with a more pronounced marginal impact on consumption among low-income residents and in-dividuals residing in …


Consumers’ Reaction To Corporate Esg Performance: Evidence From Store Visits, Frank Weikai Li, Frank Weikai Li, Roni Michaely Oct 2023

Consumers’ Reaction To Corporate Esg Performance: Evidence From Store Visits, Frank Weikai Li, Frank Weikai Li, Roni Michaely

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using micro-level data on consumer shopping behavior, this paper investigates end-consumers’ attitudes toward firms’ ESG behavior, and as importantly, the ability of consumers to affect firms’ policy concerning sustainability issues. We find that consumers care about firms’ approach toward ESG, and consumers’ behavior can impact firms’ attitudes. Using ESG incidents as a proxy, we find that the reduction in store visits is more pronounced for ESG-conscious consumers, such as those living in democratic counties, and counties with a higher fraction of educated and younger residents. Online shopping interest data yields similar results. Using abnormally hot temperature as a shock to …


Does Abstract Thinking Facilitate Information Processing? Evidence From Financial Analysts, Frank Weikai Li, Rong Wang, Yang Yu, Gloria Yang Yu Sep 2023

Does Abstract Thinking Facilitate Information Processing? Evidence From Financial Analysts, Frank Weikai Li, Rong Wang, Yang Yu, Gloria Yang Yu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study whether abstract thinking – an essential cognitive trait established by psychological and neuroscientific studies – facilitates analysts’ information processing. Exploiting analysts’ questions during earnings calls, we construct an Abstract Thinking Index (ATI) that measures their tendency to involve abstract words, logical reasoning, broader topics, and future outlooks. We find that abstract thinking improves analysts’ forecast accuracy and recommendation informativeness. Consistent with abstract thinking featuring identifying central characteristics and comprehending intangible things, ATI has stronger effects for firms with fundamentals co-moving more with peers and less tangible information. Additional analyses suggest that ATI captures analysts’ cognitive traits rather than …


The Cost Of Cheap Talk: How Campaign Promises And Default Contributions Affect Donation-Based Crowd Funding Success., Tianci Leon Qiu Sep 2023

The Cost Of Cheap Talk: How Campaign Promises And Default Contributions Affect Donation-Based Crowd Funding Success., Tianci Leon Qiu

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

Non-profit organisations (NPOs) find it increasingly harder to engage donors and raise funds from the public. Post-pandemic: the emphasis on tactics to raise funds online through donation-based crowdfunding (DCF) platforms has surged in importance for both NPO survival and continued beneficiary aid. However, unlike equity-based crowdfunding platforms where campaign organisers are obligated to provide investors with tangible returns based on funding milestones, NPOs on DCF platforms do not have to adhere to any funding milestones or are beholden to any tangible obligations towards donors. Consequently, NPOs are greatly incentivised to deploy cheap talk – non-binding, unverifiable messages and claims to …


What Drives The Value Of Financial Analysts’ Advice? The Role Of Earnings And Growth Forecasts, Ohad Kadan, Leonardo Madureira, Rong Wang, Tzachi Zach Sep 2023

What Drives The Value Of Financial Analysts’ Advice? The Role Of Earnings And Growth Forecasts, Ohad Kadan, Leonardo Madureira, Rong Wang, Tzachi Zach

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We offer a parsimonious index at the individual analyst level to measure the extent to which an analyst relies on earnings and long-term growth forecasts in producing her advice. Using this index, we evaluate the contribution of earnings and growth forecasts to the investment value of analysts’ stock recommendations. We find that the fraction of analysts’ advice attributed to forecasts varies considerably across analysts and sectors. The investment value of recommendations is higher for analysts who rely less on their forecasts and more on other sources of information when forming investment advice. Investors recognize the superiority of recommendations from analysts …


The Information In Asset Fire Sales, Sheng Huang, Matthew C. Ringgenberg, Zhe Zhang Sep 2023

The Information In Asset Fire Sales, Sheng Huang, Matthew C. Ringgenberg, Zhe Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Asset prices remain depressed for years following mutual fund fire sales, but little is known about the causes of these price drops. We show that asymmetric information generates price pressure during fire sales. We separate trades into expected trades, which assume fund managers scale down their portfolio, and discretionary trades. We find that discretionary trades contain fundamental information, whereas expected trades do not. Moreover, other traders cannot distinguish between discretionary and expected trades. Our findings help explain the magnitude and persistence of fire sale discounts: fund managers choose which assets to sell, and information asymmetries make it difficult for arbitrageurs …


Shrinking Factor Dimension: A Reduced-Rank Approach, Ai He, Dashan Huang, Jiaen Li, Guofu Zhou Sep 2023

Shrinking Factor Dimension: A Reduced-Rank Approach, Ai He, Dashan Huang, Jiaen Li, Guofu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We propose a reduced-rank approach (RRA) to reduce a large number of factors to a few parsimonious ones. In contrast to PCA and PLS, the RRA factors are designed to explain the cross section of stock returns, not to maximize factor variations or factor covariances with returns. Out of 70 factor proxies, we find that five RRA factors outperform the Fama-French (2015) five factors for pricing target portfolios, but performs similarly for pricing individual stocks. Our results suggest that existing factor proxies do not provide enough new information at the stock level beyond the Fama-French (2015) five factors.


Who Profits From Trading Options?, Jianfeng Hu, Antonia Kirilova, Gilbert Seongkyu Park, Doojin. Ryu Sep 2023

Who Profits From Trading Options?, Jianfeng Hu, Antonia Kirilova, Gilbert Seongkyu Park, Doojin. Ryu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We use account-level transaction data to examine trading styles and profitability in a leading derivatives market. Approximately 66% of active retail investors predominantly hold simple, one-sided positions in only one class of options, whereas institutional investors are more likely to use complex strategies. Hypothesizing that the complexity of trading styles reflects investors' skills, we examine the effect of options trading styles on investment performance. We find that retail investors using simple strategies lose to the rest of the market. For both retail and institutional investors, selling volatility is the most successful strategy. We conclude that these style effects are persistent …


From Hype To Reality: A Critical Analysis Of Blockchain-Based Regenerative Finance, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Marco Schletz Sep 2023

From Hype To Reality: A Critical Analysis Of Blockchain-Based Regenerative Finance, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Marco Schletz

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The authors dive deep into the field of ReFi, a concept that enhances financial practices through decentralization and focuses on environmental and societal systems. The authors highlight several key problems of the space and point out that genuinely disruptive ReFi models are still in their infancy. The good news is that ReFi’s potentials are manifold and exciting. In the not-too-distant future, we might see financial applications backed by blockchain that can enhance data credibility, exchangeability, and transparency to redefine how corporations create and apportion environmental value.


Is Carbon Risk Priced In The Cross-Section Of Corporate Bond Returns?, Tinghua Duan, Frank Weikai Li, Quan Wen Sep 2023

Is Carbon Risk Priced In The Cross-Section Of Corporate Bond Returns?, Tinghua Duan, Frank Weikai Li, Quan Wen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the pricing of a firm's carbon risk, measured by its carbon emissions intensity, in the cross-section of corporate bond returns. Contrary to the "carbon risk premium" hypothesis, we find bonds of firms with higher carbon emissions intensity earn significantly lower returns. This effect cannot be explained by a comprehensive list of bond characteristics and exposure to known risk factors. Investigating sources of the low carbon premium, we find the underperformance of bonds issued by carbon-intensive firms cannot be fully explained by divestment from institutional investors. Instead, our evidence is most consistent with investor underreaction to carbon risk, …


Bayesian Optimization With Switching Cost: Regret Analysis And Lookahead Variants, Peng Liu, Haowei Wang, Wei Qiyu Aug 2023

Bayesian Optimization With Switching Cost: Regret Analysis And Lookahead Variants, Peng Liu, Haowei Wang, Wei Qiyu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Bayesian Optimization (BO) has recently received increasing attention due to its efficiency in optimizing expensive-to-evaluate functions. For some practical problems, it is essential to consider the path-dependent switching cost between consecutive sampling locations given a total traveling budget. For example, when using a drone to locate cracks in a building wall or search for lost survivors in the wild, the search path needs to be efficiently planned given the limited battery power of the drone. Tackling such problems requires a careful cost-benefit analysis of candidate locations and balancing exploration and exploitation. In this work, we formulate such a problem as …


Evolve Path Tracer: Early Detection Of Malicious Addresses In Cryptocurrency, Ling Cheng, Feida Zhu, Yong Wang, Ruicheng Liang, Huiwen Liu Aug 2023

Evolve Path Tracer: Early Detection Of Malicious Addresses In Cryptocurrency, Ling Cheng, Feida Zhu, Yong Wang, Ruicheng Liang, Huiwen Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With the boom of cryptocurrency and its concomitant financial risk concerns, detecting fraudulent behaviors and associated malicious addresses has been drawing significant research effort. Most existing studies, however, rely on the full history features or full-fledged address transaction networks, both of which are unavailable in the problem of early malicious address detection and therefore failing them for the task. To detect fraudulent behaviors of malicious addresses in the early stage, we present Evolve Path Tracer, which consists of Evolve Path Encoder LSTM, Evolve Path Graph GCN, and Hierarchical Survival Predictor. Specifically, in addition to the general address features, we propose …


The Future Of Cryptocurrency And Blockchain Technology In Finance, Wanyi Wong, Alan @ Ali Madjelisi Megargel Aug 2023

The Future Of Cryptocurrency And Blockchain Technology In Finance, Wanyi Wong, Alan @ Ali Madjelisi Megargel

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Cryptocurrencies have been all the rage in recent years, with many being drawn to their appeal as speculative investment assets. Its proponents also champion the secure and decentralised nature of the technology it is based on, called the blockchain. Given the secure nature of blockchain technology, the idea of adopting cryptocurrencies as legal tender currency has also been mooted and experimented with – with the most famous example being the Central American nation of El Salvador’s bold move to adopting the cryptocurrency Bitcoin as legal tender in September 2021. In theory, this would provide a solution to the high transaction …


Insider Trading And Corporate Spinoffs, Charlie Charoenwong, Kuan Yong David Ding, Jing Pan Jul 2023

Insider Trading And Corporate Spinoffs, Charlie Charoenwong, Kuan Yong David Ding, Jing Pan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper studies insider trading to examine undervaluation as a motive behind corporate spinoffs. We show an unmistakable increase (decrease) in the number of insider purchases (sales) and net purchases (sales) in the four quarters prior to a spinoff announcement. In addition, relative to a benchmark period, insider selling is significantly lower, and their net purchases significantly higher, in the three quarters prior to a spinoff announcement compared to other periods. We find that announcement period excess returns for abnormal net insider purchases are significantly higher than excess returns for abnormal net insider sales. Moreover, only firms with abnormal net …