Business Commons^™

Competition In Hong Kong’S Banking Industry, Lai Yee Chu, Yue Cui, Nan Ye, Yuelin Yan

Lingnan Journal of Banking, Finance and Economics

This paper tests the competition structure of Hong Kong’s banking industry using the Panzar-Rosse approach and a panel dataset of the largest 20 banks in Hong Kong from 1998 to 2011. The estimation results showed that the competitive pressures were equal across time and across the different sizes of the banks in Hong Kong’s banking industry. Competitive pressures may heighten in the near future as banks will seek to gain competitive edge and they can do so through mergers and acquisitions. Regulations are also slowly being relaxed after the financial crisis in order to boost the economy and more advances …

Assess The Crisis Management Effort Following The Outbreak Of The Subprime Crisis, Yuchen Luo

Lingnan Journal of Banking, Finance and Economics

In this paper, I employ a linear regression model to examine the effectiveness of four microeconomic variables, namely government debt, GDP growth rate, household consumption growth rate and government spending growth rate, in stimulating economic growth. In order to test the effectiveness of expansionary fiscal policy in different macro-environments, countries were first partitioned into low and high government debt categories. In addition, raw dataset was partitioned into two time periods, respectively, representing normal macroeconomic years and recession years. My results suggest that countercyclical government spending has been an effective stimulation tool but its effect was more significant in countries of …

Can The Euro Rival The United States Dollar And Become The World Currency?, Kar Wai Man, Feissal Thomas Germais Mombo Paraga Apengue, Weixin Zhang, Yiqing Tu, Yuan Yuan

Lingnan Journal of Banking, Finance and Economics

Due to the outstanding performance of the Euro since its advent, the public may wonder whether the Euro would, one day, replace the US dollar (USD) which has all along been a force to be reckoned with all around the world. By tracing the chain of contributions the USD (the United States of America) and the Euro (European Union) have made to the world economy in the past and at present, we hope to arrive at some conclusions. However, the paper will give primacy to predicting the future trends for them separately.

Democracy And Economic Growth: A Perspective Of Cooperation, Menghan Yang, Li Zhang

Lingnan Journal of Banking, Finance and Economics

Does democracy cause higher economic growth? We build a model taking culture and interpersonal cooperation into account and find that democracy increases economic productivity through giving people more equal rights, which allows people to build a larger interpersonal network so that they can reduce investment risk and employ high-productivity (high-risk) methods in production.

Does Okun’S Law Still Hold Today?, Michael Jeffrey White, Lai Yee Chu

Lingnan Journal of Banking, Finance and Economics

Arthur Okun claimed that when a country’s unemployment rate fell, the GDP expanded. This paper investigates the claim of Arthur Okun and the effect of unemployment rates and GDP of a country on each other. Data from three countries, namely, USA, Japan, and France, were tested to see if there was a causal link between the two variables. It was found that the proposed law of Arthur Okun did not hold. In the USA, there was a two way causality link but different directions of effect. France and Japan did not have a causal link between the two variables.

Impact Of Change In Exchange Rate On Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence From China, Weifeng Jin, Qing Zang

Lingnan Journal of Banking, Finance and Economics

Based on the monthly data of foreign direct investment (FDI) in China and the index of real effective exchange rate (REER) of RMB during Jan 1997 to Sep 2012, we develop a statistical model in this paper to test the impact of changes in exchange rate in the host country on FDI, with reference to international and domestic research. According to the results of the empirical test, the appreciation of RMB promotes FDI after the reforms in the exchange rate regime in 2005 and this phenomenon is a result from the change in the type of FDI into China in …

How Does Asymmetric Information Relate To Investment Efficiency? Evidence From Analysts' Earnings Forecasts And Daily Stock Trading, Lingmin Xie

Theses & Dissertations

The adverse selection and agency cost theories suggest that the informational transparency of a firm can help to reduce over- or under-investment. This thesis examines how information asymmetry influences firm-level investment efficiency for companies listed in the U.S. market from 1993 to 2009. Information asymmetry is measured by the dispersion and error of the earnings forecasts made by financial analysts. I investigate how information asymmetry affects firms’ proneness to overor under-invest and the firms’ deviations from the investment levels predicted by investment opportunities. To be consistent with the prior literature, I also use the volatility of daily stock returns and …

Institutional Stock Ownership And Corproate Dividend Policy : Evidence From China, Jianghua Shen

Theses & Dissertations

Agency theory suggests that institutional stockholders are able to influence the dividend policies of listed firms with the underlying objective of reducing a firm’s agency costs. This study explores the causal effects of institutional ownership on dividend policies for the firms listed in China. Using various measures of institutional ownership and dividend policy, I find that mutual fund ownership in a firm causes it to pay out more cash dividends or to initiate cash dividends. These effects are mainly evident in the firms controlled by the state and regional governments and those with relatively high free cash flows. The effects …

The Role Of Credit Ratings On Capital Structure And Its Speed Of Adjustment In Bank-Oriented And Market-Oriented Economies, Michal Wojewodzki

Theses & Dissertations

This study investigates both the direct and indirect roles of credit ratings (CR) on the capital structures of 1,513 firms operating in 19 countries with different financial orientations and levels of economic development over the 20-year period (1991-2010).

Until recently, it has been common place to classify countries into capital market-based oriented (MB) and bank-based oriented (BB) in terms of their financial systems’ orientation (Antoniou et al. 2008). Traditionally, in MB economies (Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, South Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, the U.K., and the U.S.) having a CR helps firms issue equity or bonds. In contrast, …

Hello, Is Anybody There? Corporate Accessibility For Minority Shareholders As A Signal Of Agency Problems In China, Xiaofeng Zhao

Theses & Dissertations

My thesis examines whether corporate accessibility for minority shareholders, defined as the ease with which minority shareholders are able to contact corporate insiders, can be a signal of the severity of a firm’s agency problems. Using Chinese public listed firms as the testing group, I find that accessible firms are associated with less serious agency problems than is the case for non-accessible firms. Specifically, accessible firms tend to be associated with lower agency costs, lower cost of equity, higher firm valuation, and better operating performance. I also find that accessibility can signal agency problems in firms with different ownership and …