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The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns on retail stock trading patterns, at a transnational level. Cross-sectional empirical research was utilized with five samples of public companies from the US, Europe, Asia, and blended equity capital markets globally. The impact of the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns on stock trading patterns was investigated using median tests and the factors that influence retail stock trading were explored with regression analyses. Contrary to the conventional proposition that stock trading activity is reduced during times of crisis, the results of this study indicate that retail stock trading increased during the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns. In addition, the findings raise awareness of the risks to novice retail investors associated with the increased stock trading due to herd behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper empirically examines the reaction of global financial markets across 38 economies to the COVID‐19 outbreak, with special focus on the dynamics of capital flows across 14 emerging market economies. The effectiveness of fiscal and monetary policy responses to COVID‐19 is also tested. Using daily data over the period January 4, 2010 to August 31, 2020, and controlling for a host of domestic and global macroeconomic and financial factors, we use a fixed effects panel approach and a structural VAR framework to show that emerging markets have been more heavily affected than advanced economies. In particular, emerging economies in Asia and Europe have experienced the sharpest impacts on stock, bond and exchange rates due to COVID‐19, as well as abrupt and substantial capital outflows. Quantitative easing and fiscal stimulus packages mainly helped to boost stock prices, notably for advanced and emerging economies in Asia. Our findings also highlight the role that global factors and developments in the world's leading financial centers have on financial conditions in EMEs. Importantly, the impact of COVID‐19 related quantitative easing measures by central banks in advanced countries extended to EMEs, with significant positive spillovers to EME stock markets in Asia, Europe and Latin America. Going forward, while the ultimate resolution of COVID‐19 may be expected to lead to a market correction as uncertainty declines, our impulse response analysis suggests that there may be persistent effects on bond markets in emerging Europe and on EME capital flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even with the sizable Foreign Exchange (FX) holdings and good credit ratings of its top assets, Asia remains vulnerable to various shocks. This paper highlights the limited crossborder asset pledgeability as a significant factor for the lingering vulnerability in Asia. The dichotomy in asset holdings between pledgeable FX and non-pledgeable domestic assets in major economies in Asia has been the source of increasing stabilization costs as well as weakened market momentum in the region. Specifically, the peculiar feature of asset holdings in Asia reflects seriously deficient cross-border asset pledgeability that is left unaddressed. Asset pledgeability contributes toward financial stability via three channels: 1) capital market development by recognizing the role of collateral, 2) increased shock absorption capacity via collateral management, 3) and the newly activated safe asset provision. Therefore, it is crucial to go beyond the usual market development strategy and expand the overall asset pledgeability in the region that has remained unduly depressed. Even with the sizable Foreign Exchange (FX) holdings and good credit ratings of its top assets, Asia remains vulnerable to various shocks. This paper highlights the limited crossborder asset pledgeability as a significant factor for the lingering vulnerability in Asia. The dichotomy in asset holdings between pledgeable FX and non-pledgeable domestic assets in major economies in Asia has been the source of increasing stabilization costs as well as weakened market momentum in the region. Specifically, the peculiar feature of asset holdings in Asia reflects seriously deficient cross-border asset pledgeability that is left unaddressed. Asset pledgeability contributes toward financial stability via three channels: 1) capital market development by recognizing the role of collateral, 2) increased shock absorption capacity via collateral management, 3) and the newly activated safe asset provision. Therefore, it is crucial to go beyond the usual market development strategy and expand the overall asset pledgeability in the region that has remained unduly depressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current scholarship emphasises the correlation between enforcement of corporate and securities laws and strong capital markets. Yet, the issue of how private and public enforcement may achieve the objectives of compensation and optimal deterrence remains controversial. While enforcement strategies have been studied extensively in the US and the UK, comparatively less attention is placed on Asia, where concentrated shareholdings are the norm. This study fills the gap by focusing on Hong Kong and Singapore, two leading international financial centres in Asia. Post Asian financial crisis of 1997, Hong Kong and Singapore have changed their laws to strengthen the private enforcement framework. Public enforcement activities have also been significant. The question is whether these reforms and enforcement activities succeed in reaching the afore-mentioned objectives. Based on our study of ex post enforcement actions, which are actions that may lead to sanctions (such as prosecutions or administrative proceedings) or compensation orders, arising from breaches of directorial duties and corporate disclosure violations involving listed companies from 2000 to 2015, we find that (1) public enforcement dominates over private enforcement; and (2) there are important, but limited, substitutes for private enforcement: securities regulators use public enforcement to obtain compensation for investors, and shareholders file requisitions to remove errant directors. We argue that: (a) there is a significant gap in enforcement strategies for directorial wrongdoing in Singapore; (b) for public enforcement of corporate disclosure violations, the beneficiaries of the compensation should be the investors (rather than the company) and the defendants should only be the errant directors (and not the company). Our study is relevant to those jurisdictions considering the powers of regulators and improving their enforcement framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to investigate the success factors of financial derivatives markets in Asia. The selected countries include Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong. The success factors of financial derivatives markets in Asia are examined by employing the panel regression. The empirical results show that size, volatility, and liquidity of spot market are significant factors for the success of financial derivatives markets in sample countries. Further, tick size, contract size, and option-type also enhance trading volumes while product age is not statistically significant. The results from this study provide important implications in developing the financial derivatives market which plays an important role in the capital market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the extent of monetary independence in a group of ten Asian countries: China, Malaysia, Japan, India, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong. While the traditional investigation has considered only the bivariate relationship between the home interest rate and the base rate, we employ both single-equation and vector autoregressive representations of the bivariate and the trivariate relationship including the desired (or optimal) interest rate. We find in most countries, that the ranking of monetary independence is relatively consistent across the models and methodologies although model specifications produce important differences for some countries such as Japan, Indonesia, and India. Trilemma suggests that a country cannot accomplish all three policy objectives: monetary independence, exchange rate stability, and free capital mobility. To increase monetary independence a country must choose between greater exchange rate flexibility or a lower degree of capital mobility. The fact that China and Malaysia, the two countries that are known to have imposed the strictest capital controls, consistently rank high in various scenarios while Hong Kong, which has maintained nearly the freest regime in capital markets, is lowest in monetary independence, indicates that perhaps capital controls may play a more important role than does exchange rate flexibility in securing independence in monetary policy making. On the other hand, countries that maintain greater exchange rate stability do not necessarily rank low, unless it is combined with greater capital mobility as in the case of Hong Kong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose Audit firm bankruptcy can have significant negative impacts on the stock prices of client firms. The purpose of this paper is to identify determinants of audit firm bankruptcy risk as measured by costs of debt.Design/methodology/approach Using audit firm data publicly available in Korea, this study empirically examines whether client portfolio, financial, and organizational characteristics are associated with the weighted average interest rates assumed by auditors.Findings The authors find empirical evidence that audit firms’ client portfolio characteristics, including the incidence (or number) of lawsuits against the auditor, the proportion of audit clients under surveillance, the proportion of initial audit engagements, and the proportion of listed companies of audit clients, are positively associated with the cost of debt. The authors also find several financial and organizational characteristics associated with the cost of debt.Practical implications The findings of this study suggest that client portfolio characteristics as well as financial and organizational characteristics are important determinants of the cost of debt in audit firms, and that these characteristics are different from those of firms in other industries. Identifying the determinants of audit firms’ cost of debt provides insight to regulators, client firms, and capital market participants.Originality/value This study examines the default risk of audit firms that play an important monitoring role in capital markets. By utilizing unique data about audit firms available in Korea, this study is the first study to empirically examine the effect of detailed audit firm characteristics on audit firm’s default risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the venture capital industry evolves in Korea. The paper also compares the venture capital industry growth of Korea with that of the USA.Design/methodology/approach This paper forecasts the growth of the Korean venture capital industry using the Bass Model. The authors apply the Bass Model to both Korean and US data to compare the model estimates of Korean and US data, and to make use of the US case by taking the “guess by similarity” approach to analyze Korean venture capital industry growth.Findings The authors find that the innovative fund inflows in Korea are stronger than those in the USA, while inertial reinvestments are weak. The study forecasts that new investments in Korea grow at a 5-7 percent rate each year for the next five years, and the growth rate slows down over time. Peak investment is predicted around the year 2030.Practical implications Based on the forecasted venture capital investment schedule each year, this study derives the fundraising schedule and the implications for Korea fund-of-funds management to match the investment schedule.Originality/value The model estimates provide a guideline for forecasting venture capital industry development in countries with brief histories of venture capital, which lack data. The analysis can also be applied to cases when developing countries and emerging financial markets assess the impact of government interventions on venture capital industry growth, especially when they provide fund-of-funds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing country debt has been a major preoccupation for development policy makers and practitioners since the debt crisis of 1982. It is a major obstacle to economic and social progress in developing countries. After the resolution of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and the debt relief initiatives for low-income countries of 1997–2006 concerns about developing country debt seem to have receded. However, there are a growing number of problems that warrant concern, including the accumulation of domestic debt, short-term debt and private non-guaranteed debt, and increasing recourse by low-income countries to international capital markets. At the same time developing countries have strengthened their capacity to oversee and analyse their debt portfolios. Nonetheless, significant weaknesses remain in debt management capacity at the national level. Moreover, the activities of ‘vulture funds’ and the lack of a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism reveal major shortcomings in the international institutional architecture that need to be addressed urgently. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Stock price synchronicity since the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) has been significant due to its strong relationship with the economic development and capital market stability of a country. Using data from 2006-2011, the study examines whether the mandatory adoption of IFRS reduces stock price synchronicity in the Asian context. The study utilizes a sample of 1,800 firm-year observations for firms in four Asian markets--China, Hong Kong, Israel, and the Philippines--where IFRS have been mandatory since 2009. The empirical model, relating to stock price synchronicity with the adoption of IFRS, and other firm-specific control variables were analysed using both univariate and multivariate techniques. Different types of panel data estimates were used and compared so as to interpret the results with the best-suited parameters for different data sets for different markets. The empirical results support the argument that, for all four markets considered, IFRS adoption improves the information environment through the capitalization of firmspecific information into stock prices, thereby reducing the stock price synchronicity. Along with IFRS adoption, other firm-specific control variables are found to have significant influence on stock price synchronicity, such as cross-listings in foreign stock exchanges in China and Philippines, the Herfindahl index in Hong Kong, and the percentage of foreign sales in Israel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate the impact of domestic financial frictions on the current account dynamics in Asian countries before and after the Asian financial crisis in 1997-1998 by introducing collateral constraints into the intertemporal current account approach. We examine six Asian countries. Before the crisis, collateral constraints significantly impact the current account in Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, but after the crisis, they do not. Our study shows that the impact of domestic financial frictions on the current account changes before and after a financial crisis. ( JEL F32, F41) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationalization of capital markets offers diversification opportunities to the investors. This generates interest in the study of interlinkages among stock markets. The present paper studies the inter-linkages between stock markets of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Maldives. Daily closing levels of the benchmark indices in the three countries are taken for a period of July 2004 to June 2010. Line charts, correlogram and unit-root test are applied to check the stationary nature of the series. Granger's causality, Vector Auto Regression (VAR) and Variance Decomposition Analysis are performed to find out the linkages between the markets under study. The paper finds that the returns at National Stock Exchange (India) and Colombo Stock Exchange (Sri Lanka) are inter-linked. Other than India-Sri Lanka vector, the linkages between the South Asian stock exchanges are not confirmed, which means that the opportunities for diversification do exist in the South Asian region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This paper aims to seek to find answers to three questions. First, is there any possibility of long-term cointegration between East and Southeast Asian equity markets? If so, how many cointegrating equations are there? Second, what are the short-term causal relationships between equity markets in East and Southeast Asia? Third, what is the East Asia's most influential equity market toward their Southeast counterparts, and vice versa? Design/methodology/approach - This study uses Johansen's (1988) cointegration method to test long-run relationships among East and Southeast Asian equity markets. With regards to short-run causal relationships, this study uses Granger-causality test as well as the forecast variance decomposition method. Findings - Johansen test proves that there is cointegration between East and Southeast Asian equity markets, but the integration process is not complete. Cointegrating vector also provides evidence that member countries of ASEAN+3 respond differently to external shocks. With regards to short-run causal direction, this study finds that Japan Granger-causes all equity markets in Southeast Asia, while Singapore and Vietnam Granger-cause all equity markets in East Asia. These results imply that Japan is the market with most linkages in Southeast Asia, while Singapore and Vietnam are the markets with most linkages to East Asia. Furthermore, forecast variance decomposition reveals that Japan is the East Asia's most influential equity markets, while Singapore is the most influential equity market in Southeast Asia. This study suggests that policymakers in East and Southeast Asian countries to synchronize the capital market standards and regulations as well as to reduce the barriers for capital mobility to spur the regional equity market integration. Research limitations/implications - Increasing integration of East and Southeast Asian capital markets forces policymakers in ASEAN+3 countries to synchronize monetary policies, as it has been found that regionally integrated capital markets reduce the degree of independent monetary policy (Logue et al., 1976). It is therefore important for policymakers in East and Southeast Asian countries to assess the possibility of stock market integration within this region to anticipate the future risks associated with economic integration as well as to build collective regional institutions (Wang, 2004). Click and Plummer (2005) also argued that integrated stock markets is more efficient than nationally segmented equity markets, and the efficiency of Asian capital markets has been questioned in particular after the 1997 Asian financial crises. Yet, the empirical evidence on the extent of financial integration among ASEAN+3 member countries has been limited and inconclusive. This study is therefore an attempt to investigate the recent development of ASEAN+3 equity markets integration. Practical implications - This study focuses its attention on the existence and the extent of financial integration in East and Southeast Asia region, and it provides evidence that equity market integration in ASEAN+3 is far from complete, and for that reason, there is a need for policymakers in ASEAN+3 member countries to synchronize their standards and regulations. Furthermore, the policymakers in East and Southeast Asia can gain benefit from this study, as it provides the evidence that ASEAN+3 member countries respond differently to policy shocks, which may hinder the development of regional financial integration as well as the policy effectiveness of region-wide authority in ASEAN+3. Originality/value - This research is different from previous studies, as it puts the regional financial integration within the context of ASEAN+3 frameworks. Unlike previous research that considers East and Southeast Asian countries as an individual entity, this research considers East and Southeast Asia into two different blocks, following Tourk (2004) who documented that negotiation process for ASEAN+3 financial integration is conducted in sub-regional level (ASEAN vs East Asia), rather than national level (country per country basis). Second, this study covers the period after the 1997 Asian financial crisis. As suggested in Wang (2014), that the degree of stock market integration tends to change around the periods marked by financial crises, the updated study on Asian financial integration in the aftermath of 1997 financial crises is important to document the development of regional financial integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bond markets have expanded rapidly in emerging East Asian economies in recent years. Asian policymakers have played a pivotal role in this development. This process presents an interesting challenge to the developmental state literature associated with bank-based financial systems. We argue that it is best to understand the role of the state as an entrepreneurial state in the construction of these markets, focusing on institutional innovation in three mechanisms of state-led market infrastructure: national or local credit rating agencies, mortgage corporations and bond pricing agencies. National credit rating agencies rate the creditworthiness of debt in local currency. Mortgage corporations create markets in securitised housing loans. Bond pricing agencies put a value on illiquid debt instruments to enable mark-to-market portfolio management. Together, these three mechanisms constitute the core determinants of the market (demand for creditworthy products, supply of tradeable assets, and the fixing of a price to those assets). In so doing they influence the nature of market operations, producing outcomes very different from the free market ideal type. We also consider cross-country commonalities and variations in this general pattern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are pleased to announce the Special Issue on the New Challenges in Asian Capital Markets in the International Journal of Financial Studies. The focus of papers in this Special Issue is on the future challenges and/or future developments Asian Finance. In addition, one article provides a review of the literature on certain issues in relevance to the banking and capital markets in Asia. This Guest Editor's note synthesizes the contributing authors' propositions and findings regarding these challenges and developments and hopes that opens new venues for future research directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the effects of US quantitative easing (QE) on Asia by examining capital flows and financial markets. After the global financial crisis (GFC), Asian economies with more open and developed capital markets experienced greater swings in capital inflows. In particular, large capital flows manifest more in portfolio investment and other investment such as bank loans than in foreign direct investment. Empirical analysis shows QE, QE1 in particular, significantly contributed to the rebounding of capital inflows to the region after the onset of the crisis by lowering domestic yield rates as well as CDS premiums. Although the currency value responses differed across countries, it appears that economies with stable exchange rates roughly coincide with those in which house prices have been rising, suggesting that monetary easing of advanced countries have affected Asian countries through either appreciation of currency values or increases in the prices of housing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]