What Determines Chinese Stock Returns?

32 Pages Posted: 25 Aug 2004

See all articles by Fenghua Wang

Fenghua Wang

Shanghai Stock Exchange

Yexiao Xu

University of Texas at Dallas - School of Management

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: September 2003

Abstract

Size, not book-to-market, helps to explain cross-sectional differences in Chinese stock returns from 1996 to 2002. Similar to the U.S. experience, beta does not account for return differences among individual stocks. Due to the speculative nature of Chinese capital markets and the low quality accounting information, these results suggest that the book-to-market variable may have failed to reflect fundamentals in Chinese markets. Instead, we have proposed using a floating ratio as a proxy for fundamentals because of the unique structure of the traded Chinese companies. Floating ratio may have reflected the expected corporate governance in China, which helps to predict a firm's future cash flow. Not only the cross-sectional evidence strongly supports our prediction for the floating ratio variable, a three-factor model which includes size and floating ratio proxies has significantly increased the explanatory power of a market model from 81% to 90%.

Keywords: Chinese stocks, corporate governance, cross-sectional regression, floating ratio, size, three-factor model

JEL Classification: G12, G15, M41, M47, G34

Suggested Citation

Wang, Fenghua and Xu, Yexiao, What Determines Chinese Stock Returns? (September 2003). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=581801 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.581801

Fenghua Wang

Shanghai Stock Exchange ( email )

Shanghai 200120
China

Yexiao Xu (Contact Author)

University of Texas at Dallas - School of Management ( email )

P.O. Box 830688
Richardson, TX 75083-0688
United States
972-883-6703 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.utdallas.edu/~yexiaoxu

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