Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

A and B shares exist in the Chinese stock markets. A shareholders are domestic investors and B shareholders are foreign investors. During the early-and mid-1990s, B shares were traded at a discount relative to A shares, and B-share returns were higher than A-share returns. It is found that B-share market has persistent higher bid-ask spreads than the A-share market and traders in the B-share market bear higher informed trading and other transaction costs. In addition, the higher volatility of B-share returns can be attributed to the higher market making costs in the B-share market.

All NYSE-listed stocks were switched from a fractional to a decimal trading system on January 29, 2001 and all NASDAQ stocks followed suit on April 9, 2001. The conversion to decimal trading in the U.S. markets has significantly reduced bid-ask spreads. This decline is primarily due to the drop in market makers’ costs for supplying liquidity. In addition, rounding becomes less salient after the decimalization. The decrease in bid-ask spreads can be ascribed to the decrease in price rounding, when controlling for the changes in trading variables.

Several important trading rules were introduced in NASDAQ in 1997. The trading reforms have significantly reduced bid-ask spreads on NASDAQ. This decrease is due to a decrease in market-making costs and/or an increase in market competition for order flows. In addition, in the post-reform period, the spread difference between NASDAQ and the NYSE becomes insignificant with the effect of informed trading costs controlled.

Under the state corporate chartering system in the U.S., managers may seek shareholder approval to reincorporate the firm in a new state, regardless of the firm’s physical location, whenever they perceive that the corporate legal environment in the new state is better for the firm. Legal scholars continue to debate the merits of this system, with some arguing that it promotes contractual efficiency and others arguing that it often results in managerial entrenchment. We discuss the contrasting viewpoints on reincorporations and then summarize extant empirical evidence on why firms reincorporate, when they reincorporate, and where they reincorporate to. We conclude by discussing how the motives managers offer for reincorporations, and the actions they take upon reincorporating, influence how stock prices react to reincorporation decisions.

The basic rules of balancing the expected return on an investment against its contribution to portfolio risk are surveyed. The related concept of Capital Asset Pricing Model asserting that the expected return of an asset must be linearly related to the covariance of its return with the return of the market portfolio if the market is efficient and its statistical tests in terms of Arbitraging Price Theory are also surveyed. The intertemporal generalization and issues of estimation errors and portfolio choice are discussed as well.

The proliferation of the Internet has led to the rapid growth of online brokerage. As the Internet now allows individual investors access to information previously available only to institutional investors, individual investors are profiting in the financial markets through online trading schemes. Rock-bottom fees charged by the online brokers and the changing attitude toward risk of the Internet-literate generation prompt the practitioners to question the validity of the traditional valuation models and statistics-based portfolio formulation strategies. These tactics also induce more dramatic changes in the financial markets. Online trading, however, does involve a high degree of risk, and can cause a profitable portfolio to sour in a matter of minutes. This paper addresses the major challenges of trading stocks on the Internet, and recommends a decision support system for online traders to minimize the potential of risks.

This paper analytically determines the conditions under which four commonly utilized portfolio measures (the Sharpe index, the Treynor index, the Jensen alpha, and the Adjusted Jensen’s alpha) will be similar and different. If the single index CAPM model is appropriate, we prove theoretically that well-diversified portfolios must have similar rankings for the Treynor, Sharpe indices, and Adjusted Jensen’s alpha ranking. The Jensen alpha rankings will coincide if and only if the portfolios have similar betas. For multi-index CAPM models, however, the Jensen alpha will not give the same ranking as the Treynor index even for portfolios of large size and similar betas. Furthermore, the adjusted Jensen’s alpha ranking will not be identical to the Treynor index ranking.

The exposure of a number of serious financial frauds in high-performing listed companies during the past couple of years has motivated investors to move their funds to more reputable accounting firms and investment institutions. Clearly, bankruptcy, or corporate failure or insolvency, resulting in huge losses has made investors wary of the lack of transparency and the increased risk of financial loss. This article provides definitions of terms related to bankruptcy and describes common models of bankruptcy prediction that may allay the fears of investors and reduce uncertainty. In particular, it will show that a firm filing for corporate insolvency does not necessarily mean a failure to pay off its financial obligations when they mature. An appropriate risk-monitoring system, based on well-developed failure prediction models, is crucial to several parties in the investment community to ensure a sound financial future for clients and firms alike.

Even though risk management is the quality control of finance to ensure the smooth functioning of the business model and the corporate model, this chapter takes a more focused approach to risk management. We begin by describing the methods to calculate risk measures. We then describe how these risk measures may be reported. Reporting provides feedback to the identification and measurements of risks. Reporting enables the risk management to monitor the enterprise risk exposures so that the firm has a built-in, self-correcting procedure that enables the enterprise to improve and adapt to changes. In other words, risk management is concerned with four different phases, which are risk measurement, risk reporting, risk monitoring, and risk management in a narrow sense. We focus on risk measurement by taking a numerical example. We explain three different methodologies for that purpose, and examine whether the measured risk is appropriate based on observed market data.

Interest movement models are important to financial modeling because they can be used for valuing any financial instruments whose values are affected by interest rate movements. Specifically, we can classify the interest rate movement models into two categories: equilibrium models and no-arbitrage models. The equilibrium models emphasize the equilibrium concept. However, the no-arbitrage models argue that the term-structure movements should satisfy the no-arbitrage condition. The arbitrage-free interest rate model is an extension of the Black-Scholes model to value interest rate derivatives. The model valuation is assured to be consistent with the observed yield curve in valuing interest rate derivatives and providing accurate pricing of interest rate contingent claims. Therefore, it is widely used for portfolio management and other capital market activities.