China DreamThe citizens of Pompei weren’t wiped out by the sudden eruption of Mount Vesuvius. They were treated first to an 18-hour rain of pumice during which many fled with belongings and lives preserved. Only after this unpleasant but unequivocal harbinger of something far nastier did the pyroclastic flows, from which no escape was possible, commence […]
The latest IMF China Country Report was published on February 4th (the full 84-pager is here IMF China Country Report 220204) and was a generally upbeat summary. It took a closer look at six topics and below I’ve extracted what I think are the key points from each. In the order in which the topics […]
What do Milton Friedman and Xi JinPing have in common? They agree that the job of regulating society, for good of course, is something for governments not corporations to busy themselves with. Milton Friedman elaborated on this in the 1970s (see link below) pointing out that if firms concern themselves with social good at the […]
Social scientists disagree about the relationship between material prosperity and ‘happiness’. It’s an especially lively debate in China where material well being has been on such a persistent upward trajectory. Taking just the prosperity-marker of ‘digital life’ as a specific variable Xiaoqian Zeng from the Jinan University and Fan Zeng of the Shanghai University of […]
Lei Gao (et al.) from the George Mason University (Virginia, USA) took a sample of domestically listed Chinese stocks from 2010~2018 and wanted to see if there was a reliable relationship between short-selling activity and their Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) credentials? As this is a summary and you can read the work in full here […]
The Chinese currency (Rmb) doesn’t free-float against the U.S.-Dollar (U$), it goes where Chinese planners want it to; and recently that’s been up. Two years ago 1-Rmb bought 14.5-U$ cents, today it buys 15.7-U$ cents which is a strengthening of around 8.5%. What’s the fundamental economic rationale for this move? Why have the Chinese authorities […]
Post-lunch napping is still big in China. In a study, 94% of college students interviewed confirmed the habit. It wasn’t uncommon in the West but has now all but died out. Even in Western countries famous for the practice its not as common as it once was; but is it a bad thing? The answer […]
Finance theory assumes investors buy stocks after considering their return potential, which makes sense. In reality they do anything but. In fact, one of the most common reasons for stock purchase, especially among retail investors, is a look back at where a stock’s price has come from. Using a unique database, the EastMoney GUBA forum […]
There are competing theories as to whether letting outsiders into domestic stock markets is a good or a bad thing. On the one hand they bring best practices that assist in a market’s orderly development; but, on the other, they may introduce volatility that results in an undesirable higher long-term cost of capital. Writing in […]
How many times do we hear ‘Chinese buyers are pushing up property prices’ in Manhattan, Sydney, Cheju, London or wherever? But is it true? Do flows of money from Chinese buyers really and noticeably affect real-estate prices in certain areas? In the first study of its kind (I’ve seen) to isolate ‘unofficial’ Chinese capital flows […]
More monograph than research the highlighted piece today from Alicia García-Herrero, the Asia Pacific Chief Economist for Natixis with affiliations to Bruegel (a Brussels based think-tank) and the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, is a chilling piece if your business is selling mid/high-tech products to China. It’s only 12-pages so I’d urge a […]
That companies don’t do as well post-IPO as in their run up is a well documented phenomenon the world over. The reasons for this vary. In the paper highlighted today Hai Long (et al.) from the Business School, Wuchang University of Technology (Wuhan), writing in the Journal of Risk and Financial Management, takes a closer […]
As of December 8th there were 84 Main Board additions in Hong Kong in 2021. One was a listing by introduction and no money was raised but the rest involved subscription. The average loss i.e. the sum of profits and losses assuming an equal swing at the 83 money-raisers was 16% (to Friday’s close, and […]
The Hang Seng TECH Index closed this morning in Hong Kong at a new low and Tencent and Alibaba, among the most substantial businesses in China’s new-economy sector, were down over 40% and 60% from all-time highs. It’d be fair to say then the China tech and new-economy sectors are not happy places. Valuations based […]
Do Chinese companies that produce Annual Reports in both English and Chinese manipulate the English versions, somewhat, to present themselves in more favorable lights? Yes, some of them, sometimes do. Tina Lang (et al.) from the California State University at East Bay drilled through 262 company reports in both in Chinese and English from 2005~2017 […]
Gamestop, Robinhood, meme-stocks, gamification. These terms are associated with just the most recent iteration of the never-ending discussion about whether or not short-term ‘traders’ (hereafter ‘speculators’) are a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ thing. Analysis in established markets founders on an intractable problem, the lack of a counterfactual. China however may provide a useful case for […]
Often, papers I find to highlight involve a lot of quanti-mumble to get to their points which makes the process of summary writing challenging. Not so with today’s piece which couldn’t be clearer. Sumit Agarawal of the Business School at the National University of Singapore (et al.) wanted to see if Chinese firms (I’d wager […]
At this time of year crystal balls come out and pundits have a go trying to predict trends for the coming year. Central to macroeconomic forecasts, and in turn the potential for stock returns, is what GDP growth may do. In China’s case predicting the trend of GDP growth in 2022 is easy. It will, […]
I kind-of understand what clever folk at Coolabah Capital Investments have done in the paper highlighted today but whether the work has more than party-game interest I’m not sure. You can play with their model yourself and pair up countries to arrive at a) the threat of conflict and b) the possibility of all out […]
In a working paper for the Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (a Milan-based sustainable-development think tank) researchers from Tianjin University ZhongXiang Zhang and Liang Ne have produced the first study on the comprehensive CO2 reduction effects of High Speed Rail (HSR). Previous studies have looked at specific lines with some concluding the CO2 produced in the […]