Asia-Pacific Journal of Financial Studies最新文献

This study was designed to determine the nature of the association between the financial structure decision and shareholders' wealth—dividend payments—of firms listed on one of the largest stock markets in oil-based economies, the Saudi stock market. The study used panel data for all nonfinancial firms listed in Saudi Arabia's primary stock market (TASI) during the period from 2000 to 2018. The pooled ordinary least squares, quantile, generalized method of moments and U-tests were conducted to evaluate the association between the financial structure decision and dividend payment. The preliminary findings revealed a positive effect of financial leverage on dividend payments using a linear model. However, when a nonlinear model was used, the study found a nonlinear relation between the financial structure decision and dividend payouts, which exhibited an inverted U-shaped curve driven by levels of debt. This nonlinear relation verifies the tenets of the trade-off theory of optimum debt level based on the costs and benefits of the debt. Further, the study found a negative influence of firm performance, size, and age on dividend payments. The outcomes of this study may provide useful insights for policymakers, managers, and lenders into the optimal level of financial leverage and efficient dividend policies.

We assume a hypothetical defined benefit (DB) pension plan that reflects the characteristics of the occupational pension in South Korea and propose a surplus optimization strategy using a regime-switching model. Using conditional surplus at risk, we construct an optimized portfolio that limits extreme tail risks. Furthermore, we identify the surplus risk and return conditional on global macroeconomic status using a hidden Markov model. The main results are that (i) the DB pension portfolio should move from principal-protected products to diverse capital market products, and (ii) the DB pension portfolio using the regime-switching model outperforms an unconditional static portfolio.

We examine the influence of political uncertainty on the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of local firms in China. Political uncertainty refers to government officials' turnover. We find that these firms significantly increase their CSR activities when city government officials are changed or replaced. We also find that political uncertainty increases firms' attention to employee responsibilities, supply chain responsibilities, and environmental responsibilities. In addition, the turnover of government officials increases CSR activities due to the reduction or loss of political connections. The anti-corruption campaign has also strengthened the influence of political uncertainty on CSR.

Based on the perspective of market attention, this study investigates financial analysts' performance in the presence of corporate philanthropy in China. We find that the involvement of corporate philanthropy is associated with lower analyst forecast error. Additionally, our results show that the favorable effect of philanthropy on analyst forecast accuracy is stronger for firms with higher and easier information exposure in the face of engaging in corporate philanthropy. Collectively, our findings have important implications for academics and practitioners in understanding the function of corporate philanthropy in financial markets.

This study examines the signaling role of lockup extensions for initial public offering (IPO) firms subject to mandatory lockup provisions. The sample contains IPO firms that went public in the Korean stock market, which reduced the mandatory lockup period over the sample period. This study finds that (1) IPO underpricing is negatively related to the lockup extension length after the reform, and (2) the negative relationship in the post-reform period is stronger for firms characterized by high information asymmetry. The results imply that lockup extensions may reduce information asymmetry related to IPO underpricing when information asymmetry is acute.

In this paper, we develop an intelligent approach to detect default risk of FinTech lending platforms. Using China's peer-to-peer (P2P) lending market as an empirical application, we assemble a unique dataset of matched default and non-default platforms. We apply state-of-art techniques to extract sentiment and topic features from several stakeholders' social media data, which are used as supportive soft information. Our approach exhibits better predictive abilities than those with hard information only, where the value of dynamic soft information is demonstrated. Our approach serves as a proof of concept to complement traditional methods of financial risk prediction.

While there is an increasing debate about whether having multiple CEOs is beneficial to firms, few empirical studies have examined stock returns' consequences after adopting the co-CEO structure. Set in the Korean context, where the co-CEO structure is a common corporate practice, we find that co-CEO adoption has subsequently led to better stock performance than adherence to a sole-CEO structure. Moreover, given the diverse circumstances in which firms operate, co-CEO structure adoption does not guarantee success. We find evidence that the co-CEO structure's superior performance over the sole-CEO structure is concentrated in high-growth subsamples.

This study investigates the motive for dividends by examining the relationship between dividends and banks' institutional depositors during the global financial crisis. The results indicate that during the financial crisis, the higher the deposit ratio of institutional depositors to the total insured deposits was, the lower the dividend payments were. This may be attributable to the fact that during the financial crisis, banks significantly reduced their dividends because they were under close monitoring due to the fear that institutional depositors would overreact to disadvantageous policy and cause a bank run.

Investors overprice goodwill value acquired from a private target during a merger and acquisition (M&A) announcement. However, the overpricing of goodwill is corrected in the years following the deal's completion. Our results show that investors predict the decreasing value of goodwill and promptly adjust their pricing regardless of goodwill impairment. The differential market reactions to goodwill between private and public targets are economically significant. The pricing on goodwill obtained from a private target is 47% higher around the announcements and 44% (33%) lower one (two) year(s) after the M&A completion than that from the public target.

Based on data from the Renrendai platform in China, this paper studies the impacts of marital status on funding success and default. Probit models are employed to perform the main regressions. The empirical results show that married borrowers have the highest rate of funding success, followed by divorced and single borrowers. Although the default risk of divorced borrowers is higher than that of married borrowers, it is not different from that of single borrowers. In addition, this paper uncovers an important joint effect of marital status and education on online lending.