Wenxuan Hou

Split Share Structure Reform, Corporate Governance, and the Foreign Share Discount Puzzle in China

We examine the impact of the Split Share Structure Reform on the well-known foreign share discount puzzle in China. Existing literature confirms that foreign investors are more concerned about insider expropriation because of their information disadvantage relative to domestic investors. The split share structure of the ownership of Chinese listed firms created a conflict of interests between state and private shareholders. Since, before the reform, state shareholders held restricted shares that denied them any wealth effect from share price movements, they had a limited incentive to work with private shareholders to ensure that managers maximized the stock market value of the firm. By abolishing the trading restrictions for state shareholders, this reform has increased the incentive alignment between state and private shareholders, encouraging them to monitor managers. If foreign investors’ concerns over the corporate governance implications of the split share structure at least partly contributed to their discounting of Chinese listed firms, then this discount should be reduced following the reform. Indeed, our evidence confirms this prediction, especially among Chinese listed firms with more state ownership or restricted shares. Our findings imply that this significant institutional reform of the Chinese stock market has benefitted minority investors.

The Trend of the Gini Coefficient of China

A literature review indicates that the main problem in calculating the Gini coefficient of Chinese residents’ income is the shortcomings of the data sources. Though many studies have tried to overcome these limitations through decomposing the nationwide Gini ratio by urban and rural areas, the final results have been underestimated, due to the overlap term or residual in the decomposition. This paper analyses the effects of the overlap term on calculating the overall Gini coefficient through a statistical approach, and estimates Chinese Gini ratios since economic reform and open door policies were adopted. Based on decomposing the Chinese Gini coefficient from 1978 to 2006, the authors find that the key factor of income inequality comes from income disparity between rural and urban inhabitants. The authors investigate the features of this income inequality between rural and urban areas. Furthermore, statistical approaches are employed to evaluate the effects of the development of urbanisation and rural-to-urban average income on the income inequality of the whole nation. The results show that accelerating the pace of urbanisation is the key issue to improving Chinese income disparity. On the basis of the above analysis, the paper proposes related policies for policy-makers.

Trading Constraints and Illiquidity Discounts

Acting as the source of exogenous illiquidity, trading constraints prevent free trading of shares and discount their value relative to freely traded counterparts with identical dividends and voting rights. This paper numerically solves the theoretical illiquidity discounts for the restricted shares with long constraint horizon and then reconciles the contradictions in the results of various theoretical models. With control of leveraged positions, illiquidity discounts increase with the volatility, and their size is greatly diminished. We also empirically test the theories within the unique setting of China, which has the largest population of restricted shares worldwide. Large discounts are documented in two forms of occasional transactions in restricted shares: namely auctions and transfers. The results empirically verify the theoretical findings by showing that illiquidity discounts in auctions increase with both the volatility and constraint horizons. The results from transfers, however, are not always significant as the transfers are made privately and may be subject to price manipulation when the involved parties are related.

Executive Compensation and the Split Share Structure Reform in China

The split share structure reform in China enables state shareholders of listed firms to trade their restricted shares. This renders the wealth of state shareholders more strongly related to share price movements. We predict that this reform will create remuneration arrangements that strengthen the relationship between Chinese firms’ executive pay and stock market performance. We confirm this prediction by showing that there is such an effect among state-controlled firms, and especially those where the dominant shareholders have a greater incentive to improve share return performance. Our results indicate that this reform strengthens the accountability of executives to external monitoring by the stock market, and therefore benefits minority shareholders in China.

The Value of Home-Country Governance for Cross-Listed Stocks

Governance has many dimensions – corporate governance pertains to the firms management whilst sovereign-governance pertains to the firms exposure to sovereign risk, corruption, and poor regulation. We show that both are important drivers of firm value and this has serious implications for the increasing number of Chinese firms choosing to cross-list in the USA. Whilst the legal bonding hypothesis argues that firms from poor-corporate governance environments can signal their quality by issuing stock in the USA it is silent on the role of sovereign-governance. Thus, we use a sample of cross-listed firms from 48 countries between 1996 and 2008 and find that the home-countrys sovereign-governance quality, but not its corporate governance quality (as proxied by the Anti-director Rights Index) continue to influence the market values of cross-listed firms. Furthermore, cross-listed firms from strong-governance countries have higher market values than non-cross-listed firms or firms from weak governance countries. These results highlight the importance of distinguishing between the myriad types of governance when analysing the bonding hypothesis and the drivers of cross-listed stocks’ valuations, and emphasize the continued importance of sovereign-governance for cross-listed firms.

Family Control, Regulatory Environment, and the Growth of Entrepreneurial Firms: International Evidence

Manuscript Type. Empirical. Research Issue. We investigate the joint effects of family control and the regulatory environment on entrepreneurial growth through the lens of socio‐emotional wealth (SEW) theory. Research Findings. Taking into consideration both economic and non‐economic goals of entrepreneurial firms, measured by sales growth and employment growth respectively, we find that, compared to their non‐family‐controlled counterparts, family‐controlled firms tend to have lower sales growth rates, but higher employment growth rates. Furthermore, less favorable regulatory environments reduce both sales and workforce growth rates to a greater extent for family‐controlled firms than for non‐family‐controlled firms. Theoretical/Academic Implications. We add to the corporate governance and family business management literature by documenting that the regulatory environment moderates the corporate governance effect of family control on the economic and non‐economic goals of family‐controlled firms. The findings also contribute to the family business management literature by enriching and providing strong evidence in favor of the SEW theory through our exploration of the moderating role that macro‐governance plays in the family control‐SEW relation. This research also makes contributions to the entrepreneurship literature, laying a foundation for future empirical studies on entrepreneurial growth by separating its economic from its non‐economic dimensions. Practitioner/Policy Implications. Our findings provide practical implications for both policy makers and entrepreneurs. They not only help entrepreneurs better understand growth strategies in various macro‐governance settings, but also provide governments and policymakers with potential policy implications to encourage entrepreneurial and economic growth. Policies that improve the macro‐governance environment can help family firms to prosper by contributing to their economic and non‐economic growth, both of which are important for economic development.

Media Coverage and Foreign Share Discount Puzzle in China

There is growing evidence in the finance literature that media coverage can influence security pricing by facilitating news dissemination and reducing informational frictions even if it does not provide new information. This study examines the role of media coverage in the well-known foreign share discount puzzle in China. We show that differential level of news coverage for the same firm by Chinese and English media is significantly associated with the foreign share discount. Specifically, the discount is greater among firms with relatively more Chinese than English press coverage. We also find this effect more pronounced among firms with less analyst following and less institutional ownership. This implies that media coverage compensates for limitations in analyst coverage and is more influential among less sophisticated investors. Our evidence is robust to controls of other determinants of Chinese foreign share discount documented by previous literature. Despite the widespread belief that the Chinese media is tightly controlled, our study reveals that it still plays an influential role in the capital market.

Exchange Trading Rules, Governance, and Trading Location of Cross-Listed Stocks

ABSTRACT This paper shows that stock exchange trading rules are of central importance for the trading location of cross-listed stocks. We consider various measures of sovereign governance and shareholder rights across both developed and emerging countries to assess the complementary effects of other legal and institutional drivers of trading activity. The data indicate that the proportion of trades that occurs on an exchange increases at a decreasing rate with the strength of stock exchange trading rules. The effectiveness of stock exchange rules increases with the strength of regulatory institutions in the country hosting the stock exchange. Furthermore, corroborating with our full sample findings, difference-in-difference tests indicate that the promulgation of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive, which strengthened trading rules within the European Union (EU), has increased the amount of trade in the EU.

Chinese Gini Coefficient from 2005 to 2012, Based on 20 Grouped Income Data Sets of Urban and Rural Residents

Data insufficiency has become the primary factor affecting research on income disparity in China. To resolve this issue, this paper explores Chinese income distribution and income inequality using distribution functions. First, it examines 20 sets of grouped data on family income between 2005 and 2012 by the China Yearbook of Household Surveys, 2013, and compares the fitting effects of eight distribution functions. The results show that the generalized beta distribution of the second kind has a high fitting to the income distribution of urban and rural residents in China. Next, these results are used to calculate the Chinese Gini ratio, which is then compared with the findings of relevant studies. Finally, this paper discusses the influence of urbanization on income inequality in China and suggests that accelerating urbanization can play an important role in narrowing the income gap of Chinese residents.

The impact of foreign bank penetration on the domestic banking sector : New evidence from China

This study proposes a foreign bank branch networks index (FBBNI) to capture bank-level exposure to competition from foreign banks in terms of geographical proximity. The index takes account of the rapidly expanding branch networks of both foreign and domestic banks in China. Based on data from a sample of three types of Chinese commercial banks from 2002 to 2011, we find that exposure to the branch networks of foreign banks is associated with improved profitability at domestic banks, higher efficiency, and increased non-interest income, consistent with knowledge transfer from foreign banks. These relationships are most pronounced for joint-stock domestic banks presumably because their ownership structure fosters knowledge transfer.