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...

This paper analyzes systematic risk of sovereign bonds in four East Asian countries: China, Malaysia, Philippines, and Thailand. A bivariate stochastic volatility model that allows for time-varying correlation is estimated with Markov Chain Monte Carlo simulation. The volatilities and...

Recent research shows that bond yields are influenced by monetary policy decisions. To learn how this works in a bond market that differs significantly from those in the US and Europe, we model Chinese bond yields using the one-year deposit interest rate as a state variable. We also include the...

This paper examines the economic consequences of political participation by entrepreneurs in China. Using unique data on political participation and initial public offerings by entrepreneurial firms, we find that firms controlled by entrepreneurs who participate in politics exhibit superior...

While finance has been shown to influence the distribution of income, little research has been devoted to the potential impact of financial policy on income inequality. This study analyzes the relationship between repressive financial policies and inequality across countries. We show that...