Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies

This study examines direct investments of Taiwan firms in China (DIC) and firm performance consequences from industrial perspectives. It is found that a U-shaped relationship exists for electronic firms but an inverted-S-shaped relationship exists for non-electronic firms. The empirical results also reveal that electronic firms outperform non-electronic firms.

We use financial data on poorly performing firms in Hong Kong to examine the motives behind paying out cash dividends when they suffer an earnings decline. We test three hypotheses behind the cash dividend policy: the maturity hypothesis, the free cash flow hypothesis, and the self-interest hypothesis of directors (i.e., the cash channeling hypothesis of directors). The findings are largely consistent with the maturity hypothesis and the free cash flow hypothesis but do not support the cash channeling hypothesis, confirming good market transparency and governance of the Hong Kong market.

This paper investigates capital flight from Thailand to the US through trade misinvoicing during the period from 1990 to 2005. The evidence indicates that capital flight from Thailand to the US, valued over US$16,189 million, had been done through under-invoicing exports to the US rather than over-invoicing imports from the US. The major incentive for the movement of capital is investment, followed by political events in Thailand, and the most significant determinants of capital flight are the US T-bill rate, the deposit rate in Thailand, and the degree of overvaluation of the Thai Baht. Interestingly, the 1997 Asian economic crisis did not play a significant role in the capital movement through trade.

The behavior of exchange rates has been an important issue in the international finance literature. Although exchange rate is erratic and unpredictable in the short run, its long-run behavior is believed to be guided by economic fundamentals. This paper empirically tests the long-run determinants of the exchange rate by focusing on the Taiwan/US case. After incorporating productivity differential, foreign reserves, and monetary base in the absolute Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) proposition, where the relative price is the only determinant of the exchange rate, the Johansen's maximum likelihood test results indicate these determinants and the exchange rate are indeed cointegrated: thus a long-run relationship can be established.

This paper presents a switching regression model of investment decision where the probability of a firm facing financial constraint is endogenously determined. The approach, therefore, obviates the use of a priori criteria to exogenously identify the financially constrained firms, and thereby addresses the potential misclassification problem faced in the existing literature. A sample of 576 Indian manufacturing firms, collected across 15 broad industries is used for this study. The study establishes that financially constrained firms exhibit a much higher investment-cash flow sensitivity than those identified to be unconstrained. It also probes into the possible determinants of financial constraints, and finds empirical support for its hypothesis that young, liquidity constrained and low dividend payout firms are more likely to face financial constraints, when compared to their respective counterparts. This paper also provides some insight into the impact of the ongoing liberalization program on the financial constraints faced by the Indian firms.

Existing studies show that markets use comparable firm multiples to price IPOs. This study explores IPO valuations in an emerging market where reliable comparable price multiples may not be readily available, or cannot be reliably identified. In particular, we examine the value relevance of price-earnings multiples disclosed by managers in IPO prospectuses in China. Using a sample of IPOs from 1992 to 2002, we find that price-earnings multiples disclosed by IPO firms provide significant power in explaining price formation in this emerging market. We also find that price-earnings multiples disclosed by IPO firms after 1999, when the China Securities and Regulatory Commission relaxed its internal guideline for approving IPO applications, are more informative. The results are robust to a variety of empirical model specifications. This study contributes to the existing IPO literature by showing that the disclosure of price-earnings multiples provides a mechanism for IPO firms to convey information about IPO firm quality when reliable comparable firm multiples may not exist.

The US financial system is undergoing a painful restructuring as credit losses originating in the mortgage finance sector of the economy grow ever larger. A combination of factors including general prosperity, demographic shifts in demand for housing, low interest rates, innovations in mortgage lending and securitization, and a breakdown in credit quality control systems all contributed to this problem. Public policymakers and industry leaders are struggling to find ways to stem the credit losses, restructure and recapitalize the financial industry, and set the economy on a path to recovery. This paper reviews the origins of this problem, explains the events that precipitated the crisis in 2007, and analyzes the pros and cons of the "fixes" that have been proposed to address these problems.