Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies

Previous studies have examined different statistical models to predict corporate bond ratings. However, these papers use agency ratings as the benchmark to assess models and ignore the evidence that agency ratings may not be accurate in a timely manner. In this paper, we propose a new approach which incorporates ex-post bond returns to evaluate rating prediction models. Relative rating strength portfolios, formed by buying under-rated bonds with agency ratings lower than model ratings and selling over-rated bonds with agency ratings higher than model ratings, are employed to test the performance of different statistical models in rating predictions. Our results show that one version of multiple discriminant analysis model can generate a statistically significant abnormal return of 5% over a 5-year horizon. The ordered probit model which is believed to possess theoretical advantages in classifying bonds does not perform better. This suggests that using traditional measures to evaluate models can be misleading. The existence of a profitable trading strategy also raises the concern of market efficiency in the corporate bond market.

The seminal work by Cox (1975, 1996), MacBeth and Merville (1979, 1980) and Emanuel and Macbeth (1982) show that, both theoretically and empirically, the constant elasticity of variance option model (CEV) is superior to the Black–Scholes model in explaining market prices. In this paper, we extend the MacBeth and Merville (1979, 1980) research by using a European contract (S&P 500 index options). We find supportive evidence to the MacBeth and Merville results although our sample is not subject to American premium biases. Furthermore, we reduce the approximation errors by using the non-central chi-square probability functions proposed by Shroder (1989).

This paper examines the performance of limit orders versus market orders using intraday transaction prices for all stocks listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange over the first three months of 1999. The results indicate that executed limit orders significantly outperform market orders. Moreover, even after including the impact of unfilled limit orders, the unconditional limit orders still perform slightly better than the corresponding market orders. The superior performance of limit orders is consistent with the explanation that limit order traders benefit from the bid-ask bounce driven by liquidity trading in the Taiwan stock market. By replacing the buy and sell prices by the bid-ask average, the superior profitability of limit orders decline significantly.

We use a probit selection model to investigate whether the relation between stock returns and their fundamental determinants varies for China-concept and non-China-concept stocks. In addition, an ordered probit selection model is used as well to explore whether the determinants of stock returns change due to the different level of investments in China. There are a lot of reasons for Taiwanese firms to invest in China. The stock of a firm with capital investments in China is called China-concept stock. A firm can decide whether to go for its capital investments in China or not. It is interesting to investigate whether a firm's decision to invest in China affects the determination of stock returns or not. This investment decision should not be treated as exogenous in examining the determinants of stock returns. Hence, a two-stage selection model is employed for this purpose. We find that heavy-level-investment-in-China firms do exhibit a different relation between stock returns and their fundamental determinants. Book-to-market ratio is the most important determinant of stock returns for all firms.

This paper examines whether risk sharing exists in mortgage loan agreements. Specifically, we analyze the effect of the number of co-borrowers on foreclosure risk, using data from Singapore. Through the estimation of probit model, the results consistently show that co-borrowers significantly reduce the foreclosure risk, suggesting the existence of risk sharing among the co-borrowers. In addition, foreclosure risk is reduced proportionately with the number of co-borrowers. Further analysis shows that low-rise properties required a larger number of co-borrowers than high-rise properties in order to share risk effectively. Interestingly, low-rise properties experience a greater decline in the foreclosure likelihood than high-rise properties for every increase in the number of co-borrowers.

This paper studies the informative content of the NB (net-buy) information of institutional investors, including foreign investors (FIs), security investment trust companies (SITCs), and security dealers (SDs), in the Taiwan stock market. First, with/without considering prevailing market frictions, the investment strategies based on the NB trading volume and dollar trading volume of SITCs, outperform the market and those strategies based on those of FIs and SDs. Second, on average, institutional investors trade mostly large and growth stocks. Third, evidence supports negative leading roles of the aggregate/disaggregate NB dollar trading volumes of FIs over those of SITCs.

This paper reports an empirical analysis of the relationship between return autocorrelation, trading volume and volatility, following the seminal paper by Campbell, Grossman and Wang (1992) using data for A shares traded on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges for the period 1992–2002. Campbell et al. argue that autocorrelation of returns will be negatively related to trading volume given that market makers will need to be rewarded with higher returns for accommodating noise traders. For our full sample we find remarkably consistent support for the CGW hypothesis and results — return autocorrelations are negatively but non-linearly related to lagged trading volume and less strongly to volatility. These results are quite robust with respect to different messures of volume and volatility. We argue that this is a striking result in view of the substantial differences between the US market in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and the Chinese market of the 1990s. The relationship proves to be unstable over short sub-periods although whether this is due to the relatively short sample we use or to the inherent instability of the Chinese market in its first decade of operation will not be clear until much longer data sets are available for Chinese stock prices.