Think Xiaomi is just a supplier of cheap smartphones? Think again. Writing in the International Journal of Business and Economic Sciences Applied Research, Hsien-Chih Kuo, Pin Luarn and I-Jen Chen from Farestone Telecommunications and the National Taiwan University Science and Technology explain their study of the Xiaomi ecosystem to try and find out how the […]
Author: Nial Gooding
Corruption, by its very nature, is hard to pin down. In the paper highlighted this week though researchers have used privileged access to a big bank’s data [They don’t say but I’d bet its ICBC] and appear to have flushed out a very interesting variety. Sumit Agarwal from Georgetown University, Wenlan Qian from the National […]
Categories
Is The Bloom Off China’s High-Tech Rose?
Preamble Investors who bought shares early in today’s China-tech-darlings have done well. If you were in the right stocks, at the right time, heavily weighted your portfolio in that direction and have taken no profits on the way up, you will now be, minted. Congratulations to the lucky few described above. Most investors, however, were […]
The best time to repair a roof is on a sunny day. The paper highlighted today is another in the ‘Working Paper’ series from the IMF and was published in April this year. In it Richard Koss and Xinrui Shi go beyond the tired ohmyGodChinazbuildingtoomuchstuff narrative and take a look at the underlying mechanics of […]
What’s wrong with this picture? Well, it’s kind of obvious; China isn’t spending enough on social security. In the paper highlighted this week from the IMF, Philippe Wingender explains one of the main problems China has to address is clarify who pays for what in terms of central versus local government? China has perhaps the […]
Academics have increasingly had a ‘thing’ for stock price crash risk. My guess is because the event has a nice definition working back to the causes is now easier due to better data than before? So, for example, we now know that younger and/or more confident CEOs lead to stock price crashes. So too do […]
How to cure trade imbalances? The paper highlighted today is from January this year and penned by Bank of England staffers Mark Joy, Noëmie Lisack, Simon Lloyd, Dennis Reinhardt, Rana Sajedi and Simon Whitaker. It makes an important contribution to the question. They note that trade imbalances have only been a hot topic in recent […]
The paper highlighted this week is a first. It shows, conclusively, when women are given real control in a company they are better managers than men. Prior studies have looked mainly at Western models and tried to describe an arc between women on the board or in a CEO/CFO position and performance. Those studies have […]
What’s missing from this picture of the broad outline of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)? A significant part of the world whose leadership believe trade is mostly a one-sided deal and in which in any agreement there are ‘winners’ and ‘losers’. This view, that would shame even the smallest of small town medieval European […]
In seeking to contrast explanatory variables for stock price movements in the U.S. and China the authors of the paper highlighted this week turn up some extremely valuable perspectives on China stocks for investors. Jianan Lu, Robert F. Strambaugh and Yu Yuan, all affiliated with the Wharton Business School, wanted to see if ground breaking […]
There’s long been a debate about, particularly in developing markets, whether or not political connections help or hinder the development of the corporate sector? On the one hand it’s been established politically connected entities have better access to credit and a generally lower cost of capital. On the other hand its also been found companies […]
Sort of what we intuitively know; the larger the noise around an IPO the better it’s likely to do. What this paper adds is by taking a new approach to quantifying ‘noise’ it can predict more accurately other short and long term trading characteristics. Kun Chen from the Southern University of Science in Shenzhen and […]
Another IMF Working Paper. I noted last week, summarizing the one highlighted then, how IMF recommendations on China have a habit of ending up as official domestic policy. So these papers are especially worth paying attention to. In this one, from January this year, IMF staffers Sally Chen and Joon Shik Kang begin by reminding […]
The IMF and China have enjoyed a cozy relationship for some time; the former providing strategic road-maps the latter seem to like following. Papers from the IMF therefore on the subject of China should be read closely because they’re often policy-action harbingers The Working Paper highlighted today was published last November and it’s authorship gives […]
Itzhak Ben-David of The Ohio State University and NBER, Francesco Franzoni from USI Lugano and the Swiss Finance Institute and Rabih Moussawi from the Villanova University and WRDS, University of Pennsylvania set about the question in a Fisher College of Business working paper last updated in November 2017. By looking at before and after effects […]
Well, is there? The authors of the paper highlighted this week, Tianhao Zhi et al, from the Business School of the Sun Yat Sen University, start with trying to pin a definitive tail on the donkey in terms of defining what a ‘bubble’ is. They believe property markets can have two types of bubble. The […]
The math in this paper will be beyond most mortals; but the conclusion is straightforward if depressing. The authors, Huangnan Shen Jim from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London et al, wanted to re-visit the old chestnut of why China’s SOEs remain so powerful and so un-reformed. They believe the answer lies […]
Writing in the January-February edition of Foreign Affairs Oriana Skylar Mastro, assistant professor of security studies at Georgetown University, updates some old thinking about China’s perceived attitude to it’s fractious ‘ally’ N. Korea. There are three major misconceptions about Beijing’s position. First, China and North Korea are not ‘allies’ in any meaningful sense today. Second, […]
You need to be afraid of ETFs. They are, most likely, the soil in which the seeds of the next financial crisis (there’s always another one) are being planted. How do I know this? I don’t for sure; but they look very like other financial innovations that started out (and, in fairness, after convulsion came […]
Sometimes I come across a paper that in seeking to highlight one issue is helpful to me as an investor in inadvertently shedding light on another. The paper this week, from Donghui Wu and Qing Ye of the Chinese University (H.K.) and Sun Yat Sen University (Guangzhou) respectively is a good example. The researchers wanted […]