Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies

An analyst who owns stock in the company she covers may be tempted to protect or enhance her personal interests. This paper examines how this potential conflict of interest affects the reporting of sell-side analysts by identifying and collecting two samples, the first from Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Form 144 filings, and the second from voluntary ownership disclosures. Ordered probit analyses show that owning analyst recommendations are slightly more cautious than those of the control analysts. There is little robust evidence that stock ownership leads to optimistic analyst reporting, however findings indicate that analysts who are consistently optimistic are owners. The results are consistent with a conclusion that analyst stock ownership, unlike other potential incentives, may not be a significant concern since in many cases multiple nonowning analysts also provide reports. Being an outlier potentially reduces any benefit to the owning analyst and risks her personal reputation. In the absence of a detrimental effect, ownership offers a potential benefit as a credible signal of an analyst's conviction in a company's prospects.

Several stock exchanges have launched alternative markets to target small and medium enterprises. In this research, we examine the determinants of the operating and stock return performance of alternative markets. Our results suggest that turnover and stock returns of alternative markets affect each other. Hence, it is imperative to examine the performances of alternative markets in a simultaneous equation system to mitigate the causality among performance variables. In addition, a good anti-director rights environment and a noncommon law origin country contribute to a higher turnover and additional new listings in an alternative market. A common law origin country, all else the same, contributes to higher alternative market stock returns. A high index of economic freedom negatively correlates with the turnover of an alternative market. The accounting standard and the governance structure of an exchange are not related to the operating and stock return performance in alternative markets. This research contributes to stock market development by focusing on alternative markets.

This study investigates the relation between managerial overconfidence and earnings management and whether this relation is moderated by family control. Using a sample of Taiwan-listed firms, we estimate managerial overconfidence from manager dealings and determine the following: First, overconfident managers are more likely to engage in earnings management behaviors; second, family control negatively moderates the positive relation between managerial overconfidence and earnings management; and third, the negative moderating effects of family control primarily result from family chief executive officers.

Cooper et al. (2006) find support for the "other January" effect in the US market over the period from January 1940 to December 2003 whereby the 11-month holding period returns following positive January returns are on average higher than those 11 months following negative January returns. Under this scenario, January returns can predict the subsequent 11-month holding period returns implying the potential for abnormal profits. We revisit this "anomaly" in the US stock market using the extended period from July 1926 to January 2012. Over the shorter period of 1940–2003 used by CMO, the results are supportive of the "other January" effect and they do so for several alternative holding periods. However, this alleged "other January" effect disappears once we expand the period. Moreover, we find similar and perhaps stronger anomalies for non-January months, particularly February and September. The evidence we uncover in this paper suggests that this alleged "other January" effect is likely sample-period sensitive and further, it is not specific to the month of January.

Using a sample of 3,274 firm-year data from an internationally renowned accounting firm, we investigate the effects of auditor–client relationship on auditor quality (measured by absolute discretionary accruals (ABSDA)) from the perspectives of audit firm, audit group, and individual auditor, respectively. Our empirical results show that after taking account of the client size effect, the client's fee contribution to audit firm and to audit group is positively related to the client firm's ABSDA. The finding that audit firms and audit groups allow their important clients a higher level of ABSDA supports the economic-dependence hypothesis. Moreover, the economic dependence effect is more saliently found prior to the enactment of 2002 Sarbanes–Oxley Act. Furthermore, the other finding that senior individual auditors require their clients a lower level of ABSDA holds the reputation-concern hypothesis. A synopsis of the overall findings indicates that the argument of economic dependence prevails in the analysis of the audit firm and audit group, while the reputation concern prevails in the analysis of the individual auditor.

Research suggests that the cash ratios of private firms are lower than the ones of public firms, which is not consistent with an expectation for increased importance of the precautionary motive for firms with fewer funding options. The study provides a significant explanation on these lower ratios, attributed to differences in leverage, capital expenditures, internally generated cash flows, and corporate governance. The study finally testifies that excess cash holdings are positively associated with future operating performance for private, but not public firms, a finding which is interpreted as a manifestation of capital raising constraints for unlisted versus listed firms.

This paper attempts to characterize the production technology of venture capital (VC) firms in Taiwan, whilst taking into account the simultaneity problem that arises from the correlation between inputs and unobserved productivity. The estimates of scale economies from OLS are found to be much higher than those obtained from our preferred approach. The paper also explores how the capital structure of those firms was adjusted to increase their productivity when faced with the institutional change that occurred in the VC markets of Taiwan and what we can learn from this. There is evidence that financing mix was irrelevant to firms' productivity growth when tax incentives were issued by the government to stimulate equity financing, whereas they were able to benefit from increased financial leverage after these tax incentives were discontinued, which suggests that the effect of the policy termination was stronger than its initiation, in terms of productivity. Firms that chose to invest in the internet and bio-related industries emerged as placing higher financing decision importance on productivity growth than those with other investment preferences, thus implying that the financing decision for those firms investing in these sectors is much more critical in determining the growth of the firm.