Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Finance and Financial Management Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 28 of 28

Full-Text Articles in Finance and Financial Management

Developing A Culturally Responsive Classroom Collaborative Of Faculty, Students, And Institution, Paul J. Colbert Nov 2010

Developing A Culturally Responsive Classroom Collaborative Of Faculty, Students, And Institution, Paul J. Colbert

MBA Faculty Conference Papers & Journal Articles

Culture is integral to the learning process. It is the organization and way of life within the community of students and teachers and directs the way they communicate, interact, and approach teaching and learning. Although founded in particular values and principles, the academy, like most organizations, is impacted day-to-day by its culture. Yet, the traditional higher education institution has not been designed to operate within a racially or ethnically diverse student population. The social, political, economic, and cultural forces that support the institution influence the teaching and learning environments. To better address cultural diversity in the classroom, faculty must first …


Bayesian Analysis Of Structural Credit Risk Models With Microstructure Noises, Shirley J. Huang, Jun Yu Nov 2010

Bayesian Analysis Of Structural Credit Risk Models With Microstructure Noises, Shirley J. Huang, Jun Yu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper a Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique is developed for the Bayesian analysis of structural credit risk models with microstructure noises. The technique is based on the general Bayesian approach with posterior computations performed by Gibbs sampling. Simulations from the Markov chain, whose stationary distribution converges to the posterior distribution, enable exact finite sample inferences of model parameters. The exact inferences can easily be extended to latent state variables and any nonlinear transformation of state variables and parameters, facilitating practical credit risk applications. In addition, the comparison of alternative models can be based on devian information criterion …


Would Position Limits Have Made Any Difference To The 'Flash Crash' On May 6, 2010, Wing Bernard Lee, Shih-Fen Cheng, Annie Koh Nov 2010

Would Position Limits Have Made Any Difference To The 'Flash Crash' On May 6, 2010, Wing Bernard Lee, Shih-Fen Cheng, Annie Koh

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

On May 6, 2010, the US equity markets experienced a brief but highly unusual drop in prices across a number of stocks and indices. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) fell by approximately 9% in a matter of minutes, and several stocks were traded down sharply before recovering a short time later. Earlier research by Lee, Cheng and Koh (2010) identified the conditions under which a “flash crash” can be triggered by systematic traders running highly similar trading strategies, especially when they are “crowding out” other liquidity providers in the market. The authors contend that the events of May 6, …


Do Foreign Institutions Improve Stock Liquity?, Chi Shen Wei Nov 2010

Do Foreign Institutions Improve Stock Liquity?, Chi Shen Wei

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines whether capital flows by foreign institutions improve liquidity in domestic markets. I find that stocks with increased foreign institutional ownership subsequently experience higher liquidity. However, it is difficult to interpret this evidence as a causal relation because institutions tend to self-select into more liquid stocks. To solve this problem, I exploit the 2003 US dividend tax cut as a natural experiment. The results from a 2SLS (IV) regression confirm that liquidity improved more in dividend-paying stocks located in US tax-treaty countries compared to similar stocks located in non-treaty countries. These patterns are consistent with the notion that …


International Diversification With Factor Funds, Cheol S. Eun, Sandy Lai, Frans A. De Roon, Zhe Zhang Sep 2010

International Diversification With Factor Funds, Cheol S. Eun, Sandy Lai, Frans A. De Roon, Zhe Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We propose a new investment strategy employing “factor funds” to systematically enhance the mean-variance efficiency of international diversification. Our approach is motivated by the increasing evidence that size (SMB), book-to-market (HML), and momentum (MOM) factors, along with the market factor, adequately describe international stock returns, and by the direct link between investors’ portfolio choice problems and international asset pricing theories and tests. Using data from ten developed countries during the period 1981-2008, we show that the “augmented” optimal portfolio involving local factor funds substantially outperforms the “benchmark” optimal portfolio comprising country market indices only as measured by their portfolio Sharpe …


The Liquidity Risk Of Liquid Hedge Funds, Melvyn Teo Aug 2010

The Liquidity Risk Of Liquid Hedge Funds, Melvyn Teo

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper evaluates hedge funds that grantfavorable redemption terms to investors. Within this group of purportedlyliquid funds, high net inflow funds subsequently outperform low net inflowfunds by 4.79% per year after adjusting for risk. The return impact of fundflows is stronger when funds embrace liquidity risk, when market liquidity islow, and when funding liquidity, as measured by the Treasury-Eurodollar spread,aggregate hedge fund flows, and prime broker stock returns, is tight. Inkeeping with an agency explanation, funds with strong incentives to raisecapital, low manager option deltas, and no manager capital co-invested are morelikely to take on excessive liquidity risk. These results …


Incorporating Economic Objectives Into Bayesian Priors: Portfolio Choice Under Parameter Uncertainty, Jun Tu, Guofu Zhou Aug 2010

Incorporating Economic Objectives Into Bayesian Priors: Portfolio Choice Under Parameter Uncertainty, Jun Tu, Guofu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper proposes a way to allow Bayesian priors to reflect the objectives of an economic problem. That is, we impose priors on the solution to the problem rather than on the primitive parameters whose implied priors can be backed out from the Euler equation. Using monthly returns on the Fama-French 25 size and book-to-market portfolios and their 3 factors from January 1965 to December 2004, we find that investment performances under the objective-based priors can be significantly different from those under alternative priors, with differences in terms of annual certainty-equivalent returns greater than 10% in many cases. In terms …


A Dynamic Model For The Forward Curve, Choong Tze Chua, Foster Dean, Krishna Ramaswamy, Robert Stine Aug 2010

A Dynamic Model For The Forward Curve, Choong Tze Chua, Foster Dean, Krishna Ramaswamy, Robert Stine

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article develops and estimates a dynamic arbitrage-free model of the current forward curve as the sum of (i) an unconditional component, (ii) a maturity-specific component and (iii) a date-specific component. The model combines features of the Preferred Habitat model, the Expectations Hypothesis (ET) and affine yield curve models; it permits a class of low-parameter, multiple state variable dynamic models for the forward curve. We show how to construct alternative parametric examples of the three components from a sum of exponential functions, verify that the resulting forward curves satisfy the Heath-Jarrow-Morton (HJM) conditions, and derive the risk-neutral dynamics for the …


Price Movers On The Stock Exchange Of Thailand: Evidence From A Fully Automated Order-Driven Market, Charlie Charoenwong, David K. Ding, Nattawut Jenwittayaroje Aug 2010

Price Movers On The Stock Exchange Of Thailand: Evidence From A Fully Automated Order-Driven Market, Charlie Charoenwong, David K. Ding, Nattawut Jenwittayaroje

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This study examines trade sizes used by informed traders. The selected sample includes 73 active stocks from the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET), a pure limit order market, that cover two distinct market conditions of a bull and bear market. Using intraday data, the study finds that large sized trades (i.e., larger than the 75th percentile) account for a disproportionately large impact on changes in traded and quoted prices. This finding compares with the results of studies conducted on U.S. markets that show informed traders employ trade sizes falling between the 40th and 95th percentiles (Barclay and Warner 1993; Chakravarty …


Investor Diversification And The Pricing Of Idiosyncratic Risk, Fangjian Fu Jul 2010

Investor Diversification And The Pricing Of Idiosyncratic Risk, Fangjian Fu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Theories predict that, due to investor under-diversification, idiosyncratic risk is positively priced in expected stock returns. Empirical studies based on various methodologies yield mixed evidence. This study circumvents the debate on methodological issues and traces the pricing of idiosyncratic risk to its economic source – investor under-diversification. Assuming that institutional investors tend to hold more diversified portfolios and thus care little about idiosyncratic risk relative to individual investors, we find that the positive relation between idiosyncratic risk and stock returns is significantly stronger (weaker) in stocks that are held and traded more by individual (institutional) investors. In addition, the pricing …


How Predictable Is The Chinese Stock Market?, Fuwei Jiang, David E. Rapach, Jack K. Strauss, Jun Tu Jul 2010

How Predictable Is The Chinese Stock Market?, Fuwei Jiang, David E. Rapach, Jack K. Strauss, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We analyze return predictability for the Chinese stock market, including the aggregate market portfolio and the components of the aggregate market, such as portfolios sorted on industry, size, book-to-market and ownership concentration. Considering a variety of economic variables as predictors, both in-sample and out-of-sample tests highlight significant predictability in the aggregate market portfolio of the Chinese stock market and substantial differences in return predictability across components. Among industry portfolios, Finance and insurance, Real estate, and Service exhibit the most predictability, while portfolios of small-cap and low ownership concentration firms also display considerable predictability. Two key findings provide economic explanations for …


Reference Point Adaptation And Disposition Effect: Evidence From Institutional Trading, Chiraphol N. Chiyachantana, Zongfei Yang Jul 2010

Reference Point Adaptation And Disposition Effect: Evidence From Institutional Trading, Chiraphol N. Chiyachantana, Zongfei Yang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using a large proprietary database of institutional trades, we investigate whether, and to what extent, the dynamic adaptation of reference point translates into variations in the disposition effect, and establish three key results. First, the propensity to realize losses declines sharply with the magnitude of prior losses due to insufficient adaptation of reference point. Second, recent adverse information accelerates investors’ adaptation to price depreciation and increases investors’ willingness to realize losses. Finally, a priori of losing money in highly speculative investments decreases investors’ aversion to realize losses. Collectively, the findings suggest that both prior outcomes and recent expectations contribute to …


An Analysis Of Extreme Price Shocks And Illiquidity Among Systematic Trend Followers, Bernard Lee, Shih-Fen Cheng, Annie Koh Jun 2010

An Analysis Of Extreme Price Shocks And Illiquidity Among Systematic Trend Followers, Bernard Lee, Shih-Fen Cheng, Annie Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We construct an agent-based model to study the interplay between extreme price shocks and illiquidity in the presence of systematic traders known as trend followers. The agent-based approach is particularly attractive in modeling commodity markets because the approach allows for the explicit modeling of production, capacities, and storage constraints. Our study begins by using the price stream from a market simulation involving human participants and studies the behavior of various trend-following strategies, assuming initially that their participation will not impact the market. We notice an incremental deterioration in strategy performance as and when strategies deviate further and further from the …


Pricing Options In An Extended Black Scholes Economy With Illiquidity: Theory And Empirical Evidence, Umut Cetin, Robert Jarrow, Mitchell Protter, Mitchell Warachka Jun 2010

Pricing Options In An Extended Black Scholes Economy With Illiquidity: Theory And Empirical Evidence, Umut Cetin, Robert Jarrow, Mitchell Protter, Mitchell Warachka

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article studies the pricing of options in an extended Black Scholes economy in which the underlying asset is not perfectly liquid. The resulting liquidity risk is modeled as a stochastic supply curve, with the transaction price being a function of the trade size. Consistent with the market microstructure literature, the supply curve is upward sloping with purchases executed at higher prices and sales at lower prices. Optimal discrete time hedging strategies are then derived. Empirical evidence reveals a significant liquidity cost intrinsic to every option. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]


Selective Intervention And Economic Re-Engineering: Lessons Form Singapore's Parks In Indonesia And India, Caroline Yeoh, Siang Yeung Wong May 2010

Selective Intervention And Economic Re-Engineering: Lessons Form Singapore's Parks In Indonesia And India, Caroline Yeoh, Siang Yeung Wong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

No abstract provided.


Collective Investments For Pension Savings: Lessons From Singapore's Central Provident Fund Scheme, Benedict S. Koh, Olivia S. Mitchell, Joelle H. Y. Fong May 2010

Collective Investments For Pension Savings: Lessons From Singapore's Central Provident Fund Scheme, Benedict S. Koh, Olivia S. Mitchell, Joelle H. Y. Fong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Singapore's mandatory national defined contribution pension system permits participants to invest their retirement savings in a wide range of investment instruments if they wish, rather than leaving their savings in Central Provident Fund (CPF) accounts to earn interest rates by default. This article asks whether workers seeking to earn higher returns can expect to do better than the CPF-managed default, by moving their money into professionally managed unit trusts. We use historical data to investigate whether fund managers possess superior stock picking and market timing skills, as well as whether they exhibit persistence in performance and offer diversification benefits to …


Portfolio Selection Under Distributional Uncertainty: A Relative Robust Cvar In Portfolio Management, Dashan Huang, Shushang Zhu, Frank Fabozzi, Masao Fukushima May 2010

Portfolio Selection Under Distributional Uncertainty: A Relative Robust Cvar In Portfolio Management, Dashan Huang, Shushang Zhu, Frank Fabozzi, Masao Fukushima

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Robust optimization, one of the most popular topics in the field of optimization and control since the late 1990s, deals with an optimization problem involving uncertain parameters. In this paper, we consider the relative robust conditional value-at-risk portfolio selection problem where the underlying probability distribution of portfolio return is only known to belong to a certain set. Our approach not only takes into account the worst-case scenarios of the uncertain distribution, but also pays attention to the best possible decision with respect to each realization of the distribution. We also illustrate how to construct a robust portfolio with multiple experts …


Is Regime Switching In Stock Returns Important In Portfolio Decisions?, Jun Tu May 2010

Is Regime Switching In Stock Returns Important In Portfolio Decisions?, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The stock market displays regime switching between upturns and downturns. This paper provides a Bayesian framework for making portfolio decisions that takes this regime switching into account, together with asset pricing model uncertainty and parameter uncertainty. The findings reveal that the economic value of accounting for regimes is substantially independent of whether or not model and parameter uncertainties are incorporated: the certainty-equivalent losses associated with ignoring regime switching are generally above 2% per year and can be as high as 10%. These results suggest that the more realistic regime switching model is fundamentally different from the commonly used single-state model, …


An Analysis Of Extreme Price Shocks And Illiquidity Among Systematic Trend Followers, Wing Bernard Lee, Shih-Fen Cheng, Annie Koh Feb 2010

An Analysis Of Extreme Price Shocks And Illiquidity Among Systematic Trend Followers, Wing Bernard Lee, Shih-Fen Cheng, Annie Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We construct an agent-based model to study the interplay between extreme price shocks and illiquidity in the presence of systematic traders known as trend followers. The agent-based approach is particularly attractive in modeling commodity markets because the approach allows for the explicit modeling of production, capacities, and storage constraints. Our study begins by using the price stream from a market simulation involving human participants and studies the behavior of various trend-following strategies, assuming initially that their participation will not impact the market. We notice an incremental deterioration in strategy performance as and when strategies deviate further and further from the …


Investing Into The Abyss: The Continued Misclassification Of Multi-Sector Managed Funds, N. Allen, Kok Fai Phoon, J. Watson, J. Wickramanayake Feb 2010

Investing Into The Abyss: The Continued Misclassification Of Multi-Sector Managed Funds, N. Allen, Kok Fai Phoon, J. Watson, J. Wickramanayake

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The rapid expansion in assets managed by the Australian managed fund industry has resulted in it becoming a major sector of the financial system, second only to that of the banking industry. With more than A$550 billion invested in the industry investors should be concerned about the lack of reliable information available in regard to equity style management. In particular investors should be concerned about the probable mis-match between stated objectives and the actual objectives pursued by fund managers. In this study, we apply return-based style analysis (Sharpe 1988, 1992) to investigate the style and asset allocation strategies of 50 …


Pension Plan Funding Effect On Shareholder Equity, Larisa Parchomovsky Feb 2010

Pension Plan Funding Effect On Shareholder Equity, Larisa Parchomovsky

Honors College Theses

A pension plan often tends to be one of the company’s biggest liabilities. Before 2008, pension plans were not directly included in the financial statements, but could only be found in the footnote disclosures. Such accounting convention essentially made pensions a type of off-balance sheet financing resulting in a misrepresentation of valuation ratios and earnings due to the exclusion of such a significant liability. The objective of this research is to determine whether the funded status of a pension plan will significantly affect a company’s shareholder equity. As part of this research, I analyzed 4 years (2001-2004) of financial statements …


Trusts Versus Corporations: An Empirical Analysis Of Competing Organizational Forms, A. Joseph Warburton Jan 2010

Trusts Versus Corporations: An Empirical Analysis Of Competing Organizational Forms, A. Joseph Warburton

College of Law - Faculty Scholarship

This paper studies the effects of organizational form on managerial behavior and firm performance, from an empirical perspective. Managers of trusts are subject to stricter fiduciary responsibilities than managers of corporations. This paper examines the ramifications empirically, by exploiting data generated by a change in British regulations in the 1990s that allowed mutual funds to organize as either a trust or a corporation. I find evidence that trust law is effective in curtailing opportunistic behavior, as trust managers charge significantly lower fees than their observationally equivalent corporate counterparts. Trust managers also incur lower risk. However, evidence suggests that trust managers …


Tunneling As An Incentive For Earnings Management During The Ipo Process In China, Jiwei Wang, Joseph Aharony, Hongqi Yuan Jan 2010

Tunneling As An Incentive For Earnings Management During The Ipo Process In China, Jiwei Wang, Joseph Aharony, Hongqi Yuan

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using a sample of 185 Chinese IPO firms listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange during the period 1999-2001, we show that related-party (RP) sales of goods and services could be used opportunistically to manage earnings upwards in the pre-IPO period. We also provide evidence that such behavior may be motivated by the prospect of tunneling opportunities in the post-IPO period, i.e., exploiting economic resources from minority shareholders for the benefit of the parent company. We provide evidence of one such opportunistic tunneling tool: non-repayment by Chinese parent companies of net outstanding corporate loans made to them by their newly listed …


Time Varying Risk Aversion: An Application To Energy Hedging, Jim Hanly, John Cotter Jan 2010

Time Varying Risk Aversion: An Application To Energy Hedging, Jim Hanly, John Cotter

Articles

Risk aversion is a key element of utility maximizing hedge strategies; however, it has typically been assigned an arbitrary value in the literature. This paper instead applies a GARCH-in-Mean (GARCH-M) model to estimate a time-varying measure of risk aversion that is based on the observed risk preferences of energy hedging market participants. The resulting estimates are applied to derive explicit risk aversion based optimal hedge strategies for both short and long hedgers. Out-of-sample results are also presented based on a unique approach that allows us to forecast risk aversion, thereby estimating hedge strategies that address the potential future needs of …


Is Regime Switching In Stock Returns Important In Asset Allocations?, Jun Tu Jan 2010

Is Regime Switching In Stock Returns Important In Asset Allocations?, Jun Tu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The stock market displays regime switching between upturns and downturns. This paper provides a Bayesian framework for making portfolio decisions that takes this regime switching into account, together with asset pricing model uncertainty and parameter uncertainty. The findings reveal that the economic value of accounting for regimes is substantially independent of whether or not model and parameter uncertainties are incorporated: the certainty-equivalent losses associated with ignoring regime switching are generally above 2% per year, and can be as high as 10%. These results suggest that the more realistic regime switching model is fundamentally different from the commonly used single-state model, …


Should Individual Investors Use Technical Trading Rules To Attempt To Beat The Market?, Thomas S. Coe, Kittipong Laosethakul Jan 2010

Should Individual Investors Use Technical Trading Rules To Attempt To Beat The Market?, Thomas S. Coe, Kittipong Laosethakul

WCBT Faculty Publications

Problem statement: Despite widespread academic acceptance of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis, some stock traders still use technical trading rules in an attempt to beat the market. Approach: This study looked at four trading rules, namely, the arithmetic moving average, the relative strength index, a stochastic oscillator and its moving average. These trading rules compare the relationship of current prices to past price patterns to generate a signal when to buy and sell stocks. The trading rules were tested over the years 2000-2009, a period of time that exhibited bull and bear markets, to determine if traders could actively …


Strategic Financial Management: Evidence From Seasoned Equity Offerings, Michael Barclay, Fangjian Fu, Clifford Smith Jan 2010

Strategic Financial Management: Evidence From Seasoned Equity Offerings, Michael Barclay, Fangjian Fu, Clifford Smith

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Extant theories of capital structure assume myopic financial managers. So they have hard time to explain the financing behavior of seasoned equity offering (SEO) firms. In contrast with the pecking order theory, SEO firms typically are financially healthy companies with significant cash balances, low leverage, and unused debt capacity. At odds with the tradeoff theory, SEOs often move firms away from, rather than closer to, their target leverage ratios. SEOs appear to be driven by capital needs associated with large investment projects rather than by market timing considerations. Firms issue debt following the SEO to finance investment further and to …


Long-Term Earnings Growth Forecasts, Limited Attention, And Return Predictability, Zhi Da, Mitchell Craig Warachka Jan 2010

Long-Term Earnings Growth Forecasts, Limited Attention, And Return Predictability, Zhi Da, Mitchell Craig Warachka

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Long-term earnings expectations are critically important to stock price valuations. We identify relative optimism and relative pessimism in long-term analyst forecasts by comparing these forecasts with implied short-term earnings growth forecasts across rms within the same industry. Stocks with relatively optimistic and relatively pessimistic long-term analyst forecasts have negative and positive risk-adjusted returns, respectively. This return predictability depends critically on short-term forecasts since relative optimism and relative pessimism originate from the slow diffusion of information from short-term to long-term analyst forecasts. Our results indicate that market participants have limited attention regarding the long-term earnings implications of information.