Thesis (D.B.A.)--George Washington University, 1989. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 265-270).

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Management Studies / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Community Medicine / Master / Master of Public Health

by Mo Hung Fat, Yim Kwok Wai. / English with summary in Chinese / Title in Chinese: / Bibliography: leaves 60-61 / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1984

by Gladys Yue Wing-fan, Eric Liu Tai-loi. / Thesis (M.B.A.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 128-133). / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.v / LIST OF TABLES --- p.viii / ACKNOWLEDGMENTS --- p.ix / CHAPTERS / Chapter I. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter II. --- METHODOLOGY --- p.5 / Researching Publications --- p.5 / Attending Seminar --- p.6 / Conducting Interviews --- p.6 / Chapter III. --- SHANGHAI --- p.8 / Background Information --- p.8 / The New Development Areas of Shanghai --- p.10 / Hongqiao New Area --- p.11 / Caohejing --- p.11 / Minhang --- p.12 / Pudong 一 Manhattan of the East --- p.12 / Waigaoqiao-Gaoqiao Sub-Area --- p.14 / Qingningsi-Jinqiao Sub-Area --- p.15 / Liujiazui-Huamu Sub-Area --- p.16 / Zhoujidu-Liuli Sub-Area --- p.16 / Beicai ´ؤ Zhangjiang Sub-Area --- p.17 / Preferential Treatment for Investors in Pudong New Area --- p.17 / Statistics of Pudong --- p.20 / Chapter IV. --- INDUSTRIAL MIX OF SHANGHAI --- p.22 / Seven Pillar Industries --- p.22 / Foreign Investment --- p.24 / Favorable Investment Environment --- p.24 / Area for Improvement --- p.27 / Chapter V. --- TERTIARY INDUSTRY OF SHANGHAI --- p.29 / Retail Market --- p.29 / China Market --- p.29 / Shanghai Retail Market --- p.30 / Big Spenders --- p.31 / Hong Kong Seizes the Opportunities --- p.33 / Prospects of Retail Market --- p.33 / Financial Business --- p.34 / A Financial Centre in the Making --- p.34 / Merrill Lynch --- p.36 / Commodities Exchanges --- p.37 / Real Estate --- p.38 / Two Prongs Policy --- p.38 / Residential Space --- p.39 / Office Space --- p.40 / Retail Space --- p.41 / Chapter VI. --- GROWTH OF SHANGHAI --- p.42 / Grand Development Strategy --- p.42 / Tertiary Industry --- p.45 / Development Strategy --- p.47 / Threats / Chapter VII. --- FINANCIAL CENTRE IN SHANGHAI - INDISPENSABLE FOR CHINA IN THE PROCESS OF ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT --- p.53 / Fund for Development for China --- p.53 / Shanghai Assuming an Important Role --- p.54 / Chapter VIII. --- SHANGHAI FINANCIAL INDUSTRY - A CLOSER LOOK --- p.56 / The Shanghai Securities Market --- p.56 / Shanghai Securities Exchange --- p.56 / The Investors have Come of Age --- p.58 / A Tale of Two Cities --- p.59 / STAQ --- p.61 / Banking --- p.62 / Earlier Banking Reforms --- p.62 / Banking in Shanghai --- p.66 / Major Banks --- p.66 / City of Choice --- p.66 / New National Banking Laws and Opportunities for Shanghai --- p.67 / Major Players in Shanghai Financial Market --- p.69 / New Development --- p.70 / Expansion of the Shanghai Securities Exchange --- p.71 / Secondary Overseas Listing --- p.71 / National Foreign Exchange Centre --- p.71 / ADR Representative Office --- p.73 / CDR (Chinese Depository Receipt) --- p.73 / Year 2000 --- p.74 / Chapter IX. --- "A, B, H SHARES RED CHIPS AND THE ROLE OF HONG KONG" --- p.75 / B shares --- p.75 / Distinction Beween H Shares and Red Chips --- p.78 / Red Chips --- p.78 / H Shares --- p.79 / Strategic Importance of Listing/Acquisition of Companies in Hong Kong to China --- p.79 / ADR --- p.80 / "Comparison of A, B and H Shares" --- p.81 / B Shares are Losing Ground --- p.81 / Importance of H Shares to Hong Kong --- p.82 / Chapter X. --- FIELD WORK AND RESEARCH --- p.85 / Position of Hong Kong --- p.86 / Comparison between Shanghai & Hong Kong --- p.88 / Financial Knowledge/Skilled Personnel --- p.88 / Staff Turnover --- p.89 / Recruitment --- p.90 / Standard International Practice --- p.90 / Guanxi/Bureaucracy --- p.90 / Telecommunication IInfrastructure --- p.91 / Shanghai Surpassing Hong Kong as the Major Financial Centre --- p.91 / Problems Facing Shanghai in the Course of Developing its Financial Market --- p.98 / Lack of Free Competition --- p.98 / Inherited Banking Problems of a Centrally Planned Economy --- p.100 / Lack of Well Written Regulations and Legal Structure --- p.102 / Unclear Directions --- p.103 / Inconvertibility of RMB --- p.105 / Government Intervention --- p.106 / Lack of a Powerful Central Bank --- p.107 / Developing/Immature Market --- p.107 / Cumbersome Administrative System --- p.109 / Accounting Practice --- p.110 / Inexperienced Workforce --- p.111 / Space Shortage --- p.113 / Infrastructure --- p.114 / Escalating Labor Cost --- p.115 / No Freedom of Information Dissemination --- p.115 / Potential Competition from other cities --- p.116 / Chapter XI. --- CONCLUSION --- p.118 / APPENDIX / Chapter 1. --- MAP OF SHANGHAI --- p.120 / Chapter 2. --- MAP OF NEW DEVELOPMENT AREAS OF SHANGHAI --- p.121 / Chapter 3. --- VARIOUS FORMS OF FOREIGN INVESTMENT --- p.122 / Chapter 4. --- OUTLINE OF THE INTERVIEW QUESTIONS --- p.124 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.128

Due to the lack of efficient offline payment services for small value payment, and along with the booming of the Internet and telecommunications technologies, new electronic payment services and instruments are becoming increasingly popular and important in the first and second decades of the 21 century in China’s electronic commerce economy. The new electronic payment instruments, which primarily include Internet third party payment and virtual currency, are the subjects of research in this thesis. This thesis focuses on electronic payment law relating to the Internet, and the e-payment law which has been altered substantially by the Internet, rather than focusing on a comprehensive law of payment, clearance and settlement, or traditional mechanisms of payment, such as negotiable instruments and electronic funds transfers that occurs only within the intranet of closed banking systems. Although the new electronic payment instruments cannot escape from the influence of the traditional payment, and new payment instruments are based upon the traditional one both in technological infrastructure and in legal framework, the new electronic payment instruments do possess their own special features in technology, business models and in law. On this regard, readers might be asking why the author did not use the topic of “Internet Payment” or “online payment” instead of “new electronic payment” for the title of the thesis. The answer is because in China, telephone payment, along with Internet payment should be collectively considered as new electronic payment tools, and therefore, it is too narrow to just use the term “Internet Payment”. Also, the word “online” is, somewhat, a misleading word, and the author tries to specify in most cases whether it is an “Internet” or a “mobile network” or “landlines” or any other forms of networks in the following analysis when the concept of “online” has to be referred to. On the other hand, it is a truth that, among those new electronic payment instruments, it is the Internet that has been shaking and reshaping the infrastructure framework of payment, clearance and settlement; and telephone payment as well as mobile payment, to a great extent, are relying on the Internet. Therefore, Internet-related payment lies at the heart of the thesis. Furthermore, in China, new electronic payment instruments are largely created and facilitated through non-bank Internet third party payment providers and virtual currency, These two types of new electronic payment services possess enormous scale and are developing in a fast speed. Therefore, this thesis will treat the law on non-bank Internet third party payment platform providers and virtual currency as two crucial points to discuss.1 1.2 Research Questions The hypothesis of the thesis is that legal issues arising from new electronic payment services, which heavily rely on and is substantially attached to the Internet, are different from legal issues pertaining to traditional electronic payment services which are primarily intra-bank or inter-bank related. For example, in the Internet third party payment system (see Chapter 4 of the thesis), non-bank intermediaries are involved which is outside the regulatory framework of the traditional banking and payment system; also for example, in the virtual currency system (see Chapter 5 & 6 of the thesis), money is not issued by governments and denominated into any national legitimate currencies such as Renminbi in China, instead, money is issued by private Internet companies and denominated into currencies of those private companies. Thus, there are a number of legal questions to be considered: how is the Internet third party payment being regulated in China? What are the key issues in regulating the Internet third party payment? Is the current regulation appropriate? How to regulate the Internet games virtual currency in China? How is the Internet third party payment and virtual currency regulated in the European Union? Are there any lessons that China may learn from the European Union? In the thesis, the author examines these important legal issues relating to new electronic payment in detail, evaluate current existing regulations both in China and in the EU/UK, and propose specific regulatory approaches and measures for China.

The aim of this research is to investigate corporate behavior, including investment and financing decisions, when corporations face uncertainty and flexibility/inflexibility, and to explore the effects of this behavior on real option valuation. It expands the real options analysis framework into two paths: the first is to add institutional details, portfolio aspects and financial structure into the classical real option model; the other is to extend the real option model into a firm valuation model with corporate investment and financing decisions. Two types of theoretical models are developed. The first set of theoretical models follows the framework of binomial option pricing. Three binomial option pricing models are constructed to represent real estate development in Hong Kong, in which developable land has different flexibility in accordance with covenants in typical land lease contracts. First, the firm may have contractually limited time to complete the development following conversion of urban fringe/agricultural land into commercial/residential land after paying a negotiable “land premium”; second, it may buy land from the market without development time constraints; or thirdly it may buy land at public auction also with contractual development time constraints. The three binomial models deal with the flexibility/inflexibility in these land development circumstances imposed by institutional arrangements. Interaction effects from cost-saving through co-development and potential price increases through agglomeration effects from co-location of multiple options are included in the binomial models. The financial structure of the firm is also seen to influence real option values, because capital structure could imply different capital costs in the exercise of the real options, which is ignored in traditional real option theory. In addition to the traditional factors in financial option pricing models, numerical examples show that interaction effects and capital structure influence real option values and their investment thresholds. The second set of theoretical models aims to value both real flexibility and financial flexibility dynamically and simultaneously. Financial flexibility in the firm, which is seen as an important factor in the capital structure decision, is itself seen as analogous to a real option in project valuation, as the firm can use some debt capacity to invest in the opportunity but still preserve unused capacity for future opportunities. The thesis argues that the firm owns the financial flexibility to adjust its debt through sale of its existing assets or to use these as loan collateral. The firm with more collateralizable assets would have larger debt capacity, use more debt and invest more through the flexible utilization of debt capacity. Two empirical tests are conducted to confirm the findings of the theoretical models, structured into three principal hypotheses: firstly, real option value is not only determined by embedded flexibility, but also by the existing corporate asset structure through interactions and the firm’s ability to trade or collateralize its existing assets (properties); second, real option value and real option execution/investment is directly influenced by external financing decisions due to financial frictions and constraints; and thirdly, financial flexibility is expected to increase corporate investment through the collateral channel and lower cost of capital. The first empirical study uses project level land auction price data in Hong Kong to investigate the relationships between real options and firm fundamentals including interactions, constraints and financial structure. Three sub-hypotheses associated with principal hypotheses one and two about real option valuation are derived from the theoretical binomial option models. Sub-hypothesis one states that real option value is expected to increase if the firm has more properties that may interact with the property underlying a real option; two states that real option value is expected to decrease if the firm faces capital budgeting constraints when allocating resources among competing projects and high financing costs caused by financial frictions; and three, real option value is expected to increase if the firm has sufficient internal funds and financial flexibility to finance the opportunity. The empirical results support the sub-hypotheses. It is shown that the option premium embedded in the land price is not only related to real flexibility such as waiting to invest (as identified in traditional real option theory), but it also increases or decreases with the direct interactions with other properties, their competition for firm resources and the firm’s financial status. This links for the first time project level predictions of real option theory to firm fundamentals. The second empirical test investigates investment decisions and the influence of the firm’s financial flexibility. It tests principal hypotheses two and three about the effects of financial constraints, frictions and flexibility. Through the firm valuation model, sub-hypotheses four to six are derived. Sub-hypothesis four states that utilization of external funds relaxes financial constraints and induces investment in profitable opportunities; while the higher opportunity cost of external funds raises the investment threshold which reduces investment and lowers real option value. Sub-hypothesis five states that the firm with more collateralizable assets has lower investment thresholds in comparison with the firm relying on external capital with higher financing cost, and is divided into two: 5.1 states that the firm with more collateralizable assets would use more debt financing (because the collateralizable assets create low-risk debt capacity); and 5.2 states that the firm with more collateralizable assets would have access to debt at lower interest rates. Sub-hypothesis six states that existing debt reduces internal funds and debt capacity of the firm, leading to less investment and a higher investment threshold due to potentially high capital cost of external financing. Hong Kong real estate company data is employed to test the implications from the firm valuation model. The results can be summarized as follows: (1) debt level influences investment decisions, in which debt firstly relaxes the financial constraint for investment and then imposes financial frictions; (2) collateralizable assets increase investment by creating debt capacity if the firm faces financial constraints; (3) the firm has the ability to use more long term debt if it owns more collateralizable assets; (4) interest rates charged for long term debt reduces in the firm with more collateralizable assets; (5) financially constrained firms have to depend on substantial collateralizable assets to issue debt and invest. In sum, there is support for the functioning of a “collateral channel” at the firm level. / published_or_final_version / Real Estate and Construction / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration

published_or_final_version / Business Administration / Master / Master of Business Administration