Within the five major financial asset classes in China i.e. stocks, real estate, bonds, commodity futures and foreign exchange which are the ‘dogs’ and which the ‘tails’, or, who wags whom? Researchers Kim Hang Low from the National University of Singapore and Xiaoxia Zhou of the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics looked at data […]
Americans smile more than Chinese. Fact, not just an anecdote. In the paper highlighted this week Thomas Talhelm, Shigehiro Oishi and Xuemin Zhang from the universities of Chicago, Virginia and Beijing Normal respectively studied not only photographs but set about observing students on campuses in Virginia and Beijing to record smiling. The difference between smiling […]
Dr. Marcia Don Harpaz, from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Faculty of Law believes that China is heading in the direction of WTO leadership. Presently though it lacks, crucially, the ability to assume the role and the willingness of other nations to follow it. WTO leadership in the past has been characterized by two features: […]
Another first. No study to date has attempted to assess the effect of Chinese buyers on real estate markets globally. There have been several one-country studies but in the paper highlighted today researchers Yuk Ying (Candie) Chang, Hamish D. Anderson and Song Shi from the Massey University of New Zealand and the University of Technology […]
Britain and America have been described as countries divided by a common language. How then should we think of China? A country with 17-official language groups that break down into 105-language types; and that’s just official categorizations. Reality is messier. Ruishen Zhang, of the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, wondered if sell-side analysts covering […]
We all know the story; but seeing this picture prompted an audible ‘Wow!’ from me nonetheless. This is the good news; the near eradication of poverty in China in just 40-years. History contains no precedent, no nation will ever best this. The bad news though is in this process income inequality increased dramatically and in […]
The reiteration of a long-held view is often just bigotry or, bigotory’s kissing-cousin, stupidity. However, when analysts modify, or outright change, a position that’s news. This happened last week when an IMF working party consisting of James DANIEL, Mission Chief for China and Assistant Director of the Asia and Pacific Department and Alfred SCHIPKE, Senior […]
You’d think the answer was obvious and ‘of course!’; but you’d be wrong. Or, to be more precise, you’d be only partly correct. Connecting one megalopolis to another is surely a net benefit to both. As soon as a plan is announced though the next question is how many stops will there be on that […]
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 […]
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 […]