Chien-Ting Lin

Book-to-Market Equity, Asset Correlations and the Basel Capital Requirement

This paper examines the effect of book-to-market equity (BE/ME) on asset correlations under the Basel capital requirement. We find that BE/ME captures variations in asset correlations after controlling for firm size, default probability and industry effects from 1987 to 2011. Obligors with higher BE/ME exhibit lower asset correlations compared to those with lower BE/ME. Decomposing BE/ME into assets-in-place and growth options based on the asset pricing literature shows that obligors with more assets-in-place or more fixed assets have higher BE/ME and lower asset correlations than those with more growth options. Overall, our findings suggest that BE/ME is an additional important factor that may improve the estimates of asset correlations and thereby banks� capital adequacy.

Do Financial Reforms Improve the Performance of Financial Holding Companies? The Case of Taiwan

We examine the performance of financial holding companies (FHCs) in Taiwan after the financial reform that removes the separation of banking, securities, insurance, and other financial services. Using data envelopment analysis, we find that FHCs fail to improve technical efficiencies in the post-reform era. They also do not outperform independent commercial banks after the financial reform. Lower technical efficiency caused by excess operating expenses appears to be the primary source of inefficiency. While scale efficiency may improve as FHCs grow larger, the benefits are marginal and insufficient to offset the potential costs of organizational diseconomies. Our findings suggest that increasing the size and scope of financial activities alone do not necessarily improve the performance of financial firms.

Business Cycles and the Impact of Macroeconomic Surprises on Interest Rate Swap Spreads: Australian Evidence

This study examines the response of Australian interest rate swap spreads to the arrival of macroeconomic news information during the economic expansion and contraction periods. We find that the impact of news announcements on swap spread change differs and largely depends on the state of the economy. The unexpected inflation rate is the only news released that has significant impact on swap spreads across all maturities during contractions and remains the important news announcement throughout the business cycles, while the unanticipated unemployment rate tends to be more relevant to 10-year swap and the unanticipated change in money supply tends to be more relevant to 4- and 7-year swaps during expansions. We also find shocks from these news surprises appear to have significant impact on the conditional volatility of the swap spread change during both economic phases. The macroeconomic shocks in general are negatively related to the conditional volatility of the swap spread change, suggesting that the newsworthy announcements tend to reduce uncertainty on the news announcement days in the swap market during expansion and contraction periods.

A Comparative Analysis of Accounting-Based Valuation Models:

We empirically compare the reliability of the dividend (DIV) model, the residual income valuation (CT, GLS) model, and the abnormal earnings growth (OJ) model. We find that valuation estimates from the OJ model are generally more reliable than those from the other three models, because the residual income valuation model anchored by book value gets off to a poor start when compared with the OJ model led by capitalized next-year earnings. We adopt a 34-year sample covering from 1985 to 2013 to compare the reliability of valuation estimates via their means of absolute pricing errors (MAPE) and corresponding t statistics. We further use the switching regression of Barrios and Blanco to show that the average probability of OJ valuation estimates is greater in explaining stock prices than the DIV, CT, and GLS models. In addition, our finding that the OJ model yields more reliable estimates is robust to analysts-based and model-based earnings measures.

Herding behaviour in the Australian loan market and its impact on bank loan quality

We examine the effect of herding behaviour on the credit quality of bank loans in Australia. We find that bank herding varies with different types of loans. It tends to be more prevalent in owner†occupied housing loans and credit cards than other types of loans. During the global financial crisis period, herding in owner†occupied housing loans was most pronounced due to the flight†to†quality phenomenon in the housing sector. Furthermore, we find that the big four banks tend to herd more than smaller and regional banks. Bank herding behaviour is countercyclical, as it is negatively related to real GDP growth and the cost of funding but is positively related to market risk. Regulatory capital requirements may also encourage herding as banks are required to hold less risk†weighted capital for residential loans. Most importantly, bank herding is related to higher impaired assets and therefore lower loan quality. Our findings may have implications for policymakers and bank regulators.

A fuzzy approach to water pricing: the case of Shanghai

In this article, we device a methodology to value water using Fuzzy theory that incorporates not only the physical cost of delivery but also the social and sustainable resource costs that water regulators often ignore. Specifically, we include the cost of water quality, cost of water resource, gross domestic product per capita and the households willingness to pay into our estimation. We demonstrate the approach using the household sector in Shanghai where the residents face potential water shortage and poor water quality. We estimate a theoretical price of 1.82 Chinese Yuan per cubic meter for the average household.

Information Disclosure, Product Market Competition, and Firm Value

This study examines the relationship between information disclosures and firm value under different levels of product market competition. Using a unique information rating scheme that draws from 114 measures over five dimensions of information disclosure from 2005 to 2013, we find that firms with higher levels of information disclosure (better information transparency) are related to higher industry-adjusted Tobin’s Q. We also find that the levels of information disclosure and product market competition interact in affecting firm value. This relationship is robust after controlling for a number of firm-specific factors and agency-based measures. Our paper brings two streams of research that aim to explain the variation in firms’ value together, and suggests that information disclosure and product market competition complement each other in enhancing a firm’s value.

Chapter 21 On the safety and soundness of Chinese banks in the post-WTO era

Chinas accession to World Trade Organization (WTO) opened its financial markets to foreign banks in December 2006. In addition to foreign banks’ expertise and experience in modern banking activities, they also appear to have the interest, competitiveness, and regulatory advantages of competing with Chinese banks in the traditional Renminbi (RMB) business. Such competition will lead to a loss of RMB deposits and loans from local banks. Given that Chinese banks are currently ridden with large non-performing loans and low capital adequacy, the foreign bank entry will exert further pressure on the banks’ profitability and solvency. Without larger regular bailouts from the central government and fundamental changes on the roles of Chinese banks, China may experience a banking crisis in the post-WTO era. We propose two types of policy changes that may improve banks’ competitiveness and reduce the likelihood of a banking crisis.