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Full-Text Articles in Business

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 …


Geographic Distance And State's Grip: Information Asymmetry, State Inattention, And Firm Implementation Of State Policy, Xiyi Yang, Heli Wang, Xiaoyu Zhou Sep 2023

Geographic Distance And State's Grip: Information Asymmetry, State Inattention, And Firm Implementation Of State Policy, Xiyi Yang, Heli Wang, Xiaoyu Zhou

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this study, we develop the argument that geographic distance between the state and local governments undermines the state's capacity to influence the implementation of state policies by local organizations. Drawing from information economics and the attention-based view, we propose that physical distance reduces the state's monitoring effectiveness through two interrelated mechanisms: information asymmetry and state leaders' inattention to distant issues. Using data of Chinese public firms' implementation of environmental activities between 2008 and 2016, we find that firms conduct fewer environmental activities required by the state when they are regulated by local governments that are more geographically distant to …


Disclosure Regulation: Past, Present, And Future, S.P. Kothari, Liandong Zhang Jun 2022

Disclosure Regulation: Past, Present, And Future, S.P. Kothari, Liandong Zhang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

This monograph provides an overview of the theories of disclosure regulation and recent developments in the disclosure regulation literature. We organize our discussion around three basic questions. First, why do we need to regulate corporate disclosure in the financial market? Second, which theories explain the current state of disclosure regulation? Third, what are the economic consequences of disclosure regulation? In exploring the third question, we discuss several examples of disclosure regulation related to information production, dissemination, and presentation. Then, we provide an overview of the current debate on mandating environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure and reporting. Finally, we conclude …


Estimating Financial Information Asymmetry In Real Estate Transactions In China: An Application Of Two-Tier Frontier Model, Ganlin Pu, Ying Zhang, Li-Chen Chou Mar 2022

Estimating Financial Information Asymmetry In Real Estate Transactions In China: An Application Of Two-Tier Frontier Model, Ganlin Pu, Ying Zhang, Li-Chen Chou

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This study applies the two-tier stochastic frontier model to estimate the distribution of housing transaction information in Hangzhou, Wenzhou, Ningbo, and Jinhua (four cities in Zhejiang Province, China) during the year 2018, to analyze the difference in the price information acquired by the buyers and sellers in the transaction, and the effect of information asymmetry on the transaction price. The empirical results show that in each city, during the housing transaction process, the supplier has more complete information about house prices than consumers, and can therefore implement price discrimination strategies in setting service prices. Due to the disadvantage in acquired …


Sustainability Of Rewards-Based Crowdfunding: A Quasi-Experimental Analysis Of Funding Targets And Backer Satisfaction, Michael Wessel, Rob Gleasure, Robert John Kauffman Jan 2021

Sustainability Of Rewards-Based Crowdfunding: A Quasi-Experimental Analysis Of Funding Targets And Backer Satisfaction, Michael Wessel, Rob Gleasure, Robert John Kauffman

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Rewards-based crowdfunding presents an information asymmetry for participants due to the funding mechanism used. Campaign-backers trust creators to complete projects and deliver rewards as outlined prior to the fundraising process, but creators may discover better opportunities as they progress with a project. Despite this, the all-or-nothing (AON) mechanism on crowdfunding platforms incentivizes creators to set meager funding-targets that are easier to achieve but may offer limited slack when creators wish to simultaneously pursue emerging opportunities later in the project. We explore the related issues of how funding targets seem to be selected by the creators, and how dissatisfaction with the …


Consequences Of Disclosing Clinical Trial Results: Evidence From The Food And Drug Administration Amendments Act, Thomas Borveau, Vedran Capkun, Yin Wang Feb 2020

Consequences Of Disclosing Clinical Trial Results: Evidence From The Food And Drug Administration Amendments Act, Thomas Borveau, Vedran Capkun, Yin Wang

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

We examine how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act (FDAAA) of 2007, which requires additional disclosures regarding clinical trial results, impacts information asymmetry between the disclosing pharmaceutical firm and capital market participants, the general public, academics, and practitioners. We document a reduction in information asymmetry in capital markets. We also document an increase in adverse event and product problem complaint reports filed against the pharmaceutical firms to the FDA and a higher number of drug and medical device recalls for affected firms after the FDAAA enactment. Finally, cross-sectional analyses suggest that the increase in FDA complaint reports and …


A Signaling Theory Of Institutional Activism: How Norway’S Sovereign Wealth Fund Investments Affect Firms’ Foreign Acquisitions, Gurneeta Vasudeva, Lilac Nachum, Gui-Deng Say Aug 2018

A Signaling Theory Of Institutional Activism: How Norway’S Sovereign Wealth Fund Investments Affect Firms’ Foreign Acquisitions, Gurneeta Vasudeva, Lilac Nachum, Gui-Deng Say

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Combining perspectives from institutional activism and signaling theory literatures, we suggest that an activist sovereign wealth fund (SWF) can serve as an intermediary signaler, providing cues about host countries’ institutional environment to internationalizing firms. By publicizing its investments and engaging in institutional activism, a SWF can signal the institutional quality of host countries to internationalizing firms, thus allowing them to overcome the well-known “lemons problem” in international decision-making. We examine the impact of a SWF’s signals on firms’ ownership choices in their foreign acquisitions. Our empirical analysis of Norway’s socially responsible SWF and firms from Norway and Sweden during 1998–2011 …


Option Listing And Information Asymmetry, Jianfeng Hu May 2018

Option Listing And Information Asymmetry, Jianfeng Hu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Option listing increases informed and uninformed trading by 12.4% and 23.9%, respectively, in the US between 2001 and 2010, hence reducing relative information risk. We establish the causal effects using control stocks with similar propensities of listing and a quasi-natural experiment using option listing standards. The benefits are more prominent for stocks with active options trading and opaque stocks. The reduction of information risk is larger for good news than bad news, and the stock price response to earnings surprise weakens after listing. The results suggest that options improve the overall market information environment beyond substitutional effects to stock trading.


Essays In Corporate Cash Holdings, Chenxi Liu Jun 2017

Essays In Corporate Cash Holdings, Chenxi Liu

Dissertations and Theses Collection

This dissertation addresses three topics in corporate cash holdings. The first paper provides a new determinant of cash holdings by examining the impact of earnings transparency on corporate cash holdings. Motivated by Barth et al. (2013), who show that firms with less earnings transparency tend to have higher cost of equity, this paper shows that the cross-section differences in earnings transparency cause variations in firm cash holdings because firms with less earnings transparency have more incentives to hold cash in order to avoid costly external financing. Using data of US firms from 1980 to 2013, it is found that earnings …


Conditional Conservatism And Debt Versus Equity Financing, Beng Wee Goh, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald J. Lobo, Yen H. Tong Mar 2017

Conditional Conservatism And Debt Versus Equity Financing, Beng Wee Goh, Chee Yeow Lim, Gerald J. Lobo, Yen H. Tong

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Extant research suggests that conditional conservatism reduces information asymmetry between a firm and its shareholders as well as its debtholders. However, there is little evidence on whether conditional conservatism reduces information asymmetry differentially for shareholders and debtholders. We use the setting of a firm's choice between equity versus debt when it seeks a significant amount of external financing to examine this research question. We find that when firms raise a significant amount of external financing, the use of equity (versus debt) increases with the level of conservatism. We also find that the reduction in cost of equity associated with conservatism …


The Effect Of Board Independence On Information Asymmetry, Beng Wee Goh, Jimmy Lee, Jeffrey Ng, Kevin Ow Yong Jan 2016

The Effect Of Board Independence On Information Asymmetry, Beng Wee Goh, Jimmy Lee, Jeffrey Ng, Kevin Ow Yong

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Boards have an important role in ensuring that investors’ interests are protected. Our paper first examines whether the independence of a firm's board affects information asymmetry among investors. We provide evidence that greater board independence leads to lower information asymmetry. Next, we provide evidence that more voluntary disclosure and greater analyst coverage are two underlying mechanisms via which greater board independence reduces information asymmetry. Of the two mechanisms, we find that analyst coverage is more significant in influencing how board independence affects information asymmetry. Overall, our paper contributes to a better understanding of the effect of board independence on information …


What Is Public Relations To Society? Toward An Economically Informed Understanding Of Public Relations, Jurrien Gregor Halff, Anne Gregory Jun 2015

What Is Public Relations To Society? Toward An Economically Informed Understanding Of Public Relations, Jurrien Gregor Halff, Anne Gregory

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The notion of public relations contributing to the fabric of society is heavily contested in the public sphere and under-researched by the academy. The authors of this paper propose that the study of the relevance of public relations to society can be enlightened by turning to economics. Using information asymmetry as a framework, the argument is that public relations can be analyzed as a social institution that both helps to mitigate market imperfections and consequently increases the efficiency with which society’s resources are allocated as well as the chances for more market participants to derive value out of economic transactions.


What Is Public Relations To Society? Toward An Economically Informed Understanding Of Public Relations, Halff, Gregor, Anne Gregory Jun 2015

What Is Public Relations To Society? Toward An Economically Informed Understanding Of Public Relations, Halff, Gregor, Anne Gregory

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The notion of public relations contributing to the fabric of society is heavily contested in the public sphere and under-researched by the academy. The authors of this paper propose that the study of the relevance of public relations to society can be enlightened by turning to economics. Using information asymmetry as a framework, the argument is that public relations can be analyzed as a social institution that both helps to mitigate market imperfections and consequently increases the efficiency with which society's resources are allocated as well as the chances for more market participants to derive value out of economic transactions. …


Does Option Trading Convey Stock Price Information?, Jianfeng Hu Mar 2014

Does Option Trading Convey Stock Price Information?, Jianfeng Hu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

After executing option orders, options market makers turn to the stock market to hedge away the underlying stock exposure. As a result, the stock exposure imbalance in option transactions translates into an imbalance in stock transactions. This paper decomposes the total stock order imbalance into an imbalance induced by option transactions and an imbalance independent of options. The analysis shows that the option-induced imbalance significantly predicts future stock returns in the cross section, but the imbalance independent of options only has a transitory price impact. Further investigation suggests that options order flow contains important information about the underlying stock value.


The Liability Of Foreignness In International Equity Investments: Evidence From The U.S. Stock Market, Bok Baik, Jun-Koo Kang, Jin-Mo Kim, Joonho Lee May 2013

The Liability Of Foreignness In International Equity Investments: Evidence From The U.S. Stock Market, Bok Baik, Jun-Koo Kang, Jin-Mo Kim, Joonho Lee

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using foreign institutional ownership data in the US from 1990 to 2007, we examine whether foreign institutional investors face liabilities of foreignness (LOF) in the US stock market. We find that foreign institutional investors prefer low information asymmetry stocks more than domestic institutional investors do, and this preference for low information asymmetry stocks is particularly strong among foreign institutional investors from countries with high LOF. More importantly, we find that a change in foreign institutional ownership is negatively related to future returns, whereas this relation does not exist for domestic institutional ownership. The negative relation between the change in foreign …


Direct And Mediated Associations Among Earnings Quality, Information Asymmetry And The Cost Of Equity, Nilabhra Bhattacharya, Frank Ecker, Per Olsson, Katherine Schipper Jan 2012

Direct And Mediated Associations Among Earnings Quality, Information Asymmetry And The Cost Of Equity, Nilabhra Bhattacharya, Frank Ecker, Per Olsson, Katherine Schipper

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using path analysis, we investigate the direct and indirect links between three measures of earnings quality and the cost of equity. Our investigation is motivated by analytical models that specify both a direct link and an indirect link that is mediated by information asymmetry, but do not suggest which link would be more important empirically. We measure information asymmetry as both the adverse selection component of the bid-ask spread and the probability of informed trading (PIN). For a large sample of Value Line firms during 1993–2005, we find statistically reliable evidence of both a direct path from earnings quality to …


Analyst Coverage And The Cost Of Raising Equity Capital: Evidence From Underpricing Of Seasoned Equity Offerings, Robert M. Bowen, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng Sep 2008

Analyst Coverage And The Cost Of Raising Equity Capital: Evidence From Underpricing Of Seasoned Equity Offerings, Robert M. Bowen, Xia Chen, Qiang Cheng

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Theorists have long recognized that information asymmetry among investors adversely affects the cost of raising equity capital (e.g., Diamond and Verrecchia 1991). When there is information asymmetry, relatively uninformed investors are reluctant to trade because of higher potential loss from transacting with informed investors (e.g., Glosten and Milgrom 1985; Kyle 1985). To trade, uninformed investors demand compensation for the risks of trading with informed investors (O’Hara 2003). In the case of issuing new equity, firms must issue shares at a discount to overcome the reluctance of uninformed investors. Such discounting leads to smaller proceeds to the firm and a higher …


The Change In Corporate Transparency Of Korean Firms After The Asian Financial Crisis: An Analysis Using Analysts' Forecast Data, Jinho Chang, Young Jun Cho, Hyun-Han Shin Nov 2007

The Change In Corporate Transparency Of Korean Firms After The Asian Financial Crisis: An Analysis Using Analysts' Forecast Data, Jinho Chang, Young Jun Cho, Hyun-Han Shin

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

Using analysts' forecast error and forecast dispersion of firms covered by the I/B/E/S database, this study examines the change in information asymmetry of Korean firms around the financial crisis of 1997. Results show that the information asymmetry of Korean firms is lower after the financial crisis than before, implying that corporate transparency did, in effect, improve with the change in business environment. In addition, this study finds that chaebol firms have higher information asymmetry than non-chaebol firm, and also that the corporate transparency improvement of chaebol firms is not higher than that of non-chaebol firms in the post-crisis period despite …


Risky Debt-Maturity Choice Under Information Asymmetry, Chunchi Wu, Sheen Liu Jan 2007

Risky Debt-Maturity Choice Under Information Asymmetry, Chunchi Wu, Sheen Liu

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The traditional equilibrium models of signaling with debt-maturity require transaction costs by firms when raising new capital. In this paper, we propose a new model that has no such requirement. We demonstrate that a separating equilibrium of debt-maturity choice exists under a much more general condition, once accounting for the interactions between borrowers and lenders. The model is able to explain the observed complex financial structure. It is found that callable debt functions much like short-term debt, and serial debt similar to long-term debt. In equilibrium, high-quality firms issue short-term debt, and low-quality firms issue long-term debt.


The Information Efficiency Of The Corporate Bond Market, Cheng Ying Jan 2006

The Information Efficiency Of The Corporate Bond Market, Cheng Ying

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

The link between asset prices and information fundamentals as embodied in news announcement effects is an extremely, if not the most, important area amongst current research in market microstructure. The lack of adequate transaction data posts an obstacle in this research. In this thesis, based on a valuable intraday transaction-by-transaction dataset for U.S. corporate bonds, we first examine the impact of public information contained in the macro-economic news and firm-specific information contained in corporate earnings annoucements on the prices of both corporate bonds and stocks. We find that both bonds and stocks react significantly to public news and firm-specific information, …