Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies

There is ample evidence on how bank structure (bank concentration, development of the banking sector, and presence of foreign banks) is related to credit supply and economic growth. However, little is known about how bank structure affects credit supply when the banking sector itself is in crisis and thus credit supply is impaired. The paucity of studies in examining the relationship between bank structure and credit supply during financial crisis is probably due to the complication that bank structure itself is significantly related to financial crisis. In this study, we avoid the endogeneity problem caused by the correlation between bank structure and financial crisis by studying the stock price performance of firms in 20 emerging countries during the 2008 financial crisis because the financial hardship in these countries was caused exogenously by the crisis originated from the U.S. We find firms that are more dependent on external financing tend to suffer greater stock price declines. However, the severity of the decline is significantly smaller for firms in countries with higher level of bank concentration, greater advancement in banking sector, and higher level of foreign bank presence. The results suggest that bank concentration, bank development, and foreign bank presence all contribute to the alleviation of liquidity crunch caused by crisis transmitted from other countries.

Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam (CLV) have come to be recognized as the new growth frontiers in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc, especially since the 2000s. Though all the CLV countries were hit by the global financial crisis (GFC), there has been a sharp recovery in all the economies from around 2010 or so, partly aided by the rapid development of their financial sector. While this has formed the basis for optimism about the growth potential of these countries, there have also been concerns that these countries have been experiencing a period of excessive credit growth – an offshoot of rapid financial deepening – which in turn is hampering growth and aggravating financial instability. In light of this discussion, this paper examines the nexus between financial deepening and economic growth employing a Geweke causality framework with quarterly data for CLV countries from 1996 to 2010.

This study investigates whether a lead–lag relationship exists between the returns and the moments of the implied risk-neutral density (RND) in Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) 200 spot, futures, and options markets. The empirical analysis suggests that although there is a bidirectional lead–lag relationship between the returns and the implied moments, the skewness and kurtosis of the implied RND Granger-cause the spot and futures returns more strongly than the returns do. In contrast, the implied volatility is shown to Granger-cause the returns less strongly than the returns do. In addition, this study shows that the lead–lag relationship strengthens when the spot market is exceptionally bullish or bearish.

This article advocates the multiple benefits of applying probabilistic approaches to capital budgeting through enriching the deterministic framework with a stochastic modeling of main impacting inputs (including a methodology for selecting the most important inputs to be modeled stochastically). The essential limitations of the deterministic capital budgeting methodology are presented: behavioral biases (optimism, asymmetric probability distribution, etc.), incomplete view of the risk return profile, neglecting real options (be it to evaluate a project or to reshape it in a value creation perspective), portfolio diversification impact, etc. Through some selected examples, we illustrate how each of these limitations can be mitigated thanks to probabilistic approaches leading to a better decision-making process and ultimately more value creation.

We explore the crucial research question of whether the rollover risk effect amplifies or reduces a firm’s extreme risk through an empirical investigation of the Taiwanese manufacturing industry. We also investigate the relationship between corporate policy and extreme risk. On the basis of extensive empirical evidence from 2003 to 2014, we determine significant positive impacts on extreme risk for firms with difficulty in rolling over their maturing debts. Firms with higher investment levels in a financial crisis should consequentially have more tail risk spillover from the financial sector.

This paper identifies key features of the Thai mutual fund industry and analyzes determinants of those characteristics using unique survey data from 45% of fund managers registered in Thailand in 2012. The Thai mutual fund industry has some unique characteristics. It has experienced rapid growth and is dominated by bank-related funds that are mostly fixed income funds. Equity allocation of the fund industry and our sample funds are below optimal allocation benchmarks. However, country-level allocation is close to optimal, suggesting that Thai investors who invest in equity prefer to do so directly rather than through equity mutual funds. Fund managers perceive that too much regulation, investors’ preference for deposits and insufficient liquidity limit growth in their equity investments. Managers in our survey indicate that investors do not consider expense ratio and management fee important in determining mutual fund investments. This is contrary to general investment recommendations. Thai bank-related fund managers believe that investors place more importance to brand reputation than performance, whereas foreign fund managers view performance as more important. Thai bank fund managers are more concerned about local interest rates than Thai non-bank and foreign fund managers.

In deciding how much customer information to disclose, managers face a tradeoff between the benefits of reducing information asymmetry and the losses of revealing proprietary information. This paper investigates which factors affect the level of ambiguous customer identity disclosure and whether such ambiguous disclosure affects the cost of equity capital. The empirical evidence shows that the proprietary cost is a crucial factor in ambiguous customer identity disclosure. Firms with a higher level of ambiguous customer identity disclosure generate a higher cost of equity capital. Moreover, the higher cost of equity capital is concentrated among firms under imperfect market competition.