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Full-Text Articles in Business

Asset Gathering By Hedge Fund Firms, Melvyn Teo Dec 2011

Asset Gathering By Hedge Fund Firms, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre

We explore agency issues within hedge fund firms. We find that firms that launch many funds tend to underperform other firms by between 3 to 5 percent per year after adjusting for risk. These findings are strongest for firms offering funds that pursue many distinct strategies, invest in a variety of geographical regions, locate in a gamut of countries, and offer different base currencies. Our results allow fund investors to distinguish, ex-ante, firms that focus on delivering alpha from those that focus on gathering assets.


Stochastic Capacity Investment And Flexible Vs. Dedicated Technology Choice In Imperfect Capital Markets, Onur Boyabatli, L. Bertil Toktay Dec 2011

Stochastic Capacity Investment And Flexible Vs. Dedicated Technology Choice In Imperfect Capital Markets, Onur Boyabatli, L. Bertil Toktay

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper analyzes the impact of endogenous credit terms under capital market imperfections in a capacity investment setting. We model a monopolist firm that decides on its technology choice (flexible versus dedicated) and capacity level under demand uncertainty. Differing from the majority of the stochastic capacity investment literature, we assume that the firm is budget constrained and can relax its budget constraint by borrowing from a creditor. The creditor offers technology-specific loan contracts to the firm, after which the firm makes its technology choice and subsequent decisions. Capital market imperfections impose financing frictions on the firm. Our analysis contributes to …


A Multiechelon Inventory Problem With Secondary Market Sales, Alexandar Angelus Dec 2011

A Multiechelon Inventory Problem With Secondary Market Sales, Alexandar Angelus

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We consider a finite-horizon, multiechelon inventory system in which the surplus of stock can be sold (i.e., disposed) in the secondary markets at each stage in the system. What are called nested echelon order-up-to policies are shown to be optimal for jointly managing inventory replenishments and secondary market sales. Under a general restriction on model parameters, we establish that it is optimal not to both sell off excess stock and replenish inventory. Secondary market sales complicate the structure of the system, so that the classical Clark and Scarf echelon reformulation no longer allows for the decomposition of the objective function …


Charting Your Financial Goals, Benedict Koh Dec 2011

Charting Your Financial Goals, Benedict Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Every one of us has financial goals but not many of us know how to go about achieving them. We often lack investment knowledge or expertise to design an investment plan that optimises our savings. Consequently, we adopt the default approach of leaving all our savings in bank deposits. By doing so, we have already made an asset allocation decision, one that is very conservative. Over time, we soon realise that this conservative investment plan is simply not working as our savings are not compounding fast enough to keep up with inflation. We need to invest more wisely so that …


Opportunities And Challenges For The Asset Management Industry, Knowledge@Smu Dec 2011

Opportunities And Challenges For The Asset Management Industry, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Singapore, with its open economy and stable business environment, is host to some of the world's largest asset management companies. It has been observed, however, that local asset management firms are lagging far behind; somehow unable to capitalise on the same opportunities available to the global giants. Speaking at a conference organised by SMU's Centre for Asset Securitisation and Management in Asia, a panel of industry experts shared their views on what it would take to get both local and Asia-based firms into the big league.


Longevity Risk Management In Singapore's National Pension System, Joelle H. Y. Fong, Olivia S. Mitchell, Benedict S. K. Koh Dec 2011

Longevity Risk Management In Singapore's National Pension System, Joelle H. Y. Fong, Olivia S. Mitchell, Benedict S. K. Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Although annuities are a theoretically appealing way to manage longevity risk, in the real world relatively few consumers purchase them at retirement. To counteract the possibility of retirees outliving their assets, Singapore’s Central Provident Fund, a national defined contribution pension scheme, has recently mandated annuitization of workers’ retirement assets. More significantly, the government has entered the insurance market as a public sector provider for such annuities. This article evaluates the money’s worth of life annuities and discusses the impact of the government mandate and its role as an annuity provider on the insurance market.


Designing A More Efficient And Fairer Tax System, Knowledge@Smu Nov 2011

Designing A More Efficient And Fairer Tax System, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

A competent tax system should meet an economy's fiscal needs, but that cannot exist without a tax design that understands, pre-empts, and ultimately shapes human behaviours. Drawing from the UK's Mirrlees Review, Richard Blundell, research director at the London-based Institute of Fiscal Studies, delivered a lecture at Singapore Management University's School of Economics on the principles of the tax reform, and the challenges that await governments in formulating a coherent and economically efficient tax structure.


Specification Sensitivity In Right-Tailed Unit Root Testing For Explosive Behavior, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shu-Ping Shi, Jun Yu Nov 2011

Specification Sensitivity In Right-Tailed Unit Root Testing For Explosive Behavior, Peter C. B. Phillips, Shu-Ping Shi, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

Right-tailed unit root tests have proved promising for detecting exuberance in economic and financial activities. Like left-tailed tests, the limit theory and test performance are sensitive to the null hypothesis and the model specification used in parameter estimation. This paper aims to provide some empirical guidelines for the practical implementation of right-tailed unit root tests, focusing on the sup ADF test of Phillips, Wu and Yu (2011), which implements a right-tailed ADF test repeatedly on a sequence of forward sample recursions. We analyze and compare the limit theory of the sup ADF test under deferent hypotheses and model specifications. The …


Supporting Global Metals Markets: The Role Of The London Metals Exchange, Knowledge@Smu Nov 2011

Supporting Global Metals Markets: The Role Of The London Metals Exchange, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Most people would expect automobiles and electronics, comprised of many important metal parts, to be sold at relatively stable prices. Little do consumers appreciate, however, the backend market mechanisms that keep these prices stable. A prospective car buyer does not have to monitor his or her dream car's daily price fluctuations, for example, precisely because the parts that go into its manufacture maintain steady prices. This is, in part, the doing of metal exchanges that regulate the demand and supply of metals. Liz Milan, managing director of the London Metals Exchange Asia, explained this and more at a seminar organised …


Dating The Timeline Of Financial Bubbles During The Subprime Crisis, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu Nov 2011

Dating The Timeline Of Financial Bubbles During The Subprime Crisis, Peter C. B. Phillips, Jun Yu

Research Collection School Of Economics

A new recursive regression methodology is introduced to analyze the bubble characteristics of various financial time series during the subprime crisis. The methods modify a technique proposed in Phillips, Wu, and Yu (2011) and provide a technology for identifying bubble behavior with consistent dating of their origination and collapse. The tests serve as an early warning diagnostic of bubble activity and a new procedure is introduced for testing bubble migration across markets. Three relevant financial series are investigated, including a financial asset price (a house price index), a commodity price (the crude oil price), and one bond price (the spread …


Flagship Funds At Hedge Fund Families, Melvyn Teo Oct 2011

Flagship Funds At Hedge Fund Families, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre

Motivated by the stellar performance of flagship funds such as the Renaissance Medallion fund, we ask whether hedge fund firms (e.g. Renaissance Technologies) have incentives to protect the performance of their flagship funds (e.g. Medallion). We find that the flagship fund tends to outperform other funds within the fund family. The fees and redemption terms of non-flagship funds at launch is correlated with the past performance of the flagship fund. Finally, flagship fund performance has a positive impact on net flows into the other funds within the same family.


Predictions For Protection: A System To Measure And Detect Asset Bubbles, Knowledge@Smu Oct 2011

Predictions For Protection: A System To Measure And Detect Asset Bubbles, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Millions of lives can be ruined with the bursting of economic bubbles. Just in the past two decades alone, the world has had the misfortune of witnessing two such incidents; first with the dot-com burst, and then most recently, with the housing and sub-prime crisis that led to a global recession. While there is reportedly no cure for the greed, economists have made strides to identify and predict bubbles – thereby paving the way for institutional stopgaps that could well prevent a financial crisis.


What Is Behind The Asset Growth And Investment Growth Anomalies?, Fangjian Fu Oct 2011

What Is Behind The Asset Growth And Investment Growth Anomalies?, Fangjian Fu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Existing studies show that firm asset and investment growth predict cross-sectional stock returns. Firms that shrink their assets or investments subsequently earn higher returns than firms that expand their assets or investments. I show that the superior returns of the low asset and investment growth portfolios are due to the omission of delisting returns in CRSP monthly stock return file and that the poor returns of the high asset and investment growth portfolios are largely driven by the subsample of firms that have issued large amounts of debt or equity in the previous year. Controlling for the effects of the …


How The Mindless Growth Mantra Of Modern Economics Is Failing Us, Knowledge@Smu Sep 2011

How The Mindless Growth Mantra Of Modern Economics Is Failing Us, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

As the world ponders the possibility of yet another global recession, one economist has offered up, instead, a critical view of the fundamental flaws within a system so caught up with consumption that a second wave recession would seem more intentional than unnerving. In 'The End of Progress: How modern economics has failed us', author Grame Maxton takes readers through a re-examination of 'the invisible hand' and puts forth several radical ideas for how the world economy may repair itself.


Building Structured Products: Like Manufacturing A Complex, Abstract Car, Singapore Management University Aug 2011

Building Structured Products: Like Manufacturing A Complex, Abstract Car, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

What are structured products, and how do they fit in with clients' needs and the banks' range of services? Experts from Standard Chartered Bank's (SCB) structuring business provided their take at SMU's Lee Kong Chian School of Business Public Lecture.


Building Structured Products: Like Manufacturing A Complex, Abstract Car, Knowledge@Smu Aug 2011

Building Structured Products: Like Manufacturing A Complex, Abstract Car, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

The inner workings of structured financial products and the structured products industry might seem complicated to outsiders looking in. After all, regulatory restrictions, quantitative financial modelling, and foreign exchange options are not exactly universally understood commonplace terms. Industry insiders at a Lee Kong Chian School of Business Public Lecture say, however, that an appreciation for this seemingly complex domain is more about attitude than aptitude.


Acquisitions Driven By Stock Overvaluation: Are They Good Deals?, Fangjian Fu, Leming Lin, Micah Officer Aug 2011

Acquisitions Driven By Stock Overvaluation: Are They Good Deals?, Fangjian Fu, Leming Lin, Micah Officer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Overvaluation may motivate a firm to use its stock to acquire a target whose stock is not as overpriced (Shleifer and Vishny (2003)). Though hypothetically desirable, these acquisitions in practice create little, if any, value for acquirer shareholders. Two factors often impede value creation: payment of a large premium to the target and lack of economic synergies in the acquisition. We find that overvaluationdriven stock acquirers suffer worse operating performance and lower long-run stock returns than control firms that are in the same industry, similarly overvalued at the same time, have similar size and Tobin’s q, but have not pursued …


Effects Of National Culture On Earnings Quality Of Banks, Chee Yeow Lim, Kanagaretnam Kiridaran, Gerald J. Lobo Aug 2011

Effects Of National Culture On Earnings Quality Of Banks, Chee Yeow Lim, Kanagaretnam Kiridaran, Gerald J. Lobo

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine the relation between four dimensions of national culture and earnings quality of banks using a sample of banks from 39 countries. Our main analysis, which focuses on the pre-financial crisis period 1993–2006, indicates that banks in high individualism, high masculinity, and low uncertainty avoidance societies manage earnings to just-meet-or-beat the prior year's earnings. In tests of income smoothing through loan loss provisions, we find that banks in high individualism, high power distance, and low uncertainty avoidance societies report smoother earnings. Our exploratory analysis of the effects of national culture on accounting outcomes during the financial crisis period 2007–2008 …


Asset Performance Evaluation With Mean-Variance Ratio, Zhidong Bai, Kok Fai Phoon, Keyan Wang, Wing-Keung Wong Jul 2011

Asset Performance Evaluation With Mean-Variance Ratio, Zhidong Bai, Kok Fai Phoon, Keyan Wang, Wing-Keung Wong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Bai, et al. (2011c) develop the mean-variance-ratio (MVR) statistic to test the performance among assets for small samples. They provide theoretical reasoning to use MVR and prove that our proposed statistic is uniformly most powerful unbiased. In this paper we illustrate the superiority of our proposed test over the Sharpe ratio (SR) test by applying both tests to analyze the performance of Commodity Trading Advisors (CTAs). Our findings show that while the SR test concludes most of the CTA funds being analyzed as being indistinguishable in their performance, our proposed statistics show that some funds outperform the others. On the …


Size And Return: A New Perspective, Fangjian Fu, Wei Yang Jul 2011

Size And Return: A New Perspective, Fangjian Fu, Wei Yang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We document robust empirical evidence that, after controlling for idiosyncratic volatility, large stocks earn significantly higher returns than small stocks. Our empirical results indicate that idiosyncratic volatility is positively related to return, but negatively related to size. Hence, failure to control for idiosyncratic volatility generates a downward omitted variable bias and leads to the widely documented negative relation between size and return. We explain the two contrasting size-return relations, with and without the control for idiosyncratic volatility, in a parsimonious equilibrium model that incorporates three empirical regularities: some individual investors are under-diversified; small stocks have higher idiosyncratic volatilities than large …


Do Merger-Related Operating Synergies Exist?, Gennaro Bernile, Scott W. Bauguess Jul 2011

Do Merger-Related Operating Synergies Exist?, Gennaro Bernile, Scott W. Bauguess

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Executives frequently forecast large operating efficiency gains from mergers. Using these projections, we study the impact of operating synergies on merger performance. Investors' reaction to mergers varies directly with the availability of these forecasts and the gains they imply, and post-merger operating performance increases with the predictable component of forecasted synergies based on deal characteristics. The realized improvements, however, do not depend on the availability of forecasts or the surprise they convey, and post-merger stock returns reconcile discrepancies between investors' ex ante beliefs and mergers' ex post performance related to management forecasts. Overall, the evidence supports the neoclassical view that …


The Risk Exposures Of Asia-Focused Hedge Funds, Melvyn Teo Jul 2011

The Risk Exposures Of Asia-Focused Hedge Funds, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre

How have Asia-focused hedge funds adjusted their risk exposures in response to the recent financial crisis? By evaluating fund performance relative to an augmented Fung and Hsieh (2004) model, we find that Asia-focused hedge funds have broadly trimmed risk exposures post-crisis. They have reduced their exposure to small stocks relative to large stocks, scaled back their loadings on high yield corporate bonds relative to low yield U.S. sovereign debt, and pared their allocation to the Japanese equity markets. At the same time, however, they are now more exposed to Asian equity markets.


Investor Heterogeneity, Investor-Management Agreement And Open Market Share Repurchase, Sheng Huang, Anjan V. Thakor Jun 2011

Investor Heterogeneity, Investor-Management Agreement And Open Market Share Repurchase, Sheng Huang, Anjan V. Thakor

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper develops and tests a new theoretical explanation for why a firm conducts open-market stock repurchases. Investors may disagree with the manager about the firm’s investment projects. A repurchase causes a change in the investor base as investors who are more likely to disagree with the manager tender their shares. This model leads to the following predictions: first, a firm is more likely to buy back shares when the level of investor-management agreement is low, and second, the level of agreement improves following a repurchase. Our empirical tests provide strong support for these predictions. The results are robust to …


Financial Hedging Decision On Procurement Risk For Newsvendor Model With Value-At-Risk Constraint, Yuan Wen, Qing Ding, Jian Chen Jun 2011

Financial Hedging Decision On Procurement Risk For Newsvendor Model With Value-At-Risk Constraint, Yuan Wen, Qing Ding, Jian Chen

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Manufacturers must now deal with increasingly fluctuating procurement prices for commodities and industrial component parts. However, it is hard for them to pass cost increases on to downstream markets efficiently. Therefore, manufacturers have sought to solve this problem with various supply management tactics. While vertical integration of key suppliers or signing long-term contracts is possible, financial hedging emerges as the most effective approach to counter commodities price risks. In situations where market demand uncertainty is still unresolved and often interplays with upstream price volatilities, Value-at-Risk (VaR) can help managers handle the multi-fold uncertainties and their potential interactions, by effectively measuring …


The Implications Of Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment On Capital Markets: A Bottom-Up View, David Fernandez Jun 2011

The Implications Of Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment On Capital Markets: A Bottom-Up View, David Fernandez

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The buzz around sovereign wealth funds has been turned down a notch, but they remain a hot topic. The accusations of sovereign wealth funds having hidden agendas remain, but with the very public losses suffered by some during the recent financial turmoil, such talk has even less credibility. And given that most of those losses were from investments in US, UK, and European financial institutions, hope that sovereign wealth funds would be the saviors of Wall Street has also faded. At its base, four trends continue to keep sovereign wealth funds in focus. First, there is the phenomenal rise of …


Earnings Management Surrounding Seasoned Bond Offerings: Do Managers Mislead Ratings Agencies And The Bond Market, Gary L. Gaton, Chiraphol New Chiyachantana, Choong Tze Chua, Jeremy Goh Jun 2011

Earnings Management Surrounding Seasoned Bond Offerings: Do Managers Mislead Ratings Agencies And The Bond Market, Gary L. Gaton, Chiraphol New Chiyachantana, Choong Tze Chua, Jeremy Goh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study earnings management (EM) efforts surrounding seasoned bond offerings using discretionary current accruals. We find that issuers tend to inflate earnings performance prior to an offering. In order for EM efforts to effectively mislead ratings agencies and the bond market, they must lead to inflated bond ratings and decreased offering yields. Regression results indicate the opposite; aggressive EM efforts are associated with lower initial ratings and higher offering yields. We also find a statistically lower proportion of subsequent downgrades for firms with the most aggressive EM efforts, which is inconsistent with these firms’ inflated initial ratings. While some firms …


Adverse Selection And Corporate Governance, Charlie Charoenwong, David K. Ding, Vasan Siraprapasiri Jun 2011

Adverse Selection And Corporate Governance, Charlie Charoenwong, David K. Ding, Vasan Siraprapasiri

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines the impact of corporate governance on the adverse selection component of the bid-ask spread of stocks listed on the Singapore Exchange. These companies have been identified by Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia (CSLA) with the highest level of corporate governance among 25 emerging markets. We measure corporate governance by several criteria: discipline, transparency, independence, accountability, responsibilities, fairness, and social awareness. The results show that corporate governance has an inverse relationship with adverse selection. However, only the transparency dimension exhibits a significant inverse relationship with adverse selection. In addition, Government-Linked Companies (GLCs) are shown to have a smaller adverse …


Sec Rule 105 And Price Discovery In The Secondary Market, C. Charoenwong, David K. Ding, P. Wang Jun 2011

Sec Rule 105 And Price Discovery In The Secondary Market, C. Charoenwong, David K. Ding, P. Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.


Roubini On Global Economic Risks: “Dr Doom” Or “Dr Realist”?, Knowledge@Smu May 2011

Roubini On Global Economic Risks: “Dr Doom” Or “Dr Realist”?, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Renowned as the brutally frank commentator that correctly predicted the 2008 financial crisis, New York University's economics professor Nouriel Roubini has made a reputation for himself as the prophet of doom. What does 'Doctor Doom' make of all the fuss about Asia's tiger and dragon economies? He shares his take at a lecture organised by SMU's Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics while informing audiences that he prefers to be known as 'Doctor Realist'.


Value Investment And Market Timing: Opportunities In Times Of Crises, Knowledge@Smu May 2011

Value Investment And Market Timing: Opportunities In Times Of Crises, Knowledge@Smu

Knowledge@SMU

Luminary 'small-cap king' Dr Tan Chong Koay sees opportunities in crises. After all, this industry stalwart's most prolific performances have been during the periods of global economic meltdowns. Beyond financial gains, those who survive these crises would have gained much confidence, he believes. Sharing his investment philosophies at SMU's Centre for Asset Securitisation and Management in Asia, Tan, founder of Pheim Asset Management, explains what he sees as the art and science of investing.