Capital Flows and Domestic Market Integration in China
In Chapter one, using a unique data set on Chinese provincial savings and investment, I
prove that the torrent of reports about the inadequacies of the Chinese financial system,
accompanied by studies claiming product and capital market segmentation, overlooks real
achievements. While my aggregate results parallel those of Boyreau-Debray and Wei (2002) and
others, I am able to assess the impact of financial innovation on capital flows outside the
government allocation mechanism. Stripping out foreign funds, government appropriations, and
officially influenced bank loans, I discover that inter-provincial commercial capital flows present
a strong trend toward market integration and their mobility pattern starts to bear resemblance to
interstate flows in the U.S. and other advanced nations. This result undercuts the widespread
view of China's economy as lacking in domestic integration.
Several emerging capital markets have adopted legally separated share markets (LSSM)
in which local firms market separate claims to the same underlying dividend flow to two distinct
sets of investors, domestic shareholders trading "A" shares with domestic currency and foreign
investors trading "B" shares with foreign currency. I utilize an experimental approach to show
that information transference across these segmented markets may have caused the covariance in
A and B shares' price movements. Our hypothesis is that. My results not only suggest that there
is indeed information transmission across LSSM, but also indicate that the quality and clarify of
signals sent out by the market with more information directly impacts the success of information
transference.