Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies

Existing studies on the informational content of at-the-money implied volatility (ATMIV) and past realized volatility (PRV) and the relation between the two have mainly focused on a single short forecast horizon and conclude that ATMIV outperforms PRV. We examine the relation between implied and realized volatility over both short and longer forecasting horizons to provide a forecasting competition. We analytically demonstrate the option maturity effect on the sensitivity of the implied volatility (IV) estimation. As time to maturity increases, vega increases but at a decreasing rate, up to . At shorter (longer) maturities, small pricing changes should have greater (smaller) corrective impact on IVs. We find that IV outperforms PRV over a one month forecast horizon. However, as the forecast horizon increases, PRV outperforms IV and subsumes the information contained in it. These mixed results may be attributed to the reduced efficiency of longer dated sections of the S&P 500 options index market we analyze.

The main purpose of this paper is to explore Taiwanese firms' risk behavior when investing in China. Firms' investment decision-making in relation to risk propensity may be affected by its (1) aspiration performance, (2) looming bankruptcy, (3) sound operating resource, and/or (4) investment behavior within an industry. There is no reason to believe that a consensus of risk behavior is shared among various industry sectors. Nevertheless, little empirical evidence exists on this issue in the academic world. Apart from risks associated with globalization, firms in Taiwan, unlike those of other nations, face very high political risk owing to the cross-strait political tension with China. Past researchers have taken variables such as innovation or R&D expenditure as proxies in testing the risk behavior of firms, and yet the reliability of these two variables to represent risk behavior remains arguable. The authors use China investment as the proxy for risk behavior of firms in Taiwan to study the decision-making behavior of two groups: One group in electronic and information technology (EIT) industry and another group in the nonelectronic and information technology (nonEIT) industry. Empirical results show that (1) China investment is significantly affected by peer investment; (2) the EIT firms are more aggressive in resource utilization; and (3) R&D expenditure has a significant positive relationship with China investments in Taiwanese firms with strong past performance.

In this paper, we develop an international joint venture model and examine the equity ownership determination of Korean outward FDIs, one of the major developing economies (DEs), into both developed countries (DCs) and other DEs. We do this by explicitly considering the cost of technology leakage and the potential profits from FDI projects. Our results show that the relation between equity ownership and technology level depends on both the host country and industry sector. Regarding the host country, this relation is positive for FDIs into DEs but negative for FDIs into DCs. Regarding industry, this relation is positive and insignificant for the manufacturing sector but negative and significant for the nonmanufacturing sector. Combined together, these results indicate that Korean firms benefit most from competitive advantages through their FDIs into the manufacturing sector of DEs. In contrast, such competitive advantages of Korean firms diminish in their FDIs into DCs regardless of the industry sector.

We examine how information asymmetry affects a firm's incentive to hedge versus speculate by using foreign currency derivatives. We find a quadratic relation between asymmetric information and a firm's risk management activities. In particular, we find that the firms facing medium level of information asymmetry are more likely to hedge, while firms with very high and low levels of asymmetric information tend to speculate. Moreover, we find that our results hold primary for firms operating in highly competitive industries.

When examining Form 8-K filings under the Securities and Exchange Commissions' (SEC) Rule 10b-5, Carter and Soo (1999) found that over 26% are filed after the statutory due date. "Bad news" filings resulted in over 30% tardiness. Effective August 23, 2004, the SEC passed the Additional Form 8-K Disclosure and Acceleration of Filing Date Rule (henceforth, the 2004 Current Report Rule), which expanded the number of disclosures required to be submitted on the Form 8-K, while decreasing the reporting deadline from 15 calendar days (for most events) to only four business days after event occurrence. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is to assess the immediate compliance behavior of firms, consequent to the passage of the 2004 Current Report Rule (CRR).

In order to examine immediate effects, our sample consists of 2004 fourth quarter Form 8-K filings. Results indicate that compliance with stated Form 8-K deadlines has significantly improved. Relative to the other events examined, Form 8-K filings are more likely to be late if they report director resignations (i.e. "bad news"). Other results indicate no discernable differences between the number of days to file within the four day requirement and no industry is more likely than another to be noncompliant. In sum, this paper's findings should be of interest to the SEC, because they support the SEC's policy (i.e. the 2004 CRR) of firms providing material information to investors in a more timely fashion.

This study investigates the momentum profits and provides a systematic risk as well as time-varying unsystematic risk explanation, adopting the monthly returns in the Taiwan stock market during 2003–2008 periods. Through the regression models including and combining the CAPM, Fama–French three factor model, GARCH(1,1)-M and TGARCH(1,1)-M, the main results are as follows. First, most of the momentum strategies have not significant positive returns. Next, CAPM as well as Fama and French factors could roughly explain momentum returns. Additionally, it may make some profits likely if the time-varying unsystematic risk is further considered in an investment strategy. Moreover, the return volatility for the portfolio of winners is more sensitive to recent news than the losers. Conversely, the return volatility of the loser is more sensitive to distant news and has a larger response to bad news than the winner. Finally, TGARCH-M related models usually perform better than GARCH-M ones; this infers the presence of leverage effect in Taiwan stock market.