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Legal Risk And Insider Trading, Marcin Kacperczyk, Emiliano Sebastian Pagnotta Feb 2024

Legal Risk And Insider Trading, Marcin Kacperczyk, Emiliano Sebastian Pagnotta

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Do illegal insiders internalize legal risk? We address this question with hand-collected data from 530 SEC (the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) investigations. Using two plausibly exogenous shocks to expected penalties, we show that insiders trade less aggressively and earlier and concentrate on tips of greater value when facing a higher risk. The results match the predictions of a model where an insider internalizes the impact of trades on prices and the likelihood of prosecution and anticipates penalties in proportion to trade profits. Our findings lend support to the effectiveness of U.S. regulations' deterrence and the long-standing hypothesis that insider …


Shadow Bank, Risk-Taking, And Real Estate Financing: Evidence From The Online Loan Market, Xiaoying Deng, Chong Liu, Eng Seow Ong Jan 2024

Shadow Bank, Risk-Taking, And Real Estate Financing: Evidence From The Online Loan Market, Xiaoying Deng, Chong Liu, Eng Seow Ong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines whether and how individual risk-taking behavior affects real estate financing through shadow banks. Using the loan data from an online platform in China, we show that riskier households tend to employ online loans to meet the increasing down-payment in their home purchase. Individual investors are likely to fund riskier real estate loans with higher expected returns. Real estate loans experience higher ex-post default rates than other types of loans. The effect is more pronounced during the period of credit constraints.


On Sgx’S Voyage To Corporate Sustainability: Exploring Emerging Topics In Multi-Industry Corpora, Xinwen Ni, Min Bin Lin, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Wolfgang Karl Hardle Jan 2024

On Sgx’S Voyage To Corporate Sustainability: Exploring Emerging Topics In Multi-Industry Corpora, Xinwen Ni, Min Bin Lin, Simon J.D. Schillebeeckx, Wolfgang Karl Hardle

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Topic modeling and LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) have proven valuable in various fields as an innovative approach to studying areas of interest and identifying topics in a dynamic content. The underlying assumption is that techniques like LDA can swiftly capture emerging topics in textual documents compared to other categorization tools. These unsupervised approaches have been used to identify new industries and technological domains. However, our study on the nascent topic of “sustainability” within the corpora of SGX-listed companies highlights clear limitations in employing techniques like LDA on sparse data. The dynamic LDA approach, also called DTM (Dynamic Topic Modelling),based on …


Market For Manipulable Information, Hui Chen, Jian Sun Jan 2024

Market For Manipulable Information, Hui Chen, Jian Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study how investors, firms, and information sellers interact in a market with manipulable information. To better predict the firm characteristics they care about, investors can buy a score from a monopolistic information seller, which aggregates signals that are subject to firm manipulation. The average degree of signal manipulability has no effect on the equilibrium, while the uncertainty about manipulability becomes a new source of noise. Its contribution depends on firms' incentive to manipulate the signals, which in turn depends on the equilibrium price sensitivity to the score. The optimal design of the score weighs signal precision against the endogenous …


Geographic Links And Predictable Returns, Zuben Jin, Frank Weikai Li Jan 2024

Geographic Links And Predictable Returns, Zuben Jin, Frank Weikai Li

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using establishment-level data of U.S. public firms, we construct a novel measure of geographic linkage between firms. We show that the returns of geography-linked firms have strong predictive power for focal firm returns and fundamentals. This effect is distinct from other cross-firm return predictability and is not easily attributable to risk-based explanations. It is more pronounced for focal firms that receive lower investor attention, are more costly to arbitrage, and during high sentiment periods. The cross-firm information spillovers and return predictability are also stronger for geographic peers with economic linkages and with positive information. Our results are broadly consistent with …


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.


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 …


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.


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 …


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 …


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 …


Seeking Better Sharpe Ratio Via Bayesian Optimization, Peng Liu Jul 2023

Seeking Better Sharpe Ratio Via Bayesian Optimization, Peng Liu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Developing an excellent quantitative trading strategy to obtain a high Sharpe ratio requires optimizing several parameters at the same time. Example parameters include the window length of a moving average sequence, the choice of trading instruments, and the thresholds used to generate trading signals. Simultaneously optimizing all these parameters to seek a high Sharpe ratio is a daunting and time-consuming task, partly because of the unknown mechanism determining the Sharpe ratio. This article proposes using Bayesian optimization to systematically search for the optimal parameter configuration that leads to a high Sharpe ratio. The author shows that the proposed intelligent search …


Growing Up Under Mao And Deng: On The Ideological Determinants Of Corporate Policies, Hao Liang, Rong Wang, Haikun Zhu Jun 2023

Growing Up Under Mao And Deng: On The Ideological Determinants Of Corporate Policies, Hao Liang, Rong Wang, Haikun Zhu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Historically, economic activities have been organized around certain ideologies. We investigate the impact of politicians’ ideology on corporate policies by exploring a unique setting of ideological change—China from Mao to Deng around the 1978 economic reform—in a regression discontinuity framework. We find that the age discontinuity of politicians around 18 years old in 1978, who had already joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) or joined soon thereafter and later became municipal paramount leaders, has had a lasting effect on contemporary firm- and city-level policies. In particular, firms in cities with mayors that joined the CCP under the ideological regime of …


Asset-Rich And Cash-Poor: Which Older Adults Value Reverse Mortgages?, Joelle H. Fong, Olivia S. Mitchell, Benedict S. K. Koh May 2023

Asset-Rich And Cash-Poor: Which Older Adults Value Reverse Mortgages?, Joelle H. Fong, Olivia S. Mitchell, Benedict S. K. Koh

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Home equity represents a substantial share of retirement wealth for many older persons, particularly in Asia where national housing policies have encouraged home-ownership. This paper explored the potential for reverse mortgages to help 'asset-rich and cash-poor' older Singaporeans unlock their home equity while ageing in place. The empirical analysis was based on a nationally representative survey of home-owners age 50+ in the 2018 Singapore Life Panel (N = 6,258). Our analyses showed that the average older home-owner holds some 60 per cent of total net wealth in housing equity, suggestive of high demand potential for reverse mortgage products. Nevertheless, actual …


Liquidity Constraints, Consumption, And Debt Repayment: Evidence From Macroprudential Policy In Turkey, Sumit Agarwal, Muris Hadzic, Changcheng Song, Yildirim Yildiray Apr 2023

Liquidity Constraints, Consumption, And Debt Repayment: Evidence From Macroprudential Policy In Turkey, Sumit Agarwal, Muris Hadzic, Changcheng Song, Yildirim Yildiray

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Using account-level credit card data from a large Turkish bank, we study the impact of a unique credit card policy that increases minimum payment on consumption and debt repayment. We show that the policy reduces credit card spending and debt, boosts existing debt repayment, and reduces credit card delinquency. The credit card debt of affected consumers falls on average by 50% two years into the policy’s implementation. An increase in minimum payment has a stronger effect than does a decrease of a similar magnitude. We build a benchmark life cycle model with soft liquidity constraint to explain the reduction in …


Exchange-Traded Funds And Real Investment, Constantinos Antoniou, Frank Weikai Li, Xuewen Liu, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, Chengzhu Sun Mar 2023

Exchange-Traded Funds And Real Investment, Constantinos Antoniou, Frank Weikai Li, Xuewen Liu, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, Chengzhu Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate the link between exchange-traded funds and real investment. Cross-sectionally, higher ETF ownership is associated with an increased sensitivity of real investment to Tobin's q and a heightened ability of stock returns to forecast future earnings. Inclusion of stocks in industry ETFs enhances investment-q sensitivity and implies greater incorporation of earnings information into prices prior to public releases. Greater nonmarket ETF ownership leads to increased (reduced) reliance of real investment on own (peers') stock prices. Overall, the evidence is consistent with ETFs positively affecting real investment efficiency via greater flows of information.


Impact Of Geographical Diversification And Limited Attention On Private Equity Fund Returns, Victor Ong Feb 2023

Impact Of Geographical Diversification And Limited Attention On Private Equity Fund Returns, Victor Ong

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article analyzes the effect of geographical diversification on global private equity (PE) fund returns. We find that there is a negative correlation between geographical diversification and PE fund returns. To establish the causality between geographical diversification and PE fund returns, we employ an instrumental variable analysis where the instrument used is the stock market capitalization of the host country where the PE fund is based. Our results apply to Net IRR, TVPI and DPI as dependent variables used to proxy for PE fund returns in the main regression model. A one standard deviation increase in geographical diversification results in …


The Financialization Of Cryptocurrencies, Lei Huang, Tse-Chun Lin, Fangzhou Lu, Jian Sun Feb 2023

The Financialization Of Cryptocurrencies, Lei Huang, Tse-Chun Lin, Fangzhou Lu, Jian Sun

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that change in Grayscale Bitcoin Trust premium is the single most significant predictor of Bitcoin daily return. This sentiment measure is similar to the closed-end fund discount measure as in Baker and Wurgler (2006), but more likely to reflect the excess demand from traditional investors than from blockchain specialists. Although there is a substantial variation in Bitcoin price quotes worldwide, this Grayscale premium and discount predict Bitcoin daily return for the most liquid Bitcoin exchanges. Using K-means clustering and LDA analysis, we find that this predictability is especially significant when there is a large variation in bullish and …


Presidential Economic Approval Rating And The Cross-Section Of Stock Returns, Zilin Chen, Zhi Da, Dashan Huang, Liyao Wang Jan 2023

Presidential Economic Approval Rating And The Cross-Section Of Stock Returns, Zilin Chen, Zhi Da, Dashan Huang, Liyao Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We construct a monthly presidential economic approval rating (PEAR) index from 1981 to 2019, by averaging ratings on the president’s handling of the economy across various national polls. In the cross-section, stocks with high betas to changes in the PEAR index significantly under-perform those with low betas by 1.00% per month in the future, on a risk-adjusted basis. The low PEAR beta premium persists up to one year, and is present in various sub-samples and even in other G7 countries. PEAR beta dynamically reveals a firm’s perceived alignment to the incumbent president’s economic policies and investors seem to misprice such …


Learning From Manipulable Signals, Mehmet Ekmekci, Leandrro Gorno, Lucas Maestri, Jian Sun, Dong Wei Dec 2022

Learning From Manipulable Signals, Mehmet Ekmekci, Leandrro Gorno, Lucas Maestri, Jian Sun, Dong Wei

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We study a dynamic stopping game between a principal and an agent. The agent is privately informed about his type. The principal learns about the agent’s type from a noisy performance measure, which can be manipulated by the agent via a costly and hidden action. We fully characterize the unique Markov equilibrium of this game. We find that terminations/ market crashes are often preceded by a spike in (expected) performance. Our model also predicts that, due to endogenous signal manipulation, too much transparency can inhibit learning. As the players get arbitrarily patient, the principal elicits no useful information from the …


The Sun Is Rising In The East: Dual-Class Shares And The Competitive Landscape Of Technological Industries In Asia, Hao Liang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen, Wei Zhang Oct 2022

The Sun Is Rising In The East: Dual-Class Shares And The Competitive Landscape Of Technological Industries In Asia, Hao Liang, Tran Bao Phuong Nguyen, Wei Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

There has recently been a relaxation of listing regulations to accommodate and attract firms going public with dual-class shares (DCS), notably in Asia. We examine the value implications of DCS adoption by employing an event study around a regulatory change allowing DCS listings in Hong Kong. We find negative market reactions around these regulatory discussions for firms already listed in Hong Kong, especially for firms in technology (tech) sectors. However, the market reaction turned positive for tech firms during Hong Kong’s first DCS listing. We identify two distinct channels that influenced shareholders’ perspectives on DCS: the competition channel, which dominated …


The Alphabet Soup In Reporting And Measuring Esg, Hao Liang, Kam Chee Chan Oct 2022

The Alphabet Soup In Reporting And Measuring Esg, Hao Liang, Kam Chee Chan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Harmonising frameworks with the Impact-Weighted Accounts Framework.


International Asset Pricing With Strategic Business Groups, Massimo Massa, Hong Zhang, Hong Zhang Aug 2022

International Asset Pricing With Strategic Business Groups, Massimo Massa, Hong Zhang, Hong Zhang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Firms in global markets often belong to business groups. We argue that this feature can have a profound influence on international asset pricing. In bad times, business groups may strategically reallocate risk across affiliated firms to protect core “central firms.” This strategic behavior induces co-movement among central firms, creating a new intertemporal risk factor. Based on a novel data set of worldwide ownership for 2002–2012, we find that central firms are better protected in bad times and that they earn relatively lower expected returns. Moreover, a centrality factor augments traditional models in explaining the cross section of international stock returns.


The Cryptocurrency Participation Puzzle, Ran Duchin, David H. Solomon, Jun Tu, Xi Wang Aug 2022

The Cryptocurrency Participation Puzzle, Ran Duchin, David H. Solomon, Jun Tu, Xi Wang

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We show that ongoing zero portfolio weights in cryptocurrency are surprisingly difficult to generate in a standard Bayesian portfolio theory framework. With ten years of prior data, equity market investors would need very pessimistic priors on mean returns to justify never having bought cryptocurrency: -10.6% per month for Bitcoin, and -19.6% per month for a diversified portfolio of cryptocurrencies. Moreover, most priors that involve never purchasing cryptocurrency imply that investors should short cryptocurrency. Optimal absolute weights are generally small but non-trivial (1-5%), frequently positive, and fairly smooth despite returns being volatile. Under a wide range of priors, the certainty equivalent …


Inflation Expectations Can Be A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Aurobindo Ghosh, Khyati Chauhan, Muskan Bagrodia Aug 2022

Inflation Expectations Can Be A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Aurobindo Ghosh, Khyati Chauhan, Muskan Bagrodia

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In a commentary, SMU Assistant Professor of Finance (Education) Aurobindo Ghosh, SMU postgraduate student and Research Assistant for the SInDEx Project Muskan Bagrodia and International Monetary Fund Economic Research Assistant Khyati Chauhan weighed in on why inflation expectations matter as much as economic data. They discussed how inflation expectations can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, and shared the key takeaways of the quarterly DBS-Sim Kee Boon Institute’s Singapore Index of Inflation Expectations (DBS-SKBI SInDEx) survey. They concluded that effective communication on inflation control measures, in addition to credible policy decisions, will help consumers feel assured and refrain from basing purchasing decisions …


Customer Concentration And Corporate Carbon Emissions, Saiying Deng, Tinghua Duan, Frank Weikai Li, Xiaoling Pu Aug 2022

Customer Concentration And Corporate Carbon Emissions, Saiying Deng, Tinghua Duan, Frank Weikai Li, Xiaoling Pu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper examines whether economic links with major corporate customers curb corporate carbon emissions. We show that supplier firms with a concentrated customer base have significantly lower carbon emissions. The baseline results are robust to alternative measures of carbon emissions and customer concentration, and various approaches that mitigate endogeneity concerns due to omitted variables and reverse causality. Moreover, the curbing effect of customer concentration on supplier carbon emissions is more pronounced in firms facing lower customer switching costs, with less (more) supplier (customer) bargaining power, fewer redeployable assets, operating in more carbon-intensive industries, and after the Paris Agreement of 2015. …


Oil Price Shocks And Stock Market Anomalies, Zhaobo Zhu, Licheng Sun, Jun Tu, Qiang Ji Jul 2022

Oil Price Shocks And Stock Market Anomalies, Zhaobo Zhu, Licheng Sun, Jun Tu, Qiang Ji

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This paper provides a novel perspective to the nexus of oil prices and stock markets by examining the impact of oil price shocks on stock market anomalies. After decomposing oil price shocks into three types , we find that aggregate demand shocks have the strongest influence on stock market anomalies. In contrast, oil supply shocks and oil-specific demand shocks have little impact. Similar results are also found in the industry analysis. Interestingly, the link between aggregate demand shocks and anomalies is the strongest among firms with either small size or high idiosyncratic risks. The documented effects are robust after controlling …


Why Do U.S. Firms Invest Less Over Time?, Fangjian Fu, Sheng Huang, Rong Wang Jul 2022

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

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Capital expenditures of U.S. public firms, relative to total assets, decrease by more than half from 1980 to 2020. The decline is pervasive across industries and firms of different characteristics and cannot be explained by the usual determinants of investment and many other seemingly plausible reasons. The decline is consistent with the transformation in production technology — firms rely more on intangible capital and less on fixed assets in production. Industry-level analyses yield supporting evidence. We observe similar declining trend in capital expenditure in other developed countries but not in most emerging markets.