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This study examines the role of executive compensation in public governance. We collect data on corruption cases that involve top-level executives in Chinese listed state-controlled firms. We find a significant positive relationship between underpayment of executives and the likelihood of an investigation into corrupt behavior. We also show that corruption is positively associated with firm performance and that the relationship between underpayment of executives and corruption is influenced by firm performance, suggesting that top managers are more likely to engage in illicit behavior if they are compensated poorly while the firms under their control perform well. Finally, we find that pay-performance sensitivity decreases when top executives are involved in corruption investigations, indicating a lack of pecuniary incentives. Our empirical findings point towards an important relationship between executive compensation and corrupt behavior, thereby providing valuable input to the understanding of executive pay and its effects in China’s state sector.

This paper analyzes the relationship between financial liberalization and urbanization. We conjecture that liberalizing financial policies enables the process of economic structural change and that this change results in an increased demand for labor in the predominantly urban service industry, Using different identification strategies and a large country sample, we find that financial liberalization is positively associated with urbanization. When controlling for the robustness of determinants as well as potential endogeneity, financial liberalization is still significantly and positively related to urbanization. We also identify the individual financial policies that are most strongly associated with urbanization, namely interest rate liberalization, strengthening of competition in the banking sector, credit control liberalization, and a decrease in the entry barriers to the domestic financial industry. Our findings have implications for countries such as China, where policymakers hope that urbanization will be a key driver of future economic growth.

In March 2008, Malaysia’s political landscape was shaken by election results showing that the Barisan Nasional had won less than two thirds of the parliamentary seats and lost five states to the opposition. A two-thirds supermajority had been seen as a sacred threshold for the coalition to ensure its continued legitimacy. We conjecture that the 2008 election represented a challenge to the competitive authoritarian regime and that this had direct effects on firms with ties to the ruling coalition. Our empirical results show that firms with political patronage were adversely affected by the electoral outcome. More specifically, firms with close ties to the Barisan Nasional experienced a significant negative value effect. Firms characterized by political patronage also decreased their leverage levels significantly more than other firms after the 2008 election, suggesting that their access to debt capital had become more restricted. Moreover, this effect was mainly driven by changes in long-term debt. These results suggest a significant negative effect on connected firms as the political status quo was challenged in Malaysia.

It has been argued that the Chinese state sector is advancing at the cost of the private sector. Focusing on publicly listed firms which are divided into state- and private-controlled firms, we investigate preferential access to debt and effects on firm performance. Focusing on the large stimulus program launched in the fall of 2008, we show that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were better able to maintain their leverage levels and had better access to debt of both short and long maturities compared to privately controlled firms. Furthermore, we show that political connections obtained through political participation help mitigate the discrimination private firms faces in a transition economy where the state controls capital allocation. We also find that preferential access to debt financing does not help SOEs improve firm performance relative to that of private firms. Political participation does however help improve private firms’ performance. These results lend support to the argument that the state is indeed advancing at the cost of the private sector and that SOEs still face a broader set of goals than just profit maximization and/or are less efficient than private firms.

While finance has been shown to influence the distribution of income, little research has been devoted to the potential impact of financial sector policies on inequality. This study analyzes the relationship between financial repression and inequality across countries and across China's provinces. Using several alternative estimation procedures including fixed effect, dynamic panel and instrumental variable regressions, we find that financial repression is positively associated with inequality across countries. Moreover, we find that this relationship is stronger in less developed economies and that interest rate controls, capital account controls, poor banking supervision and a concentrated banking sector are the most important financial policies influencing inequality. Furthermore, financial repression is associated with a higher fraction of the population living in poverty. Focusing on China, financial repression again acts as a driver for inequality and its effect is stronger in less developed provinces. These results have important policy implications, not the least so for China, where rising inequality poses a significant problem for the government.

This paper analyzes the relationship between financial repression and structural change. We present a simple theoretical model of structural transformation in which the impact of financial repression on unbalanced growth is studied. The model suggests that governments may choose to repress the financial sector to allow for continued development of the industry sector while inhibiting growth in the domestic service sector. We then present empirical evidence of financial repression having a significant negative effect on structural transformation. In countries with higher levels of financial repression, the development of the service sector is held back in favor of continued expansion of the industry sector. The results are robust to different country sample compositions, alternative measures of sectoral structure, and different measures of financial repression. The analysis suggests that financial repression may be an important driver of structural imbalances, especially in countries with heavy state intervention and where the government strongly favors industrial expansion. The findings have direct and important policy implications for governments that are experiencing rapid economic transformation due to high economic growth and that also use financial repression to achieve a long-run industrial output growth.

This paper examines how repressive financial policies influence external balances. We argue that financial repression holds back financial development and distorts the process of structural transformation by constraining the service sector and promoting the manufacturing sector, thereby affecting external balances. Using a panel data set of a large number of countries, we find that financial repression has a significant and positive effect on the current account. This result holds for several additional robustness checks, including using medium-term determinants of the current account, alternative measures of external balances, and alternative measures of financial repression. We also show that financial repression mainly affects external balances through its effect on economic structure. When analyzing different repressive financial policies, we find that interest rate controls and capital account controls are the main policies contributing to external imbalances. Furthermore, financial repression has a larger effect on the current account in East Asia than the rest of the world.

We use structural VAR models with short-run restrictions to analyze the potential transmission of China’s monetary policy shocks to equity markets in Southeast Asia. Our results show that several of the markets in the region are influenced by China’s monetary policy, even though the effect is modest. The impact of a monetary expansion in China is significant and positive for four of the five Southeast Asian equity markets, indicating an increase in demand for goods and services in both China and abroad, which in turn shows up in the foreign equity market. The results provide evidence of China’s growing influence in Southeast Asia and its financial markets. The transmission effect is still quite small, but can be expected to increase if the current trends of deepening economic integration between China and Southeast Asia and a maturing Chinese central bank continue.

This paper analyzes the relationship between stocks and bonds in nine Asian countries. Using a bivariate stochastic volatility model, we show that there are significant volatility spillover effects between stock and bond markets in several of the countries. Furthermore, dynamic correlation patterns show that the relationship between stock and bond markets changes considerably over time in all countries. Stock-bond correlation increases during periods of turmoil in several countries, indicating that there is a cross-asset contagion effect. Therefore, if there is a flight to quality effect in Asian markets, it seems to occur across countries or regions rather than across domestic assets. The results have direct and important implications for regional policy makers as well as domestic and international investors that invest in multiple asset classes.

This paper analyzes equity market movements in East Asia and Europe during the global financial crisis. Extending the methodology in Chakrabarti and Roll (2002), we study regional as well as country-regional volatility, covariance and correlation. We also analyze regional and country-regional tail dependence in the two regions. The results show that volatility and covariance patterns in East Asia and Europe were relatively stable until the second half of 2008. Correlations were higher in Europe, but relatively high in East Asia as well. Both regions thus exhibit an overall increase in comovements compared to the time of the Asian financial crisis. There was a sharp decline in regional correlation during the third quarter of 2008 in both East Asia and Europe, which was then followed by a strong increase. The spread of the crisis affected Europe more, with resulting higher regional comovements. Moreover, average tail dependence stayed relatively stable in both regions throughout the pre-crisis and crisis periods with a notably higher level of tail dependence in Europe. Surprisingly, countries in East Asia such as China that are usually seen as insulated from the rest of the region show signs of increasing market integration with the rest of the region. The increasing level of financial market integration and the high level of comovements during times of international financial turmoil demonstrate the limited benefit of diversification in regional portfolios.

This paper analyzes the joint dynamic processes of macroeconomic and monetary variables and bond yields in China. We show that macroeconomic variables as well as monetary policy variables have a significant impact on two factors that capture the variation in yields. An increase in the inflation rate and economic growth result in a rise in the yield curve. Similarly, an increase in the money supply causes a rise in the yield curve, albeit with a delayed effect. Finally, when official rates are raised, the long yield shows signs of a delayed decline. Overall, the long yield is more sensitive to most changes in macroeconomic and monetary variables. These results differ from an earlier study on bond yields by Ang and Piazzesi (2003), who show that the U.S. short-term rate is more sensitive to changes in macroeconomic variables. Possible explanations for the difference include certain unique structural features in the domestic financial system and the way monetary policy is conducted in China.

Recent research shows that bond yields are influenced by monetary policy decisions. To learn how this works in an interest rate market that differs significantly from that of the U.S. and Europe, we model Chinese bond yields using the one-year deposit rate as a state variable. We also add the difference between the one-year interest rate and the one-year deposit rate as a factor. The model is developed in an affine framework and closed-form solutions are obtained. It is tested empirically and the results show that the new model characterizes the changing shape of the yield curve well. Incorporating the benchmark rate into the model thus helps us to match Chinese bond yields.