Why is China so cagey about it’s military capability? Isn’t the fact that Beijing keeps the world and it’s neighbors guessing destabilizing; and couldn’t it lead to a dangerous proliferation of arms in the region if others end up over-arming on the better-safe-than-sorry principle? Surely that outcome isn’t in Beijing’s best interest, so what explains […]
Category: Sunday Papers
Writing in the Journal of Democracy (July 2017) Professor Kevin J. O’Brien from the University of California, Berkley notes that China’s development model is tired and, for different reasons, some former supporters are now somewhat brassed-off. He looks in more detail at three such groups: frustrated cops, former military officers and bullied cadres, teachers, hospital […]
Does corruption grease the economic wheel or is it sand in the gears? The question is perennial because corruption, by it’s very nature, is hard to gauge. The paper highlighted this week may be a landmark in addressing this question and, certainly, I’ve seen nothing like it with regards to China. The authors, Nan Chen […]
The paper summarized this week got a lot of press when released last month because it sounds, sort of, TED-talkie-right. In a nutshell it tries to show that color, particularly the color red, negatively affects investment decisions. The researchers, William J. Bazley, Henrik Cronqvist and Milica Mormann from the universities of Miami and Southern Methodist […]
The piecemeal approach adopted so far by European governments to the recent waves of migration from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and sub-Saharan Africa won’t do. This migration trend will persist, perhaps for a very, very long time; and the paper highlighted this week explains why. Frédéric Docquier and Joel Machado writing in […]
A car is faster than a bicycle, a plane faster than a car. Apes are smarter than trees, humans (most anyhow) smarter than apes. Examples of higher complexity leading to better results are all around. However, when it comes to investing, this is not the case. Hedge funds, as a group, have been unmasked as […]
Listed in Hong Kong there are now several Chinese City Commercial Banks (CCBs); and many more have plans in the pipeline to come here. If you’ve invested in the sector, have been or might be tempted then read on. What follows is depressing work on why this sector is (most likely) a solid avoid. Writing […]
The issue of whether inequality is rising or falling in China is not a trivial one. Since the beginning of the reform and opening up in 1978 inequality widened and carried on widening for many years. In a Discussion Paper for the International Food Policy Research Institute Ravi Kanbur and Yue Wang of Cornell University […]
As ETFs and passive strategies continue their march into the lunch-rooms of the world’s biggest active managers they’re resorting to a series of rearguard actions. One of these getting a lot of press has been the concept of so-called ‘Smart Beta’ [Eeeew!]. If the term is new for you a smart-beta strategy is supposed to […]
Studies, mostly in the developed West, have shown conclusive evidence that tall people (men and women) get paid more than shorter peers. In the paper highlighted this week Xiao Yang et al from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in Chengdu decided to look at the phenomenon in China. It would have […]
The Chinese government’s relationship with the internet and information technology has shifted significantly in recent years. From playing whack-a-mole with pesky micro-bloggers, when Xi Jin Ping first took over in 2012, to today, the authorities’ relationship has matured as a) the net penetrates deeper into society than ever before and b) the information that can […]
Black Swans anyone? The paper highlighted this week is dense; but there’s a part I have to abstract in full because its highly topical and I can’t summarize it easily. Alibaba fans please take time to digest independent research analyst Mr. Michael C.I. Nwogugu’s thoughts here: “..Alibaba poses a substantial financial stability risk due to […]
Writing in the Journal of International Banking Law and Regulation Lerong Lu and Lu Longjie, both from the University of Leeds, provide the clearest account I’ve seen to date about how regulators in China lost control of margin finance in 2014 which led to the spectacular bull and bust market that followed in Chinese A-shares. […]
Using data from one of China’s largest P2P operations, Renrendai (Renrendai 人人贷), the authors of the paper highlighted this week, Fabio Braggion, Alberto Manconi and Haikun Zhu from the universities of Tilburg in the Netherlands and Bocconi in Milan, set out to provide an answer to the question in the title. What they needed for […]
I’ve summarized and posted links to a number of papers in the past year or so on atmospheric pollution in China. The paper highlighted and linked to this week will be the last in this series. Today’s paper from Shihe Fu, V. Brian Viard and Peng Zhang of the Southwestern University, the Cheung Kong Graduate […]
What happens if you take a strategy that’s (sort of) reliably worked in the U.S. over a long period and see if it can be applied to the A-share markets in China? That’s what Jason C. Hsu, Vivek Viswanathan, Chenhui Wang and Philip Wool with the University of California’s Anderson School of Business and Rayliant […]
Get your brand name type right, at least in autos in China, and you can expect a 7.6% sales advantage. Get it wrong and your sales could under-perform by as much as nearly 5%; so what is ‘right’ and/or ‘wrong’? The authors of the paper highlighted this week, Fang Wu, Qi Sun, Rajdeep Grewal and […]
Atmospheric pollution in China is bad. Nobody would pretend otherwise; but why, exactly, does it need to be cleaned up? Most studies on the problem have focused on narrow health dis-benefits such as respiratory and related issues leading to disability and premature death. So far so nasty. In the paper highlighted today though Xi Chen […]
Academics [Er, shouldn’t that be ‘kids’? Ed.] say the funniest things. Sometimes when you look at some work from academia, as with the paper today, as a practitioner you know the answer to a headline question right away. The proofs are just a formality. Hopefully, anyone else also engaged at the sharp end of things […]
Sometimes just a picture (or two in this case) can sum up an argument. Here you see the relationship between investment and growth for 60-major economies, 30-developing and 30-developed from 1975 to 2014. Next, the relationship between consumption, as a percentage of GDP, and growth. No Holmesian deduction required to see there’s a […]