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We examine the impact of corporate fraud committed by one firm (the "fraudulent firm") on other firms with interlocking directors (the "interlocked firms"), focusing on the debtholder side. We argue that the revelation of a fraudulent firm's fraud can damage the reputation of the interlocked firms because corporate governance can propagate via director interlocks. Empirically, we find that the interlocked firms' cost of debt is higher and the loan covenants become stricter after the fraud cases of the fraudulent firms are revealed. Consistent with the corporate governance propagation explanation, our results are weaker (stronger) for interlocked firms that have better (worse) pre‐event corporate governance standards. Our findings suggest that corporate fraud of fraudulent firms can affect other firms through director‐interlocks beyond shareholder value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Phillips–Loretan approach, this paper verifies the degree and speed of pass‐through and rigidity of different interest rates in China, as well as the response of private loan interest rates to other interest rates during 2002–2012. The results indicate that the long‐term pass‐through from the interbank offered rates and deposit and loan interest rates to the treasury bond rate is incomplete, but that the long‐term pass‐through to private loan interest rates is overshooting. The long‐term pass‐through from the deposit and loan interest rates to the overnight interbank offered rate is incomplete, while that to the interbank offered rates of other maturities is complete. The short‐term pass‐through and adjustment speed of interest rates exhibit asymmetry. Therefore, before considering a full liberalization of interest rates, it is important to further enhance the competition of the financial system and the function of different interest rate systems, such as the interbank market and bond market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how a firm's characteristics restrict the influence of monetary policy changes on its investment behavior. Focusing on China's listed companies for a sample period from the first quarter of 2002 to the first quarter of 2011, we find that quantity-oriented and price-based monetary policies have heterogeneous impacts on corporate investment behavior, but the influence of monetary policies is constrained by the liquidity, inventory, size and asset-liability ratio of a firm. Firms with higher liquidity, lower inventory level and lower asset-liability ratios are less sensitive to the impact from two kinds of monetary policies. The larger the size of the firm, the less it is subject to influence from quantity-oriented monetary policy; it responds more to price-based monetary policy. The policy implication is that the monetary authorities should pay attention to the importance of policy-making based on the monetary demand of microeconomic entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using one-contract-size trades in the Mini Hang Seng Index futures to proxy the activities of small traders, this study empirically investigates the information contribution of small futures traders to price discovery on the Hang Seng Index (HSI) markets. Estimated with the models of Gonzalo, J., and Granger, C. W. J. (1995) and Hasbrouck, J. (1995), the results show that small traders contribute about 16.8% to price discovery, a disproportionately high share considering their relatively low trading volume. The results also indicate that the Hang Seng Index futures (HSIF) market still has the largest information share (about 71.0%), whereas the HSI spot market has a 12.2% share. Our results suggest that small traders are not uninformed in the HSIF markets, and play an important role in price discovery. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 30:156–174, 2010 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study documents a continuous relation between audit firm size and the issuing of modified opinions in China using a panel data set of audit firms and listed firms from 2001 to 2003. The relation is robust after controlling for a set of confounding factors and dealing with endogeneity issues. It is also robust when we exclude audit firms involving foreign partners or private client firms from our sample. Our results indicate that the audit firm size effect suggested in other studies is applicable to audit markets that have not yet been dominated by a few very large audit firms as well as audit markets where client firms are partially state-owned entities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes unemployment rates of 48 United States contiguous states using a more powerful panel-based test which exploits cross-section restrictions on the constituent series. Econometric methodology; Empirical results of the study; Conclusions.

An introduction is presented in which the editors discuss various topics within the issue including the impact of global financial crisis, macroeconomy and financial markets in China.